About Yorkshire Wildlife Trust

For 75 years, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust have been protecting Yorkshire's wildlife and wild places. Together with our volunteers and members we work across land and sea; from hills and valleys to beaches and city streets ensuring precious wild places are rich in wildlife.

Our vision is for a Yorkshire that is abundant in wildlife, with more people having a genuine and meaningful connection with nature. We look after over 100 nature reserves right across Yorkshire, and are involved in hundreds of other conservation-related projects from campaigning to educating to tackling invasive species to restoring river courses.

Yorkshire needs a recovery of wildlife on land and sea and we do four main things:

* Save wild places: We manage and restore over 100 nature reserves across Yorkshire and actively work to create new wild areas and wildlife corridors.

 * Save wildlife: We protect the incredible species that call Yorkshire home, by understanding what they need and creating spaces where they can flourish.

* Connect people with nature: We inspire people, especially children, to experience wildlife, and enjoy it.

* Protect the environment: We campaign to protect and restore Yorkshire’s irreplaceable natural heritage. Now more than ever before, we need a society where nature matters. We inspire thousands of children, families and individuals every year; helping them to connect with their local wildlife through events and engagement programmes.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Yorkshire’s coast and seas are home to the most breath taking wildlife spectacles! From our soaring coastal clifftops where colourful puffins care for their young, to the foaming waves where playful dolphins leap, to the kelp forests and carbon-storing seagrass meadows, and down to the depths where ancient wonders like ocean quahogs live.

Tragically, our marine wildlife is a shadow of what it once was. That is why our expert marine biologists are tackling pollution at source, working with fishermen to combat ‘ghost gear’, campaigning for stronger protection for Marine Protected Areas and reintroducing species like native oysters and replanting seagrass meadows.

Peat; a last wilderness and one of our greatest hopes for carbon capture. These remote upland bogs have been misunderstood and misused for decades; from burning to draining, Yorkshire’s peatlands have been damaged almost beyond repair. Healthy peatlands not only provided habitat for wildlife such as short eared owls and curlew but also store carbon, safeguard against flooding, clean our drinking water and filter sediment from rivers,  and provide a spectacular place for walkers and tourists to visit. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Yorkshire Peat Partnership are using innovative, industry leading techniques to repair these precious habitats, from new techniques including ‘spraying’ specialist mosses onto the windiest hillsides and blocking drains with organic fibres

In Yorkshire wildlife is always just around the corner; from soaring swifts to dancing butterflies to croaking frogs. However these once common species are under threat.  Across land and sea Yorkshire’s wildlife needs to make a recovery and to grow back wilder and more connected through a rich mosaic of wildflowers, trees, ponds and other vital landscapes. For example, the Yorkshire Wolds once glistened with dew ponds but these have been lost as agriculture changed, without somewhere to breed our amphibians have seen sharp declines. However the Trust are recreating these precious pools the splashes of frogs are returning.

 

A proportion of every sale from the British Wildlife by British Artists Exhibition will be paid as a donation to Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (registered charity number 283895) - full details can be found on the FAQ page.