text: The Wildlife Trusts are one of the steering group partners of Neighbourhoods Green, a partnership initiative which works with social landlords and housing associations to highlight the importance of, and raise the overall quality of design and management for, open and green space in social housing.
  Kathryn Brown OBE was appointed as the charity’s first director of climate action in January 2022.
  History
  Today's Wildlife Trust movement began life as The Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR), which was formed by Charles Rothschild in 1912. It aimed initially to draw up a list of the country's best wildlife sites with a view to purchase for protection as nature reserves, and by 1915 it had drawn up a list of 284 (including the Farne Islands and the Norfolk Broads), known as Rothschild Reserves. During the early years, membership tended to be made up of specialist naturalists and its growth was comparatively slow. The first independent Trust was formed in Norfolk in 1926 as the Norfolk Naturalists Trust, followed in 1938 by the Pembrokeshire Bird Protection Society which after several subsequent changes of name is now the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales and it was not until the 1940s and 1950s that more Naturalists' Trusts were formed in Yorkshire (1946), Lincolnshire (1948), Leicestershire (1956) and Cambridgeshire (1956). These early Trusts tended to focus on purchasing land to establish nature reserves in the geographical areas they served.