Northumberland Wildlife Trust was established in 1971 and has been saving wild places ever since. Their work is varied. It includes events for families as well as educational work and events for schools in their visitor centres and 60 nature reserves in Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland.
The trust also works to save wildlife, especially endangered animals, and advise other landowners, while also managing habitats on their own reserves.
The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world
The work of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust is most certainly needed. It has been noted that the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, with its level of wildlife continuing to decline according to a recent State of Nature Report from 2023.
This decline has included considerable loss of fungi, plants and animals, which has been an ongoing decline for centuries due to habitat loss. Consequently, we now live in one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth.
It is argued that we know what we need to do to turn this situation around and conservation work must be at the centre of it. It is also important to do recovery work, so that nature can start to get back to the healthy state that it has been in the past.
Nature recovery in Northumberland
This is where the Northumberland Wildlife Trust comes in. Northumberland Wildlife Trust and The Wildlife Trusts have been presented with a once in a generation opportunity to buy the historic Rothbury estate in Northumberland.
The estate includes the beautiful Simonside hills, an area I know very well, with their beautiful views to the Cheviots to the north and the North Sea to the east. On days when the visibility is good, you can see as far as Cross Fell to the south and I have even seen Criffell near Dumfries on one particularly clear day. It is also a place of abundant wildlife.
Northumberland Wildlife Trust has stated that, “right now we have an opportunity to prevent it ending up divided between multiple owners, businesses and developers and to preserve it in its entirety – creating one of England’s largest connected and protected landscapes for wildlife and for future generations”.
However, there is a catch. The trust must raise £30 million by September 2026 in order to take advantage of this one-off opportunity and meet the asking price of the Duke of Northumberland’s youngest son, Max Percy, who has put the land up for sale. So far they have raised about £10 million.
We have lost so much
Speaking to the Guardian in December, Mike Pratt, the chief executive of Northumberland Wildlife Trust commented: “We’ve lost so much. We’re getting to the point where if we’re not careful, children in the future won’t know what a hedgehog is. They won’t have encountered one.”
Pratt went on to emphasise that what the trust wants to do is to replicate work they have seen being done in the Netherlands, connecting large areas of land across whole landscapes, working towards “ecological connectivity on a big scale”.
Pratt continues: “It is ambitious. It is super-ambitious. We’ve obviously been doing conservation of nature reserves for years but we’ve realised that it’s just not enough. We really need to work at a big scale.”
Sir David Attenborough
The campaign to raise the necessary funds has received a major boost with the release of a video made by Sir David Attenborough.
In the video, Sir David comments: “People know and love the Simonside Hills that rise here. They walk the ridges and listen for the calls of the curlew, they watch for red squirrels and admire the views as they scramble among the crags.
“They walk along its remote paths and marvel at the astonishing rock carvings left by our distant ancestors, who once lived here.”
Attenborough also notes that local communities and farmers would be able to work alongside Northumberland Wildlife Trust to “create a place where people and nature can thrive side by side”.
Indeed, Northumberland Wildlife Trust is committed to listening to people living in the area and have assured them that the estate will not become a site for the reintroduction of the lynx, as they would not like the area anyway. They also believe that if they can buy the estate, it would result in a boost to tourism in nearby Rothbury.
Protecting a beautiful area
The area around the Rothbury Estate is part of our beautiful heritage here in Northumbria and it would surely be good to see it in the hands of the people again, through the auspices of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. As has been previously noted, our country is one of the most nature-depleted in the world, something we really should address with some urgency.
There is more information about the fund that the Northumberland Wildlife Trust is raising here and more general information about Northumberland Wildlife Trust here.
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