**Trustees’ Annual Report for the period 1 August 2022 to 31 July 2023**
**Yorkshire Rewilding Network (YRN)**
## **Charity registration number: 1190992**
## **Objectives and Activities**
The objects of the CIO are to advance biodiversity and environmental improvement through rewilding, principally in Yorkshire, by providing support, education, information and encouragement to the public and other stakeholders, including but not limited to those with an interest in rewilding. In this sense, rewilding is defined as the restoration of ecosystem functions to a point where nature can take care of itself. It seeks to reinstate natural processes and, where appropriate, missing species – allowing them to shape the landscape and the habitats within. Rewilding embraces the role of people – and their cultural and economic connections to the land – working within a wider, healthy ecosystem.
YRN carries out a range of activities to fulfil its purposes, including publishing newsletters and other relevant stories about rewilding, facilitating a discussion forum, hosting publicly available webinars and arranging small group visits to rewilding projects. A significant addition to these ongoing activities was the staging of a Rewilding Festival in June 2023. The Festival incorporated music, storytelling, a panel discussion, family day and rewilders’ gathering to increase the diversity of those who engage with us.
YRN adopts an inclusive approach, centring all of activities around public benefit, ensuring that the charity operates in line with the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit.
As a young charity, YRN is rarely in a position to make grants. Where it does so, it refers to its purpose and ensures that any grants are aligned with that purpose.
Social investment does not form a material part of YRN’s activities.
The majority of the time and effort on YRN activities during the period covered by this report is voluntary. Volunteers have maintained the YRN website, written material for newsletters and articles and arranged and hosted webinars. Without such contributions, YRN would have been unable to operate. Since autumn 2021, YRN has contracted in a part time Project Officer to supplement volunteer activities and since autumn 2022 YRN has also contracted in a part time Community Engagement Officer to extend its reach across the region.
## **Achievements and Performance**
YRN has connected many individuals with peers and advisors, ranging from those looking for moral support or occasional grazing advice to people concerned that trees would not establish on an exposed coastal site to those wondering how to start rewilding, and many others. It has also signposted people to funding sources such as the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme.
In the corporate/public sector, as well as with landowners, YRN is also seeing opportunities for enabling positive rewilding projects. YRN is increasingly in contact with large estates who are considering nature recovery/rewilding to enable it to make further similar contributions.
YRN has its own website, as well as over 1,000 newsletter subscribers, over 1,000 followers on Twitter (now X) (as at the time of this report, April 2024), an active discussion forum and has staged over 20 well-attended webinars on a range of rewilding topics with local relevance. A number of site visits have taken place and volunteering opportunities for both surveys and wild wood planting have been arranged. A presentation about rewilding has been developed, and delivered to various community groups, aiming to increase the reach and diversity of the network.
Increasingly, YRN is engaging at a senior level with other stakeholders such as Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Yorkshire Water, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and Nidderdale AONB to influence them to include rewilding in their future plans.
In line with the emergent, less structured nature of rewilding, YRN has deliberately avoided fixed, measurable objectives to date, instead following the energy of the network to achieve the most impact.
## **Financial Review**
YRN’s financial position at the end of its third year was healthy when compared to its running costs. The charity was successful in gaining a grant from Rewilding Britain’s Innovation Fund, enabling it to contract in a part time Community Engagement Officer and to stage a Rewilding Festival in June 2023. Ongoing fundraising efforts aim to provide sufficient resources to enable part time contractors to continue to be funded.
Funds come from individual and corporate donors and from a range of small grants.
YRN aims to maintain reserves of a minimum of £1,000 which is a sufficient amount to cover its committed costs and to enable and orderly wind-down of the charity if the Trustees take the decision that that is necessary.
The main risk facing YRN is its resources becoming overstretched to cope with the increasing interest in rewilding in Yorkshire and the consequent requests for its services. To manage this risk, the charity prioritises its activities to best meet its purposes and seeks to raise sufficient funds to retain appropriate resources.
## **Structure, Governance and Management**
As a CIO, YRN has a written constitution, based on the standard proforma for a CIO.
Selection of new trustees is by existing trustees, usually from those who have already engaged with YRN so that potential new trustees know about the charity, its activities and aspirations.
YRN is wholly independent from Rewilding Britain, but liaises with the national charity and with other regional networks regularly.
