Margaret, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Member 1413

“Osmosis” is the word Margaret Hartley uses when I asked her how she became involved in nature conservation. There was no lightbulb; no specific moment of outrage or enlightenment. Hailing from a family that kept pigs and chickens, Margaret instead went to study Botany, Micro-Biology and Chemistry at university in the 1960s, where her field trip to Scotland combining Botany and Geology proved significantly more compelling than her trip to the pig industry looking at the deterioration of pork chops! She next studied plant taxonomy, specialising in mosses and liverworts, which seems like the obvious path to anyone who meets her – Margaret is a great organiser and conscious of the smallest detail.

After spending time at the Royal Botanic gardens in Edinburgh and even more time peering through microscopes, Margaret escaped her largely academic career into the museum sector and the chance to work with the public. In 1966 she started her career at Yorkshire Museum on £760 per year, working under Mr. GF Wilmot, an archaeologist, and his friend Kitty Robb – a botanist – who were on the council of the then-Yorkshire Naturalists Trust (now, of course, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust). 

By 1967, with the encouragement of her two mentors, Margaret had become member 1413 of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and a member of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union, at one time serving as Chairman of its executive committee. She recalls plans towards the end of the '60s to merge the two organisations; they have remained separate, although the Trust is proud to have closely collaborated with YNU over the years on landmark works like The State of Yorkshire’s Nature in 2024. In true Yorkshire fashion, while acknowledging that the organisations do very different and valuable work, Margaret is not quite so happy to have been paying two sets of subs for 50-odd years! 

At the time Margaret joined Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, the vast majority of work was carried out by volunteers, who did everything including recruiting, investigating and acquiring sites and fundraising. At that time the YNT was like a startup company; everybody got involved in everything and there were always more things to do. Although we have a paid membership recruitment team today, in those days volunteer-run stalls sold ‘merch’, with talented hagglers such as a certain Mr. Clifford Disbrey infamous for being able to sell a tea towel to anyone he talked to!”      

The Trust may have been smaller in the ‘70s with fewer reserves, but it faced a lot of the same challenges as it does now. Project funding is still often short-term, for 3 years or less, and our desire to look after and restore as many wild places as possible is often quashed by the outlay needed to manage and support them properly. Approaches, too, can often be similar; the #TeamWilder initiative aims to guide and empower individuals and community groups to improve the quality of their local wildlife and wild spaces themselves, a continuation of the culture of liaising, giving local advice and networking cultivated in the 1970s. 

One of the biggest changes the Trust has made since the early days was to open our reserves to the public. In the 1970s, nature reserves were not generally open to the public and reserve cards provided to members contained contact details for them to arrange visits. Margaret showed me an early set with just 25 cards - one for each reserve – replaced now by the “Discover Yorkshire’s Wildlife” handbook that actively promotes visiting reserves. The lack of initial access was partly due to a lack of nature protection and legislation at the time; the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) gave wildlife protection, but destructive nature collecting was a popular pastime. It’s hard to believe that an “Observers Book of Birds Eggs” was published as recently as 1981! 

Margaret has been present for many of the Trust’s big changes; from the restructuring of our administrative areas from the old Vice Counties model to the newly-created Council authorities in 1974, to the renaming of the Trust from the Yorkshire Naturalists Trust to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust in 1983. This required a full debate at the AGM with advantages and disadvantages presented; Margaret made the case for keeping the old name even though she supported the change! 

Margaret is also very proud to have been part of arguably the best ‘girl group’ known as the “three Margarets” - Atherton, Sanderson and Hartley, who between them worked across most of Yorkshire and had significantly supported the acquisition of sites like Flamborough Head. Her close involvement as a volunteer and Board Member was extensive; training reserve managers, arranging talks and nature exhibitions, and externally to the Trust becoming a licensed bat worker, acting as secretary to the Bradford Naturalists Society, and even winning best in class at the Leeds flower show. She has also continued to honour her love of the museum sector through various roles, including working as Senior Keeper for many years at Cliffe Castle museum in Keighley where she put together the stunning crystal collection. Despite this, she says, and underlines “Believe me other active members were doing much more than I".

Over time, Margaret has seen the Trust change from being volunteer-led to staff-led – with ongoing significant volunteer support – to tackle the full roster of work needed in Yorkshire. She sees water, rivers and seas as increasingly concerning, and the shortage of insects as depressing – but is heartened by the visible impact of the Trust in conserving our wild places. Without Yorkshire Wildlife Trust there would be no Askham Bog - the A64 would have gone straight through it – no Potteric Carr, which would have been decimated by the M18 – and North Cave Wetlands might have become landfill.

Looking back on our achievements, Margaret is particularly struck by the amount of land now covered by the Trust. We now manage over 110 reserves and are often in the process of expanding the land they cover and have been able to influence the stewardship of land and wildlife we don’t directly control through projects like Wild Ingleborough. There is a visible improvement to sites once we start to manage them, which is satisfying as Margaret knows that the journey to gaining new nature reserves is not simple – from funding them to even knowing they were there in the first place, for which we are heavily reliant on local knowledge. When asked which was her favourite site, Margaret found it impossible to answer but confessed a soft spot for all of those she helped to acquire.

There is no better place to finish my discussion with Margaret than on the topic and future of volunteering. We discuss issues with an ageing volunteer profile; it’s always difficult to replace the knowledge of retiring enthusiasts, and Margaret herself has returned to the Trust to help with archiving. She suggests enthusiasts could extend their volunteering by changing their roles – something she has a great deal of valuable and impressive experience with!   

Finally, a thought for all you volunteers out there. When you go to clear the birch you’ve just cut down and find that someone else has already done it, think of Margaret’s words from 2005.

“I think successful ‘volunteering’ rests on team-work - in all roles I felt I was being asked to be part of a team and was made by others to feel I had something to contribute. I saw them doing so much and joined in.”

If you feel inspired to volunteer please visit the volunteering section of our website here to find out how you can get involved.