How we are run
The Wildlife Trusts movement
There are 47 Wildlife Trusts across the UK, the Isle of Man and Alderney - of which Yorkshire is the second oldest and largest. With over 800,000 members and 40,000 volunteers collectively, The Wildlife Trusts is the largest grassroots organisation dedicated to conserving wildlife.
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is an independent, autonomous charity with its own Board of Trustees. We are part of The Wildlife Trusts movement, which operates as an umbrella organisation for all individual Trusts and helps to coordinate campaigns at a national level. The Wildlife Trusts is a charity in its own right and does not govern us, but we frequently come together as a movement to be a powerful voice for nature.
Our President
Professor Sir John Lawton is Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and was formerly Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council ('99-'05).
He trained as a zoologist at the University of Durham, and subsequently held posts at Oxford University, the University of York, and Imperial College London. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in 2005 for his contributions to ecological science. He has also been awarded numerous other national and international prizes. He is married to Dot, and together they have two children and five grandchildren.
Vice President
Alastair Fitter is an ecologist and naturalist who retired from the University of York in 2012, where he is Professor Emeritus of Ecology; he was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to environmental science and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005.
He has been a member of the YWT for over 50 years and has had a long involvement with its founding reserve, Askham Bog, acting as Chair of its management committee from 1973-1985. He was a member of Yorkshire Naturalists Trust Council in the 1980s and then a member of the Board of Trustees of YWT from 2008-2012 and again from 2016-2024. He was the first chair (2021-2024) of the Nature Recovery Committee, set up to advise the Board on ecological and conservation issues. In the last few years, he has been assisting the Trust with the development of the State of Yorkshire’s Nature review, which provides the evidence base for its Strategy for Nature.
Our patrons
Our patrons are The Earl Peel GCVO DL and Mr Stephen Martin.
