The Wildlife Trusts celebrate 100 years of nature conservation

On 16 May 1912 a banker named Charles Rothschild got together with like-minded enthusiasts to whip-up support for a radical idea: to identify and protect the very best of the UK’s wild places. Thus began the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves which would later become The Wildlife Trusts movement – the first time that anyone had come up with a vision for nature conservation.

Before 1912, the emphasis was on trying to protect individual species. Rothschild’s plan was different: to safeguard the places where wildlife lived – the moors, meadows, woods and fens under attack from rapid modernisation.

Read more about the centenary of The Wildlife Trusts, and how Norfolk led the way.