of all 16,000 species of flora and fauna found in British waters. It campaigned successfully for protection for the basking shark, and is the ‘lead partner’ for the UK marine turtles Species Action Plan. Among its multifarious activities for volunteer divers and beachcombers are ‘Seasearch’, a project to map UK marine habitats, a schools project called ‘Oceanwatch’, and an adopt-a-beach project for communal cleaning up. Another project, ‘Ocean Vigil’, records cetaceans and sharks. Fund raising is called ‘Splash for Cash’. Internationally, the Society surveys coral reefs in the Red Sea and Sri Lanka, and is helping the Malaysian government to establish a marine wildlife park at the Semporna Islands. Members receive a quarterly news magazine, Marine Conservation. Its slogan: ‘Seas fit for life’.
Office: 9 Gloucester Road, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire HR9 5BU.
Plantlife
‘Britain’s only national membership charity dedicated to saving wild plants’ was established in 1989, and now has some 12,000 members and a permanent staff of 18, based in London. Plantlife aims to achieve for plants what the RSPB has done for birds, that is, to improve their lot through a programme of campaigning, practical conservation work and public education. As a small charity with big ideas, it often works in tandem with bodies with similar aims, for example, as a member of the campaign to save peatlands, and has formal links with botanical societies and institutions nationally and internationally. Under its ‘Back from the Brink’ campaign, Plantlife is the ‘lead partner’ for Species Action Plans on a range of rare flowers, bryophytes and fungi. It also runs 22 nature reserves across 17 counties, mainly meadows, heaths and bogs with an outstanding flora. It contributes to plant conservation Europe-wide via the newly founded Planta Europa network, and commissions research reports on matters of current concern, such as bulb theft, controlling the sale of invasive plants (‘At war with aliens’) and managing woods for wild plants (‘Flowers of the forest’). Its magazine, Plantlife, was recently voted the pick of the bunch. Its goal: ‘A world in which the riches of our wild plant inheritance are not diminished by human activity or indifference but are recognised, cherished and enhanced’.
Address: 21 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9RP.
Director: Dr Jane Smart.
Plantlife ‘flora guardians’ clearing invasive ‘parrot’s feather’ weed from a plant-rich waterway. (Tim Wilkins/ Plantlife)
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT)
WWT is ‘the only charity concerned solely with wildfowl and the wetland habitats they rely on’. In 1946, Peter Scott leased 7 hectares of land at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire to establish the Severn Wildfowl Trust, renamed the Wildfowl Trust in 1954. Slimbridge has become home to the most comprehensive collection of ducks, geese and swans in the world. The Trust originally specialised in breeding endangered species, most famously the Nene or Hawaiian Goose, and Slimbridge later became a major research and ‘discovery’ centre. Nine more autonomous ‘Centres’ were established at Peakirk, Walney, Arundel, Martin Mere and Washington in England, Caerlaverock in Scotland, Llanelli in Wales and Castle Espie in Northern Ireland, all but the first being designed as refuges for wild birds (with excellent viewing facilities) rather than as captive breeding centres. The Trust also helped Thames Water to set up the Wetland Centre, on the site of Barn Elms Reservoir in London. It organises wildfowl surveys and advises on conservation worldwide, for example, on the design of a new wetland reserve in Singapore and on reed-bed filtration systems in Hong Kong. It changed its name in 1989 to reflect the Trust’s wider interest in wetland habitats. In 1992, WWT produced a global review on the conservation and management of wildfowl, and played a leading role on the first international conference devoted to these birds. Today it has some 70,000 members, while up to 750,000 people visit its Centres each year. Its newsletter is called The Egg. There is also a biannual research newsletter, Wetland News.
Main Centre: Slimbridge, Gloucestershire GL2 7BT.
The Woodland Trust
Founded by Kenneth Watkins in 1972, the Woodland Trust has been one of the voluntary movement’s surprise successes, striking a chord with our British love of trees and woods. It acquired its first property, Avon Valley Woods in Devon, near Watkins’ home, in 1972, and its 1000th, Coed Maesmelin, near Port Talbot, in 1999. The Trust’s straightforward purpose is to acquire woods of historic, scientific or amenity value, open them to the public and manage them in sympathy with their character. Although still only a medium-sized charity, with 63,000 members, the Trust has a sizeable income – £16.3 million in 1999 – from legacies, landfill tax credits, corporate sponsorship and appeals. It also sells timber on the Internet. It has offices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and a headquarters at Grantham, Lincolnshire. An admirable proportion of the Trust’s budget goes straight into conservation; for example, in 1999, it spent £5 million on acquiring woods and £6.3 on managing them. Many Trust properties are SSSIs, managed by agreement with one of the conservation agencies, and nearly all of them are de facto nature reserves, with nature conservation a primary aim. Today it owns or manages 1,080 sites covering 17,700 hectares.
With its open house policy, the Woodland Trust aims to promote public enjoyment (‘Wild about Woods’) and to ‘engage local communities in creating, nurturing and enjoying woodland’. It publishes an attractive quarterly newsletter, Broadleaf, and many of its properties have their own leaflets. The Trust also contributes towards the national Millennium Forest project. Though on occasion a little too anxious to plant trees where no trees are needed, the Woodland Trust has saved many fine woods from oblivion, and its overall influence on British woodland management has been benign, and considerable. On ancient woods, its aim is ‘no further losses’.
Address: Autumn Park, Grantham, Lincolnshire NG31 6LL.
Chief Executive: Mike Townsend.
Membership of the large conservation societies (in thousands)
Afterword: my own county trust
The county of Wiltshire has been the domain of great naturalists ever since John Aubrey wrote the first county natural history (Memoires of Naturall Remarques) in 1685. Richard Jefferies lived at Coate, near Swindon, and the location of his Bevis stories is preserved today as a country park. The county boasts one of the classic floras – Donald Grose’s 1957 Flora of Wiltshire. Its lep-idopterists include Baron de Worms, who was in charge of a chemical laboratory at Porton Down, and the Marlborough schoolmaster Edward Meyrick, perhaps the greatest microlepidopterist that ever lived, who lies in my parish churchyard. For 150 years we have had a flourishing Archaeological and Natural History Society based at the county museum, with its own journal. Even the county’s coat of arms commemorates its most characteristic, certainly its most spectacular, species, the now nationally extinct great bustard, standing back to back, in their proper colours.
The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, then the Wiltshire Trust for Nature Conservation, was formed in 1962. At that time nature conservation was scarcely more than the hobby of a few hundred local naturalists. As one of the founders, Lady Radnor, recalled, ‘We thought
