The Wildlife Trusts recognises that the central roles of access, awareness raising, education, community engagement and participation is essential to our overall aim to achieve a UK richer in wildlife.

We aim to achieve this by:

• ensuring that our activities are relevant to all sectors of society and contribute to people’s quality of life;
• creating opportunities for individual and community engagement with nature and wildlife in both rural and urban environments;
• making the resource of our nature reserves and visitor centres available and welcoming to the widest possible audience through sustainable access;
• broadening the constituency for nature conservation and wildlife protection by developing activities that are enjoyable and inclusive;
• maximising opportunities for people who help us through voluntary effort to develop personal skills and resources;
• identifing under-represented groups and develop targeted participation initiatives with them;
• empowering individuals and communities to become involved in activity, planning and decision-making that is beneficial to the environment;
• identifing and removing barriers to awareness-raising and participation, whether they are social, cultural, physical, economic or intellectual;
• modelling current best practice in environmental matters in all our operations and activities;
• enabling people to explore and improve the sustainability of their everyday life choices and how they impact on biodiversity.