(Image: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
It’s a big anniversary for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, which, like this magazine, marks its 80th anniversary this year. The organisation has gone from one to more than 110 nature reserves
Naturalists and all lovers of the beauties of Yorkshire will, therefore, be interested to learn of the formation of THE YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS’ TRUST LIMITED with the primary purpose of establishing and maintaining Sanctuaries for the preservation of wildlife, particularly of rare or unusual character,’ The Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust Ltd Brochure (1946).
An early Yorkshire Wildlife Trust logo (Image: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
When the confectioners and naturalists Sir Francis Terry and Arnold Rowntree founded Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust – now Yorkshire Wildlife Trust – in 1946 to look after Askham Bog nature reserve in York, they laid a legacy for Yorkshire’s wildlife. Their choice was inspired by the likes of naturalist Charles Rothschild, who 30 years previously was the first to realise that Britain would need a system of permanent protected areas for wildlife – and who included Askham Bog on that list.
Since conception, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has been an organisation that works from the grassroots, sowing seeds with communities, and saving and advocating for Yorkshire’s wildlife and wild spaces. No wild creature has been too small, and no challenge has been too big.
Discovering a four-spotted chaser dragonfly (Image: Lucy Cardy)
Yorkshire Naturalists' Trust first brochure for members, 1946 (Image: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
Over the last 80 years, we have flourished: from a tiny office in the Yorkshire Museum to nearly 200 staff today, and from Askham Bog to over 110 nature reserves. Supported by over a thousand volunteers and 45,000 members, work spans from the flowering meadows of the East Riding and Flamborough’s cliffs to peatland restoration and the rolling stone-walled Dales. YWT is replanting seagrass in the Humber Estuary, monitoring marine wildlife to develop policies for its protection, helping woodlands survive ash dieback and wetlands adapt to drought. People are still at the heart of the Trust, too, from hardworking volunteers to support for greener urban communities, and the incredible and awe-inspiring wildlife experiences we run for thousands of visitors in Yorkshire’s most beautiful places.
Conservation Corps at Askham Bog in 1964 (Image: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
Conservation Corps at Askham Bog, 1964
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust was created with ambition for the future of Yorkshire’s wildlife and wild spaces, boasting just 11 members. Askham Bog nature reserve was Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s first reserve, and is nationally famous for its extremely rare and biodiverse plant and insect life. Over the years, the way we have cared for the reserve has changed as we have understood its habitat better – we now know we need to aim to make it as wet as possible.
Roger Mitchell, a vital guiding light and advocate at Potteric Carr nature reserve, with Sir David Attenborough (Image: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
Potteric Carr nature reserve
As one of our more urban reserves, Potteric Carr and its unique habitat has often been under threat – such as during the proposed routing of the M18 in 1971. Minutes from the House of Commons read: ‘Few people familiar with Doncaster and its problems of traffic congestion would question the urgent need of an east-west bypass. However, there was no welcome from my constituents – instead they reacted with shock and dismay when they saw the proposed route.’
7,500 local residents objected, and after a campaign by local campaigners like Roger Mitchell, the Trust and other organisations, the route was changed and Low Ellers Carr (now Potteric Carr) was saved.
Spurn Peninsula. (Image: Harry Appleyard)
Now internationally famous for its iconic lighthouse and migrating birds, the Trust took Spurn into its care in 1959 despite concerns that the sea would claim the land, making it a short-term and little-gain purchase. Support from members meant the gamble paid off – Spurn was designated as a National Nature Reserve in 1996 and attracts bird watchers from across country.
The popular Puffin Festival (Image: O’Hara Photography)
Puffin Festival
Yorkshire’s first-ever Puffin Festival took place in 2019 to celebrate these incredible parrots of the sea, and now hosts thousands of visitors at Flamborough North Landing and Bridlington each year. Yorkshire’s chalk cliffs are home to the largest mainland puffin colony in the UK, alongside an internationally significant seabird colony.
