Trusts and foundations

The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation supported Water for Wildlife, a London-wide project to improve habitats and our knowledge of the waterbodies in the capital, and engaging volunteers across London in citizen science. The presence of dragonflies and damselflies is used as an indicator of the quality of freshwater habitats such as lakes, canals and rivers; volunteers will monitor dragonfly and damselfly species to help us better understand the health of London’s waterbodies. The knowledge gained through this project will be used to guide practical habitat improvements at 20 sites across London.

The GLA, through their Greener City Fund Community Grant Scheme, has generously funded new floating reedbeds at Camley Street Natural Park, alongside desilting the pond to improve the area for pond dipping. 

The multi-functional floating reedbeds are placed in the system on the Regent’s Canal. They incorporate excellent habitats for birds to nest, invertebrates to live, and fish to spawn and shelter from predators. The reedbeds also provide a range of ecosystem functions, including the absorption of excess nutrients from the water, mitigating canal pollution.

A generous grant from the Michael Marks Charitable Trust is funding our habitat conservation work on 5 of our chalk grassland reserves in south London.  Over the course of a year we will run 156 volunteering days where we will be cutting back scrub and other invasive species, scything the meadow, maintaining infrastructure on the reserves and collecting green hay and wild flower seeds from the local flower-rich meadows to reseed bare patches of ground. Chalk grassland is one of the most endangered habitats in Britain, and one of the most species-rich: in a well-managed chalk grassland you can find as many as 40 different species in just one square metre. It is a landscape wildlife rich with hedgerows, orchids, reptiles, butterflies and glow-worms. It is particularly important for a range of nationally rare and protected species, such as the small blue butterfly and man orchid which are found across several sites in Sutton, Croydon, Bromley and north Surrey.

A grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) is enabling us to deliver Keeping it Wild, the youth focused project which will empower and inspire 600 young people aged 11-25, from backgrounds currently under-represented in nature conservation and wildlife, to gain vital skills while discovering, conserving and sharing their experiences of the capital’s wild spaces. 

The project ran over three years is being delivered in partnership with London Youth, Headliners and the John Muir Trust. Young Londoners from a range of backgrounds have the opportunity to take part in five different activity strands, with the programme path tailored – by young people themselves – to best suit their needs, interests and age group.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly known as the Heritage Lottery Fund, is the largest dedicated funder of heritage in the UK.

Since its creation in 1994, The Wildlife Trusts have worked closely with The National Lottery Heritage Fund to connect people to nature and each other, save precious wildlife-rich places, create new woodlands, wetlands, meadows and many other habitats and protect rare and endangered species.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has invested a total of £7.9bn in 43,000 heritage projects. The hundreds of Wildlife Trust projects across the UK supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund have benefited thousands of people from all walks of life – helping them to experience the joy of wildlife in their daily lives; from children and young people to older generations; from those living in urban areas to those in the countryside, or by the coast.

The Foundation kindly donated towards ‘Go Wild in the City’, an outdoor learning programme at Woodberry Wetlands that benefitted 2,700 school children and 1,460 local children based around Woodberry Downs. The programme included 'Tiny Tadpole' sessions for under 5's, weekend drop-in sessions for local families, a holiday nature club, formal school sessions and a weekend festival for the community to enjoy. All sessions were fun, hands-on and engaging half-day workshops of outdoor activities including, but not limited to, pond dipping, mini-beast hunts, discovering animals in the reedbeds, local seeds and germination, frog days and the life cycles of a wetland habitat. 

Veolia Environmental Trust helped fund our vital work at Camley Street Natural Park, a unique urban nature reserve, surrounded by significant new development in a bustling part of central London - between King's Cross and St Pancras. The woodland, grassland and wetland habitats including ponds, reedbed and marshy areas, provide a rich habitat for birds, butterflies, amphibians and plant life, while a visitor centre caters for the thousands who visit annually.

During development, the old building was taken down and a new state of the art multi-purpose learning space was built in its place. The site was also relandscaped to ensure the more sensitive areas of the reserve are protected from the high footfall. The money from Veolia Environmental Trust also went towards essential work including creating a new meadow and hedgerow area, installing new paths and fencing and planting new trees.