The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Archive is the largest body of fully catalogued, publicly accessible Wildlife Trust papers in the UK. Archive material from 1946-2010 was catalogued between 2016 and 2017, and work on the collection continues today. 

The archive is 7 cubic metres in size (about 400 boxes) and there are over 2000 unique catalogue entries on our online portal, Borthcat. 

The collection includes paper, photographic and digital material, and is accessible by appointment in our reading room.

The records in this collection are of national and international importance. They document the establishment of the Trust and its development through to the modern day, as well as the bio-recording of internationally scarce habitats, relationships with landowners and the precedent-making legal cases led by the Trust in the 1970s. 

The archive highlights the UK’s unique role in the development of nature conservation and showcases the significance of the Yorkshire landscape, as well as highlighting the voices of the people who champion it.

This is an active collection which is still used to inform regional and national conservation campaigns and local planning opposition affecting sites of ecological importance. It is also regularly consulted for academic research at all levels,  general site development and maintenance of nature reserves,  as well as continuous ecological monitoring of key species and ark sites across Yorkshire.