A cornerstone of our commitment as a sustainable travel company is our Conservation Contribution Scheme – a scheme designed to help conserve and enhance those natural assets which are vital to our environmental, community and economic wellbeing. At the end of 2017 we signed a new partnership with the John Muir Trust to become a Peak Partner of their organisation. The essence of the partnership is that Wilderness Group would make a £5,000 minimum donation to the trust per year, and in return for providing this minimum amount we work with the trust to decide which projects our funds would support. We decided upon this approach based upon customer feedback, specifically it would be better if those funds raised through the Conservation Contribution Scheme could be associated with identified projects rather than the general work of the charity.

The funds to support this partnership come from our Conservation Contribution Scheme – an optional payment that is made directly to us by our clients as part of their booking. Since the launch of the scheme we, together with you as our valued clients, have raised over £50,000 for the John Muir Trust and other conservation organisations.

Our most recent project work with the John Muir Trust has been in Scotland but as their reach continues to expand into England then we anticipate our Conservation Contribution Scheme being able to support future work in the Lake District. This includes the management of 1,000 hectares of common land which includes the summit of the iconic mountain of Helvellyn. You can read more about the mission and work of the John Muir Trust here.

From 2018 our Conservation Contributions increased from £5 to £10 per person per booking – this is the first increase since the scheme launched in 2010. It’s hoped that this will increase the overall size of the annual fund we have at the end of the year to put toward our conservation projects.

While we are committed to giving at least £5,000 of the annual funds raised to the JMT, any amount over this figure can go toward other worthwhile environmental causes. Our ambition within the Wilderness Sustainability Team is to be able to able to put funds toward other projects. In recent years this has included native habitat restoration with the charity Trees for Life and the funding for  installation of a “Seabin” on the West Coast of Scotland as an effective method of capturing plastic ocean waste.