Member Update

We wanted to reach out to you, our loyal members, to update you on the work we're doing to get ready to re-open our nature reserves.

As a small charity we've faced huge challenges in recent weeks, with increased footfall on many of our sites and a reduced team of staff here to look after them.

We care for nearly 50 nature reserves in our region and although the gates have been closed to our car parks, our nature reserves are accessible by foot and so have been used considerably during the last few months. Our teams are now working hard to catch up with maintaining these sites, so that they are safe and accessible for visitors. We're working on installing new signage, one-way systems and contactless payment options.

We can understand your frustration when you're seeing other organisations open their sites to visitors. But we are a wildlife charity – nature needs to be at the heart of the decisions that we make, and although we know connecting people with nature is a huge part of that, we need to be confident that we are ready to re-open in a safe and sustainable manner. 

We're taking a phased approach to re-opening and have started with a pilot nature reserve, Lunt Meadows in Merseyside. We have re-opened the nature reserve car park and installed new directional signage and guidelines, to see if the new systems and precautions we have put in place are robust enough to roll out to our other nature reserves.

Our next steps will be opening our other nature reserve car parks and we're working hard to ensure this happens as soon as possible. Our visitor centres will follow once Government guidelines allow us to do so. We are having to be very cautious with our approach to opening to ensure that our delicate nature reserves and our small team are not overwhelmed with visitors.

Thank you for your continued support and patience. We'll be in touch with more specific re-opening details very soon.