RSPB:
- RSPB is going through a big reorganisation and cost-cutting exercise. Something like 300 staff will be going (from c2000 altogether). The English regions will shrink from five to three with the North England Region being largely untouched (as far as boundaries are concerned) except for losing Derbyshire to the new Mid-England Region). East Anglia and the current Midlands Region will be merged (perhaps with an office at The Lodge?) and the South East and South West regions will now stretch from the Isles of Scilly to North Foreland.
- Applications to be the new Chief Executive of the RSPB are welcomed here. The RSPB is, I learn, a Global Non-profit Practice. It rightly discounts the National Trust as a conservation organisation as the advertisement claims that the RSPB is the biggest in the UK. The RSPB’s income is exagerrated a bit (by a mere £5+m) in the ad as is its staff complement (see above) according to the information on the Charity Commission website. Interestingly the Charity Commission website does not yet show the RSPB’s accounts having been received for 2018 which, if accurate, would make them a lot later than usual…
BTO:
Chris Packham has come to the end of his term as BTO president but, slightly strangely, despite announcing this at their AGM at Swanwick in December, and then in an email to BTO members last week, there is as yet no replacement named. I wonder who it will be.
RSPB. You seem to have forgotten that RSPB extends into Scotland – did you not realise? The “cost-cutting” is going on here as well.
BTO. To coin a phrase, “It could be you”!!!
A big lesson from the RSPB experience: boats can sink even if you don’t rock them.
Cost-cutting is not a bad thing if it means that more of the organisation’s resources are going into actual conservation spending. I very much hope that the cuts are aimed at doing more with less rather than a contraction of what the RSPB will actually be seeking to do in terms of conservation action.