BMC Access & Conservation Trust - IMPACT REPORT 2025

Mynediad Newyddion
15 Rhag
2 min read

In addition to welcoming four new trustees, the BMC Access & Conservation Trust has been busy in 2025, securing grants and creating fundraisers to support crag and mountain path repair, moorland restoration and landscape conservation in hill walking and climbing areas. Here are this year's highlights.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the BMC Access & Conservation Trust's Impact Report 2025. Here you'll find out about the new trustees and of all the fantastic mountain path repair and landscape conservation projects the charity has been supporting this year.

THANK YOU so much if you have donated to us this year or at any time - your support is much needed, especially as government-funded operations are being cut and the climate crisis looms ever closer. With your help we can create a better future for ourselves, the next generation, the mountains and the wildlife that relies on them.

BMC Access & Conservation Trust chair Chris Coleman says, "2025 has been a year of transition as well as real momentum for the BMC Access & Conservation Trust - our new trustees are helping us sharpen our strategic focus while we continued to deliver meaningful impact on the ground across our two core umbrella initiatives, Mend Our Mountains and The Climate Project. None of this would be possible without the generosity of our donors, the passion of our volunteers, and the collaboration of our brilliant partner organisations. Your support is making a tangible difference to the upland and mountain environments we all care about so deeply - and we're looking forward to driving that even further through 2026."

New Eryri Apprentice Ranger

An incredibly generous £30,000 donation has been made to our Eryri (Snowdonia) Apprentice Ranger fundraiser, from non-alcoholic craft-beer-makers Athletic Brewing Co. through their Two for the Trails grant programme. This donation ensures the National Trust can go ahead with this 2-year role and the new apprentice ranger will join their path repair team in January 2026. We now only have £22k left to raise! If you love hiking and climbing in Eryri and want to help fix the footpaths there, click here to give to this project, part of the BMC Access & Conservation Trust's Mend Our Mountains campaign.

23,320 sphagnum plugs planted

In 2025 BMC Get Stuck In volunteers planted 23,320 sphagnum plugs in the Goyt Valley, Peak District, with Moors for the Future Partnership as part of the BMC Access & Conservation Trust's The Climate Project campaign. This brings the grand total to 55,845 since our Get Stuck In volunteer events started planting this peatland-restoring moss in February 2024. We were also happy to welcome staff members from BMC Official Outdoor Retailer, Cotswold Outdoor, on a volunteer event this spring. Planting sphagnum protects the habitats of bird like lapwing and curlew, as well as improving the overall health of the moor, helping to capture carbon and slow the movement of water off the land, which in turn improves water quality and decreases flood and wildfire risk. Find out more, donate to The Climate Project and volunteer for the next event here.

Get Stuck In volunteering

A total of 191 BMC volunteers have been hard at work this year, giving 1,843 volunteer-hours over 276 days this year. Across 19 events they have fixed 276m footpaths, planted 13,100 sphagnum plugs, 3,240 acorns and 500 trees, removed 1km squared of sitka spruce saplings and built the Lake District's largest rainwater-diverting earthwork. Well done all and thank you! Click here to read about each event in more depth. If you appreciate well-maintained, sustainable and sensitively-made mountain paths, want to help protect peatlands and native British wildlife, sign yourself up for a Get Stuck In event now, or donate to Mend Our Mountains or The Climate Project campaigns.

New ACT Trustees

Chris Colesman (Chair), Steve Charles, Julie Wilson and Mark Boucher join Richard Holland, Rosanna Moore and Neal Hockley (BMC Board Rep) on the roster of BMC Access & Conservation Trust Trustees charged with taking the charity to new heights in 2025. With their tremendous mix of real-world skills, professional expertise, passion for access and conservation and love of the UK mountainside, the trust will continue to go from strength to strength in 2026 and beyond. Scroll to the end of the Access & Conservation Trust homepage here to find out more about each person.

