AnnualReportfor2024Final2025 - Flipbook - Page 4
An overview
Photo: Greater horseshoe bat ©Andrew McCarthy
by the Chair of Trustees and CEO
Welcome to Vincent Wildlife
Trust’s Annual Report and Financial
Statements for 2024. The report
showcases our key achievements
during the fourth year of our TenYear Strategy delivery; explains
our governance arrangements; and
outlines our future plans. We are
delighted to report that 2024 was a
very positive year for VWT.
The late Honourable John Vincent
Weir (1935-2014) founded The
Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) in 1975
to safeguard threatened mammals.
Conserving threatened mammals is
a huge task as nature and the wider
environment continues, overall, to
decline and degrade, with one in four
British mammals now classi昀椀ed as
threatened with risk of extinction.
Against this background, over the
last 50 years, Vincent Wildlife Trust
has led the way in the recovery
of mammal species such as otter,
horseshoe bats and pine marten.
Many of ‘our’ species are bucking
the trend. The Trust is respected
nationally and internationally as
a leader in the demonstration
of innovative methods based on
pioneering research that aims to
understand, halt and reverse declines
in threatened mammal species.
We are continuing our work to
conserve threatened mammals by
leading the way with scienti昀椀callysound conservation work. We are
working hard to extend our reach and
impact, prioritise a greater range of
species over a larger geographic area,
and work towards conservation at a
landscape scale. During 2024, VWT
was pleased to be able to increase
the size and strength of its team to
support a number of new projects
following signi昀椀cant funding secured in
2023 across both our bat and carnivore
programmes. This has enabled a
step change in momentum towards
delivering our Ten-Year Strategy.
For example, our Defra Species
Recovery Fund project, Horseshoes
Heading East, which delivers the
second phase of our Sussex Bat
roost work, made excellent progress
during 2024, improving and adding
to a network of both hibernation
and summer roost sites across Sussex
for greater horseshoe bats to use
all year-round, providing resilience
at a landscape scale as the species
recovers its former range.
4 Vincent Wildlife Trust Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024
In Ireland, our predictive modelling
of landscape corridors for lesser
horseshoe bats has continued with
great success, with several new
councils commissioning the models to
help inform planning decisions. Models
produced earlier in 2024 in Ireland
have now been independently groundtruthed, highlighting the potential of
this approach to identify key sites for
conservation interventions.
Our expertise in pine marten
translocation was sought after for the
Two Moors pine marten translocation
project in 2024, bringing the total
number of pine martens translocated
by VWT to more than 100 over the
past decade. These martens have
been moved from Forestry and
Land Scotland forests to Wales,
Gloucestershire and Devon, where
their population recovery and
recolonisation is reversing the status
of this critically endangered mammal
in England and Wales.
Our Nature Network Fund Social
Feasibility Assessment for the
reintroduction of the European
wildcat to Wales provided a platform
for representatives from communities
of interest — including in the vicinity
of the proposed release sites —
