Having tied the knot aged 50, in his own words, quite late in life, National Trust chairman and “senior volunteer” René Olivieri has spent the past two decades as a proud stepfather to his wife Anne’s two children. Amid a glittering career in publishing and, latterly, the charity and cultural sector where he previously helmed the RSPCA and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, becoming a parent increasingly informed his world-view.
“Having kids did open my eyes to thinking more about the future for sure,” he says in a wide-ranging interview as the Trust celebrates today’s 130th anniversary of its founding. I want to be a good ancestor and I want everyone else to be a good ancestor too.
“I look at my kids – they’re in their 30s, people are living longer, they’re going to have children themselves – and I want them to know they can have children and that they’re going to feel secure and happy enough in this future world.
“We have this enormous collective responsibility. And that’s why I feel the National Trust has to step up and rise to the challenge of the day.”
That challenge – as the charity revealed last week when it unveiled a bold ten-year plan, including an ambitious scheme to create 250,000 new hectares of nature-rich landscapes – is the global climate crisis.
Chillingly, despite our love of the outdoors, the UK was revealed as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world in 2023.
One in six species face extinction and 95 varieties of animal, plant and fungi have already been lost, according to scientists who studied data from over half a century.
The Trust, explains Olivieri, 71, who was born in the US but came to Britain as a young man and now has UK citizenship, is taking a long view – over the next 25, 50, even 100 years.
He describes this as “cathedral thinking”, in reference to the multiple generations it took to build many of the UK’s most outstanding buildings.
“Governments and businesses often have very short-term horizons in looking for an immediate return or an outcome,” he explains. “But when you’re dealing with trying to restore nature, we always try to take a long-term view.
“So we’ve been asking people about what future generations are going to need from us and what they need us to do now. And we’ve had a pretty clear response.”
Ambitious plans for a new 193-acre forest in Lunt, Merseyside, spearheaded by the National Trust (Image: National Trust)
Indeed, polling of 70,000 members, volunteers and partners last year – the Trust’s largest ever consultation – informed the “building blocks” of the new strategy.
Olivieri continues: “We’ve always been there, trying to provide this benefit for the wider public, but now we want to be even more ambitious. We have a history of looking around and asking, ‘What does the nation’ – and we’re always for the nation, even though we have this great membership – ‘need?’ We’ve always risen to the challenge.”
With its 5.4 million-strong membership, Olivieri and the Trust believes it can – indeed, must – have an enormous impact on mitigating climate change, not only on its own land but in partnership with others to preserve and restore nature.
But before you choke on your cream tea – and there are always commentators and politicians who take a jaundiced view of the Trust’s campaigning – Olivieri insists this does not mean abandoning its mission of conservation and restoration of the hundreds of properties from stately homes to farmhouses, factories and other oddities it preserves on behalf of the nation.
“We spent more last year than ever before – £178million – on conservation.
“It’s really important we emphasise we will continue to work really hard to look after the places and collections we’re responsible for. And we have big plans to do even more.
“We’re investing £17million in Bath Assembly Rooms, where people used to go in Jane Austen’s time, to make it a really spectacular experience, we’ve acquired Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s childhood homes in Liverpool, so the conservation work will continue.”
Olivieri, who lives in rural Worcestershire, grew up in rural Oregon, one of five siblings, in the foothills of Mount Hood. He describes himself as a “farm boy” at heart. He adored nature but a year living with a family near Bruges in Belgium, at the age of 17, as well as trips to Germany and Italy as a student, opened his eyes to Europe’s treasures.
Having begun a career in academic publishing, he crossed the Atlantic to work in the UK for Blackwells as a publisher, later becoming the firm’s chief executive.
Airlifting bags of Brash as part of a peatland restoration project at Kinder Scout, Derbyshire (Image: National Trust)
“When I got here, I was absolutely bowled over by this thing called the National Trust. The British have this incredible affiliation with nature and history I’d not experienced anywhere before. The Trust is unique in the world and the largest conservation charity in Europe,
“But it works as an independent organisation, not affiliated with a political party or government and not funded by anything other than membership and donations.
“It looks after a huge chunk of our past and a huge chunk of our nature – it’s just an astonishing phenomenon. Every time anybody visits me from abroad, they ask, ‘Why don’t we have something like this at home?’”
