Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire
The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (WTBCN) is a registered charity which manages 126 nature reserves covering 3,945 hectares (15.23 square miles). It has over 35,000 members, and 95% of people in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire live within five miles of a reserve. In the year to 31 March 2016 it employed 105 people and had an income of £5.1 million. It aims to conserve wildlife, inspire people to take action for wildlife, offer advice and share knowledge. The WTBCN is one of 36 wildlife trusts covering England, and 47 covering the whole of the United Kingdom.
In 1912 Charles Rothschild formed the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves to protect sites considered "worthy of preservation". The society worked to secure statutory protection, and this began with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. In 1959 the society took on a coordinating role for local wildlife trusts, which covered the whole of Britain and Northern Ireland by 1978. The society changed its name to the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts in 2004, and it operates as The Wildlife Trusts.
In 1956 the Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely Naturalists’ Trust was founded, and it was followed by the Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire Wildlife Trust in 1961, the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust in 1963, and the Peterborough Wildlife Group in 1987. The Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire trusts merged in 1990, and a further merger produced the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire and Peterborough in 1994. Peterborough was dropped from the name (but still covered by the trust) in 2011.
Fifty-two reserves are Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), six are Ramsar wetland sites of international importance, six are Special Protection Areas under the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds, two are National Nature Reserves, four are Nature Conservation Review sites, one is a Special Area of Conservation, two are in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, one is a Geological Conservation Review site and eighteen are Local Nature Reserves. The largest site is Ouse Washes at 186 hectares (460 acres), which is internationally significant for wintering and breeding wildfowl and waders. The smallest, at 0.7 hectares (1.7 acres), are Chettisham Meadow and Stoke Wood End Quarter, both of which are SSSIs.
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