Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

The Wildlife Trusts: A hundred years of nature conservation
The Michael Clegg Memorial Lecture (joint event with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust)
Michael Allen, former Chair of The Wildlife Trusts

2012 is the centenary year of The Wildlife Trusts, 100 years since Charles Rothschild founded the movement, originally known as the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves. The lecture will chart the story of the changing fortunes of UK wildlife and the Trust movement – from its inception in 1912 under the leadership of Rothschild, through the birth of the local conservation movement after the Second World War, and up to the present day – and will be illustrated by fascinating archive photographs.
There will be a focus on the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, which was formed in 1946 and now manages 85 nature reserves and is supported by over 33,000 members.

Report
by Bob Hale
By the early 19th century various organisations were working to protect individual living species. By contrast, Charles Rothschild (1877-1923), banker and expert entomologist, founded the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves in 1912 to safeguard entire natural habitats – a radical concept at that date. An inventory of 284 sites “worthy of preservation” included a dozen “Rothschild Reserves” in Yorkshire, with five of primary importance: Askham Bog, Flamborough Head, Forge Valley, Kilnsey Crag, and Grass Wood near Grassington. Rothschild’s successors continued his drive for statutory protection, which finally came in 1949. Askham Bog and Skipwith Common were among the first national nature reserves designated that year.
Askham Bog, with its legendary collection of rare plants and insect life, was bought in 1944 by Sir Francis Terry and Arnold Rowntree, and the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust was set up to manage it. Renamed the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, it now has 30,000 members and owns or manages over 60 sites countywide. It is one of 47 independent trusts in the country, for which Rothschild’s society, later called the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, and now The Wildlife Trusts, acts as an umbrella organisation.

Sponsored by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust