Guest blog – “So, Ben, about this list…” by Ben Hoare

Ben Hoare has been a natural history editor for 20 years. One of his first jobs was deciphering the pencil scrawl of ornithologist Hadoram Shirihai in Eilat – he was paid in ‘life ticks’, including Basra reed warbler, Nubian nightjar and Southern pochard. In 2009 (by now earning real money) Ben became Features Editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine. The Wildlife Power List is in the May issue, on sale now.

 

“So, Ben, about this list…”

I’ve been asked that a lot over the past week. The May issue of BBC Wildlife went on sale on Wednesday. It includes a 12-page article detailing the top 50 people that we feel have the potential to change the fortunes of wildlife and how we experience the natural world.

The emails started almost immediately.

On Thursday I had a breakfast meeting with a smart and influential publisher (not on the list, though too polite to mention it). Is the Wildlife Power List really necessary, he wondered. And do you really have to rank people?

That evening I went to an event in Bristol. Almost everyone I spoke to wanted to know how BBC Wildlife put the list together, and held forth on who should have been included. Two natural history TV presenters were there (they didn’t make the list either, but fortunately were very polite about it too.)

And still the emails keep coming.

Where are the botanists in your top 50? Why aren’t there more Government scientists? You seem to have forgotten several big conservation NGOs. There aren’t enough women! What’s Prince William doing on there? Why does writing a book about goshawks earn you a place in the top 15? You’ve only included MPs from two political parties – what about the other ones? Why isn’t David Attenborough number one? What is power anyway? And so on.

Magazines like lists, because readers like lists. OK, not all readers, but a lot more than you might think – or who might admit it. Lists are a guilty pleasure. After all, it’s human nature to rank people and things.

Lists are also an effective way of looking at the contributions of different people from all kinds of fields. Lists are fun. And lists can be celebratory. Conservation is a tough career and these are tough times – for nature, as well as everyone involved in conservation. So we definitely wanted our list to have a feelgood factor.

At start of the BBC Wildlife Power List feature, we explain the criteria used. But here’s a bit more detail:

1) We only considered humans. So there are no cute and fluffy mascots, though a fibreboard Harry the Hen Harrier gets a mention.

2) We only considered living people. Sadly there was not enough space this time to include lifetime achievement awards. The late, great Derek Moore and Oliver Rackham would otherwise surely have featured.

3) We only considered British people. This was a purely pragmatic decision – it would have been impossible to look at all of the world’s conservationists in one magazine article.

4) We only considered people having a positive impact on the fortunes of wildlife. Actually, we did also begin to compile a list of the 50 Britons most damaging to the natural world. You’d probably love to see that. But it’s locked in the drinks cabinet of BBC Director-General Tony Hall and is unlikely ever to see the light of day.

5) We focused on how influential people are in 2015, and are likely to be in future. Since the English badger cull, neonicotinoid pesticides, illegal raptor persecution and rewilding are among today’s highest-profile conservation issues, our list naturally reflects that.

6) We decided to consider people of all ages together. The alternative would have been to include a separate box listing young contenders, but that might have come across as patronising. In any case, the contribution made by young conservationists can be just as potent as that of older folk.

This last point is significant. I saw the presentation that 13-year-old Findlay Wilde gave at the BTO Conference last December, sharing the platform with other gifted young birders – Ellis Lucas, Toby Carter, Evie Miller, Josie Hewitt and Ben Moyes. Powerful stuff. Many of the audience were in tears.

It’s a canny move, using very young people like these to inspire and influence adults. So is encouraging them to do exactly the same nest-finding surveys and ringing work as adults. Full marks to the BTO.

I’m glad we were able to include five people under 25 in our list. I only wish the list could have been more ethnically diverse. As far as I can tell, there doesn’t appear to be much diversity among the senior staff of most British conservation organisations (I’d love to be proved wrong). One of my rarest sightings at a rural nature reserve last year, at Spurn Point in September, was a young black birdwatcher carrying a telescope and tripod.

Finally, a note on how the BBC Wildlife Power List was produced. It was put together by Editor Matt Swaine, Environment Editor James Fair and myself, following some pretty vigorous debate. We took soundings from as many experts as we could. In the end, a list of 50 people is not very many, and inevitably we couldn’t find room for everyone. The fact that you don’t see a particular NGO mentioned does not necessarily mean that it doesn’t do great work.

What did we get wrong, and what would you change? And what should we do differently for the next BBC Wildlife Power List? We’ll read any comments here, and welcome feedback to our letters pages. Or you can add posts on our Forum.

We are also planning a major new initiative – BBC Wildlife Local Conservation Heroes. You can find details on p35 of May’s issue, and there will be more information about this project in future issues of the magazine. We need your nominations!

[registration_form]