Big Give pledges to match donations for Vincent Wildlife Trust’s new Marten Month National Pine Marten Survey

The pine marten, once thought to be Britain’s second most common carnivore, was the second rarest by 1915. To prevent the native pine marten becoming extinct in Britain, conservation work has started to help them recover. But to make sure we are focusing the work in the right areas, we need up-to-date information about where they are already as well as a better understanding of people’s views of pine martens so that we can support them to live together.

Citizen science survey

To gather more information about pine martens and people’s views, VWT has designed a new citizen science survey for people to report their sightings as a most effective way to gather basic distribution data on a widespread species. For example, during our recent National Polecat Survey 2024-2025, members of the public submitted 2,300 records, which was the largest number of records ever submitted to VWT’s previous polecat surveys. 

This new Marten Month Pine Marten Survey is proposed for the month of September 2026 when members of the public can become citizen scientists and submit sightings of pine martens, as well as record their thoughts and feelings about this native carnivore. 

Your donations

Thanks to this year’s Big Give campaign, any donations made through BigGive.org will be doubled to support this survey. We can only match fund donations made through the Earth Raise campaign page on the BigGive website using a valid debit or credit card from midday Wednesday 22nd April to midday Wednesday 29th April.

We hope that this survey will help to increase the area being surveyed for pine marten presence in Britain and result in more information on where pine martens are to inform conservation work and support pine martens to recover in Britain. The survey will also help our understanding on how people view pine martens and hopefully engage more people to be involved in pine marten conservation. Future plans include establishing an annual citizen science survey for pine martens that will feed into the new National Pine Marten Monitoring Programme.

You can help make a difference to this work to help pine martens once again thrive by doubling your donation through BigGive.org