Nature is awesome in its variety and inspiring in many ways – from the high peaks to the deepest oceans and from the most remote wilderness to our city streets.
Celebrating the UK’s natural treasures in 2014, The Wildlife Trusts are hosting a series of wild weekends to offer endless opportunities to visit, discover and explore. Each offers a chance to get stuck into wild places and fun events across the UK – they’ll be similar to what you find listed here – but with a themed focus.
The Wildlife Trusts care for 2,300 nature reserves - these include beautiful heathlands, meadows, ancient woodlands, islands, beaches, moorland and mountains – and the range of events hosted at these wild places is just as varied.
Each weekend links to a fantastic list of places to visit: discover woodlands in April, wildflower meadows in June, great gardens in July and for the summer, National Marine Week guides people towards top rockpooling sites. Wondrous wetlands are on the menu in September.
To help you discover all of these places and more, we've created Nature Finder, the simple location-based free app. It uses GPS technology to automatically find your location and display maps and listings of nature reserves and events nearby. Nature Finder is suitable for all iPhone and iPad models, from the App Store - just search for 'Wildlife Trusts'. http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/app
We love the natural world
We are motivated by that personal emotional connection to the natural world. We love it just because it is there. And we believe there should be more of it.
In short, we stand for all wildlife, everywhere
The Wildlife Trusts want to help nature to recover from the decline that for decades has been the staple diet of scientific studies and news stories. We believe passionately that wildlife and natural processes need to have space to thrive, beyond designated nature reserves and other protected sites.
To achieve this it is vital that the richest wildlife sites are protected and sustained as a starting point from which nature can spread back into our wider landscapes. And at sea we must also protect areas as focal points for a future when our marine wildlife can thrive.
Society needs this as much as our wildlife does. A healthy natural environment is the foundation for everything that is of value to people – food, water, shelter, flood prevention, health, happiness and creative inspiration. It’s the source of our prosperity and our wellbeing.
We have for many years put out the message of hope that nature can recover on a grand scale if we do things right – we must achieve Living Landscapes and Living Seas for our treasured wildlife to have a lasting and rich future. We recognise the fundamental reliance of human life on a healthy natural environment.
We are motivated by that personal emotional connection to the natural world
Creating Living Landscape and achieving Living Seas provides us with good health, personal fulfilment, employment and all the other things that nature does for us. We are ideally placed to provide a real foundation to nature’s recovery, to enable people to understand why nature matters to them and inspire and support them to take action for it.
Every year, more than 7,000,000 people visit our nature reserves, but we’re not just about land management. We run over 11,000 events a year, helping more than 380,000 people connect with nature in their local patch. We work with about 5,200 schools and welcome people to more than 120 centres. Through our work, we advise more than 5,300 landowners on how to manage over 200,000ha of land for wildlife.
People everywhere benefit from our work each year: nature therapy projects to improve mental health; urban regeneration programmes to bring more nature into disadvantaged housing estates; arts projects; natural gyms; after-school clubs; Forest Schools and marine wildlife surveys.
In short, we stand for all wildlife, everywhere. And we work with local communities to help them to achieve natural environments rich in wildlife where they live and work – wherever that may be. Come join us!