Dear Kevin…

To Kevin Cox, Chair of RSPB.   Dear Kevin, I see BASC has written you an open letter – click here. As an RSPB Life Member I hope you won’t waste too much time (your staff’s time) agonising over replying. BASC, as you know, have long been thrashing around rather aimlessly, being rude to all…

Changes in the NGO world

Plantlife is one of my favourite small wildlife conservation charities and over many years I’ve worked with them and in the last decade done a few bits of work for them. And to be fair, in the past I’ve pinched a couple of their staff to come and work at the RSPB. There seems to…

Thoughts on 2020 (5) – nature conservation

I don’t think that nature conservation, as a movement, comes out of 2020 very well. The economic challenges should have brought home to many nature conservation organisations that they have morphed too much into being part of the entertainment industry in recent years and have loosened their nature conservation and environmental roots. When it came…

NEWS: RSPB prepares to shift position on gamebird shooting

At yesterday’s RSPB AGM, Kevin Cox, the Chair of Council made the following announcement; There is growing concern about the environmental impact (including for carbon, water and biodiversity) of intensive forms of game bird shooting and associated land management practices.  This includes both driven grouse moor management (which involves shooting our native red grouse) and…

The RSPB cohort

I was listening to Today this morning to hear John Humphrys’s last programme (and rather moving it was too) and so i caught an interview between JH and the new Woodland Trust CEO, my former colleague Darren Moorcroft. Congratulations to Darren – I wish him every success. But it got me thinking about all the…