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
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.
We are delighted to welcome Professor Alastair Fitter as our newly elected President in 2025. Alastair has played a pivotal role in shaping the Trust’s new Blueprint for Yorkshire’s Nature Recovery, a bold and collaborative vision to secure a third of Yorkshire for nature by 2030.
Our patrons
Our patrons are The Earl Peel GCVO DL and Mr Stephen Martin.