Olivieri took on the role in the autumn of 2022 after his predecessor Tim Parker stepped down after seven years.
This followed controversy over the Trust’s examination of historical links between its properties and the UK’s legacy of slavery and colonialism.
The organisation was increasingly finding itself sucked into so-called “culture wars”, attracting the ire of Tory ministers, and Parker had become a lightning-conductor for dissent. On his appointment, Olivieri insisted he welcomed debate and wanted to hear criticisms. Today, he tells me: “Our aim is to engage as many people as possible, tell as many story stories, try to be truthful, factual, but not tell people what to think.”
He insists: “We really do not have a political motivation other than to get the Government to look after and spend more on heritage, culture and nature conservation, which will always be part of our role in promoting and campaigning. If you look at publicly-measured trust levels in what the National Trust is doing, they’ve never been higher.” Indeed, one does wonder why any politicians would want to take-on one of the most beloved organisations in the world, even if it might excite a few hundred likes on social media.
But in some ways, the Trust has become a victim of its own success. Stories about vegan scones, links to slavery and LGBTQ are guaranteed to make good click-bait.
“That’s why we want to be listening better, be more outward looking and differentiate more between properties and places in talking more with local people and communities,” says Olivieri. “What can we do for them? How do they want to use a site?”
US-born Olivieri came to the UK as a young man and was bowled over by the National Trust (Image: Rowan Griffiths)
With his boyish looks and enthusiasm, Olivieri makes an engaging figurehead and part of his role will be to engage as many groups as possible. He pays warm tribute to volunteers and members, and insists the Trust is not doing anything out of keeping with its work over the past 130 years.
“We’re very fortunate that we’re so successful and we have this history of jumping in whenever there’s a crisis; whether it’s nature disappearing or people moving into cities and not having access to nature.
“Or country houses under threat in the thirties and forties and us taking them on and looking after them.
“And then there were the coastal areas of the UK that were being developed unsympathetically and closed off to public access.
“In the sixties and seventies we jumped in with Project Neptune to restore a lot of that for free public access.
“Today one of the things we can do, that everyone can do, to deal with climate change is by restoring nature. Nature naturally absorbs a lot of the carbon.
“Peatlands for instance soak up carbon from the air, so if we manage them properly, we can deal with some of the effects of climate change.
“By managing our rivers so the water flow isn’t as great, and by having soils which absorb more water, we can help combat drought and flooding.
“Nature does a lot of the heavy lifting, so if you re-wiggle those rivers so they don’t move quite so fast, you get less flooding downstream, more absorption of water and better biodiversity. It’s not rocket science.”
Crucially, he sees no clash with vested interests like farming or the Government’s ambitious scheme to build 1.5 million new homes, some on former Green Belt. “A lot of our land isn’t suitable for farming. But at the end of the day, if you don’t look after the soils, if you don’t look after biodiversity or bug life, how water is absorbed and stored, that’s going to undermine your ability to produce food.
Inspecting tiny saplings at a National Trust nursery at Hafod Garregog, Gwynedd (Image: National Trust)
“We’re certainly not pitting ourselves against the farmers in any way, we have a lot of sympathy with the difficulties farmers are experiencing now.
“But we have to fight to find the right solutions and they need to be holistic. Otherwise it’s short-termism and we will regret those decisions subsequently.
“And we’re not against the new housing. We understand that people need places to live in.
“With new technology, new advances, it’s possible to provide the right infrastructure, the right offset, to create houses and communities which are net zero, giving people great places to live and access to nature on their doorstep.”
Nor does any of this mean the Trust will stop acquiring properties for the nation – but look out for more land acquisition and the linking of existing sites through so-called “green corridors”.
“Nature works really well at scale. The bigger and the more connected places are, the better they can adapt, the richer they become, the
less human intervention they actually need,” he explains.
“We need to be working alongside other organisations that have property, linking our places to theirs, and working with other landowners to improve their land and make sure the connections to our land are open for wildlife to flourish.”
Does he have a final message?
“We’re worried about the future, but we’re optimistic. We think people will and can do a lot to re-engage with their history and sort out our problem with nature.
“We’re in a good place and we want to be positive about feeling we all have agency in this world.”
I am sure his kids would approve.
● For more information, please visit nationaltrust.org.uk/our-strategy