## **Reference and Administrative details**
|Charity name|Yorkshire Rewilding Network|
|---|---|
|Registered charity number|1190992|
|Charity’s principal address|18 Cheltenham Avenue
Ilkley
LS29 8BN|
**Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity**
|1
2
3
4
5
6|**Trustee name**|**Office (if any)**|**Dates acted if not for whole**
**year**|**Name of person (or body) entitled**
**to appoint trustee (ifany)**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||Jeff Davitt|Chair||N/A|
||Deborah Davitt|Treasurer||N/A|
||JennyWatson|Secretary||N/A|
||John Hartshorn|||N/A|
||Antonia Beardsall|||N/A|
||Samantha Mennell|||N/A|
No trustees hold title to property belonging to the charity
No funds are held as custodian trustees on behalf of others
## **Declarations**
**The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.**
**Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees**
**Signature** _Samantha Mennell_ **Full name(s)** Samantha Mennell **Position** Chair **Date** 05 May 2024
||**Yorkshire Rewilding Network**|**Yorkshire Rewilding Network**|**Yorkshire Rewilding Network**|**Yorkshire Rewilding Network**|**CC16a**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||**For the period**
**from**|01/08/2022|**To**|||
|||||||
|**Section A Receipts and payments**||||||
|**A1 Receipts**|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**
**5,248**
**3,433**
**7,850**
**1,880**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**18,411**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**18,411**
**820**
**201**
**72**
**14,406**
**38**
**-**
**15,537**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**15,537**
**2,874**
**-**
**5,258**
**8,132**|**Restricted**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**
**-**
**2,300**
**4,228**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**6,528**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**6,528**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**2,727**
**6,406**
**-**
**-**
**9,133**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**9,133**
**- 2,605**
**-**
**-**
**- 2,605**|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to the nearest £**|**Total funds**
**to the nearest £**
**5,248**
**5,733**
**12,078**
**1,880**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**24,939**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**24,939**
**820**
**201**
**72**
**14,406**
**2,727**
**6,406**
**38**
**-**
**24,670**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**24,670**
**269**|**Last year**
**to the nearest £**|
|Individual donation,inc Gift Aid|**5,248**||**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**||**5,077**|
|Corporate donations|**3,433**||||**600**|
|Grants received|**7,850**||||**1,950**|
|Event sales|**1,880**||||**-**|
||**-**||||**-**|
||**-**||||**-**|
||**-**||||**-**|
||**-**||||**-**|
|**_Sub total_**_(Gross income for_
_AR)_|
**18,411**||||**7,627**|
|||||||
|**A2 Asset and investment sales,**
**(see table).**||||||
||**-**||**-**
**-**
**-**|||
||**-**
||||**-**|
|~~**_Sub total_**~~|**-**||||**-**|
|**_Total receipts_**
**A3 Payments**||||||
||||**-**||**7,627**|
|||||||
|
Software and licences|**820**||**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**||**1,158**|
|Insurance|**201**||||**88**|
|Bank charges|**72**||||**72**|
|Contractors|**14,406**||||**4,921**|
|FiPL workshops||||||
|YRN RewildingFestival events|||||**-**|
|Materials|**38**||||**461**|
||**-**||||**-**|
|**_Sub total_ **|**15,537**||||**6,700**|
|||||||
|**A4 Asset and investment**
**purchases, (see table)**||||||
||**-**||**-**
**-**
**-**|||
||**-**|||||
|**_Sub total_ **|**-**||||**-**|
|**_Total payments_**
**_Net of receipts/(payments)_**
**A5 Transfers between funds**
**A6 Cash funds last year end**
**_Cash funds this year end_**||||||
||||**-**||**6,700**|
|||||||
||**2,874**||**-**||**927**|
||**-**||**-**
**-**|**-**
**5,258**|**-**|
||**5,258**||||**4,331**|
||**8,132**||**-**|**5,527**|**5,258**|
CCXX R1 accounts (SS)
22/04/2024
1
**Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period**
|**Categories**
Signed by one or two trustees on
behalf of all the trustees
**B1 Cash funds**
**B2 Other monetary assets**
**B4 Assets retained for the**
**charity’s own use**
**B5 Liabilities**
**B3 Investment assets**|Signature
None
**Details**
**Details**
None
Current account
**Details**
**Details**
**_Total cash funds_**
(agree balances with receipts and payments
account(s))
None
**Details**
None|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**5,527**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**5,527**
**-**
Agreement Error
Agreement Error
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**liability relates**
**Amount due**
**(optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
Print Name|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**|
|---|---|---|---|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||OK|
||||**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**Current value**
**(optional)**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**Current value**
**(optional)**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**-**|
||||**When due**
**(optional)**|
|||||
|||||
|||||
|||||
|||||
|||||
||||Date of
approval|
||||04/04/2024|
|||||
CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
22/04/2024
2