Oysters in the Humber
In 2025 Wilder Humber, delivered in partnership by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, achieved the largest release of native oysters in the intertidal zone by any restoration project in the UK to date. Oyster reefs once provided an entire ecosystem for the Humber’s wildlife, as well as a vital water-cleaning filter.
David Attenborough at YWT. (Image: Tom Marshall)
Sir David Attenborough:
Sir David has long been a friend of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, visiting a number of our reserves over the years including Potteric Carr and Askham Bog nature reserve. Most recently, he was instrumental in supporting the Trust and more than 7,000 local campaigners to successfully oppose a proposed 500-home housing development on Moor Lane in 2019 that threatened to damage Askham Bog’s fragile ecological balance.
State of Yorkshire’s Nature and Bringing Yorkshire’s Nature Back
In June 2024, the Trust launched the first-ever State of Yorkshire’s Nature report, which gave an accurate insight into how the whole of Yorkshire’s nature is faring. With headlines that two-thirds of all British species are found in Yorkshire and that 3,000 species here are at risk of extinction, the report was closely followed in 2025 by the country’s first-ever blueprint for nature’s recovery, Bringing Yorkshire’s Nature Back. This blueprint sets out how Yorkshire can achieve the Government target of 30 by 30, and what steps are needed by councils, landowners, eNGOs and local communities.
White-clawed crayfish and great crested newt
2026 saw the first reintroduction of juvenile crayfish raised from wild females in a hatchery at Flamingo Land into an invasive crayfish-free watercourse, where they will hopefully have better chances of survival. The Trust also created our 100th pond for great-crested newts in Yorkshire as part of a multi-year project with Natural England and landowners across the region to provide more space for these endangered amphibians.
Team Wilder - TadCrafters. (Image: Andy Steele)
#TeamWilder
Launched in 2022, the #TeamWilder initiative brings together people across Yorkshire who want to create wilder spaces where they live. The Trust has now worked with more than 60 local community groups across the region to re-green their local areas, providing advice and support on everything from wildflower verges and local community gardens to days out on our reserves and local festivals.
Peatland restoration
Yorkshire Peat Partnership, hosted and led by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2025. For the last 15 years the team have been coordinating restoration across the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors National Park and Nidderdale National Landscape, raising over £36m. An area the size of Bradford is now under recovery and as a result will prevent the loss of almost 13 million tonnes of carbon emissions by 2050.
Read more
- A milestone year for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust
- Yorkshire’s natural beauty gets even bigger and better
- Explore Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s wetlands this autumn
Wild Ingleborough
The Ingleborough National Nature Reserve was expanded in 2025 to include much of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s landholdings in recognition of how much work the Trust has done to revitalise the rare habitats around Ingleborough mountain. The team has introduced roaming conservation grazing stock, restored hundreds of metres of dry stone walls, and offered hundreds of schoolchildren and city-based groups the opportunity to experience a wilder Dales. The project’s highlight is its upland nursery, where extremely rare plants such as spiked speedwell, Yorkshire sandwort, purple saxifrage and more have been collected as seeds to grow on and plant back out.
Lady’s-slipper orchid (Image: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
Lady’s-slipper orchid
The lady’s-slipper orchid was reduced to a single plant in a secret, constantly-monitored location in the Yorkshire Dales. Over the last three years, the Trust has worked in partnership, expanding on decades of conservation work around the remaining wild plant, rearing new orchids and planting out many of these hand-reared orchids into the Dales. In 2024 an entirely ‘new’ plant was discovered at one of these reintroduction sites, marking the first ‘wild’ lady’s-slipper orchid to grow in a hundred years.
Dry stone walling at Ingleborough. (Image: Sara Spillett)
Help create a wilder future
Our natural world has changed dramatically over the last 80 years, and countless wild places across Yorkshire have been lost. But here’s the incredible thing; thanks to our community of members, the wild places in our care are thriving. Together, we are helping nature recover, one place at a time.
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s work is powered by people who care deeply about Yorkshire and the wildlife that makes it special. Every new member helps us create more space for nature to recover. Imagine what we could achieve with your help..
Find out more about becoming a member at ywt.org.uk