About us

Employees outdoors

© Cain Scrimgeour

About us

Our purpose is to bring wildlife back, to empower people to take meaningful action for nature, and to create an inclusive society where nature matters. 

Our vision is of a thriving natural world, with our wildlife and natural habitats playing a valued role in addressing the climate and ecological emergencies, and everyone inspired to get involved in nature’s recovery.

      Who we are

      The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life, who believe that we need nature and nature needs us. We have more than 900,000 members, over 39,000 volunteers, 3,600 staff and 600 trustees. There are 46 individual Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a place-based independent charity with its own legal identity, formed by groups of people getting together and working with others to make a positive difference to wildlife and future generations, starting where they live and work.

      Every Wildlife Trust is part of The Wildlife Trusts federation and a corporate member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a registered charity in its own right founded in 1912 and one of the founding members of IUCN – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Taken together this federation of 47 charities is known as The Wildlife Trusts.

      How we are run

      What we do

      For more than a century we have been saving wildlife and wild places, increasing people’s awareness and understanding of the natural world, and deepening people’s relationship with it. Wherever you are, Wildlife Trust people, places and projects are never far away, improving life for wildlife and people together, within communities of which we are a part. We look after more than 2,600 nature reserves, covering over 97,000 hectares, and operate more than 120 visitor and education centres in every part of the UK, on Alderney and the Isle of Man.

      We work closely with schools, colleges and universities, with hundreds of farmers and landowners, fishermen and divers; with thousands of companies, big and small; with community groups and other environmental organisations; with lotteries, charitable trusts and foundations; with politicians from across the political spectrum; with local and national governments and more. Together, we are tackling the climate and nature crisis - starting with the ambition of 30% of the UK's land and seas connected and protected for nature by 2030. Strategy 2030 sets out the impact we hope to have by working together collectively in the crucial decade ahead.