Wildlife Trusts are all local, independent charities but we can and do work together as The Wildlife Trusts to ensure nature conservation across the UK is well represented and has a voice.

Together the combined Wildlife Trusts are the largest UK voluntary organisation dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild places everywhere – on land and at sea.

Wildlife Trusts are split into regions; a single Trust covers Scotland; Wales has five Trusts which work increasingly closely together; there are Trusts for Ulster, the Isle of Man, Alderney and the Isles of Scilly and a further 36 Trusts across England largely based on the old county boundaries or small groupings of such counties.

Wildlife Trusts across the UK are supported by more than 800,000 members, 150,000 of which belong to the junior branch - Wildlife Watch.

The UK-wide part of The Wildlife Trusts was founded in 1912 by the banker and naturalist Charles Rothschild. By the end of the 1960s Wildlife Trusts had been formed across the British Isles (usually, but not always, at a county-wide level).