Supporting Seagrass Ocean Rescue

Thanks to a recent donation from the BMC's Official Outdoor Retailer, Cotswold Outdoor from their Pennies at the till campaign the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust have been able to donate £15,000 to Seagrass Ocean Rescue in North Wales as part of The Climate Project campaign. This donation will extend the employment of Living Seas Project Officer, Rhys Bowen, by over a year. Rhys monitors and restores several key seagrass meadows and restoration sites across North Wales, below popular sea cliff climbing routes and coastal hiking paths. These meadows play a vital role in national marine conservation, carbon storage and reducing pathogens and pollutants in our water. Find out more here.

Masson Lees Quarry

The BMC Access & Conservation Trust gave a grant of £5,000 to the new owners of Masson Lees Quarry, near Matlock in Derbyshire. The site has been purchased by outdoorsy, conservation-keen father and son team Nick and Sam Lister, who have exciting plans for this secluded, limestone quarry, popular with BMC members for its plethora of bolted sport climbing routes and dry tooling lines. So far the team have created a new, wider, safer access ramp down to the base of the crags, which allowed them to bring back the popular MassonFest celebration of Dry Tooling this autumn. Future plans include a car park, camping facilities and a film of the transformation. Click here for more info.

Kendal Mountain Festival

The BMC Access & Conservation Trust had a stand in the Basecamp charity tipi, manned by five incredible BMC volunteers, three trustees and a representative each from Fix the Fells and Moors for the Future. The aim was to raise awareness of the BMC's charity and its two campaigns - Mend Our Mountains and The Climate Project, and our Get Stuck In volunteer path repair and moorland restoration programme which covers both campaigns. Everyone at the stand encouraged visitors to sign up and enter our raffle to win prizes worth £1,792 and in total £585 was raised. Click here for the full report.

Did you know that you can donate to us entirely FREE simply by shopping online as you usually would, at any time of the year with Easyfundraising? It only takes two minutes to set up, here's how.

If you want to contribute to upland and mountain access and conservation causes like the above, then simply click here to donate to The BMC Access & Conservation Trust via The Climate Project or Mend Our Mountains at any time. Donations of any amount are always most welcome.

Volunteer

Fancy fixing footpaths in the Lake District, placing stepping stones in Eryri or planting sphagnum in the Peak District? Sign up to one of our Get Stuck In events here. And if you can't volunteer, why not gift us the amount you would have spent in fuel or on a train fare getting to a volunteer event?

Leave a legacy

A wise person once said, the most noble thing you can do is to "plant trees under whose shade you will never sit" and, likewise, fund path repair projects on which you will never walk. If you'd like to make a lasting impact on the landscape long after you've left this world, please consider leaving us a legacy.

Coming soon...

We are pleased to tease that we'll be funding a new and incredibly valuable conservation project in 2026 with more information to come soon...

Mynediad Newyddion

BMC Access & Conservation Trust - IMPACT REPORT 2025

In addition to welcoming four new trustees, the BMC Access & Conservation Trust has been busy in 2025, securing grants and creating fundraisers to support crag and mountain path repair, moorland restoration and landscape conservation in hill walking and climbing areas. Here are this year's highlights.

15 Rhag
2 min read

Mynediad Newyddion

BMC at Kendal Mountain Festival 2025

The BMC had a strong presence at Kendal Mountain Festival this year, with the BMC Access & Conservation Trust charity stand, Women In Adventure film competition and workshop, a local hike, talks by staff members and one BMC volunteer winning a prestigious award.

27 Tach
2 min read
10 Ion 2026

Disciplines

Get Stuck In! Tree Planting Volunteering Day | Overdale Nature Reserve | Peak District | Saturday 10th Jan 26

Join other BMC members to help Derbyshire Wildlife Trust (DWT) plant trees in an area of upland pasture on the edge of high moorland.

Mynediad Newyddion

BMC volunteers protect struggling native oak trees in the Peak District

This October, BMC and Mountain Training Association volunteers joined forces with the National Trust to cut down faster-growing, competitor trees to protect native oak trees in the Upper Derwent Valley of the Peak District.

21 Hyd
2 min read

Eryri Apprentice Ranger fund

Help the BMC's Access & Conservation Trust raise £66,000 in funding for a new a 2-year Apprentice Ranger role within the National Trust Cymru Footpath Team in Eryri, as part of our wider Mend Our Mountains campaign.

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