Dear Tony
I’m really glad that you are taking over the hot seat at NE. Best of luck with it. And you certainly don’t need any advice from me, but…
Your job is really about nature – but you’ll have to deal with a bunch of interest groups on the way – some of them are not so much interest groups as enemies of nature.
These are four important interest groups:
- Natural England staff. It is fashionable to praise the NE staff for their dedication and brilliance under trying circumstances, and these are trying times, but they really aren’t doing that brilliantly are they? You can make a big difference here from Day 1 (errr – that’s today). Show them that you are on Nature’s side, you are an enthusiast for Nature, you want NE to do a good job for Nature and that you want to be able to tell the world what a good job NE is doing for Nature. That will make a difference to them – many of them haven’t heard anything like that for years. Get out and talk about Nature to the staff – demonstrate both your knowledge and commitment to Nature and to them provided they do a good job for Nature.
- Defra. Well, I’m pretty sure that Michael Gove had spotted your background when he appointed you – if he wanted another Andrew Sells then he wouldn’t have chosen you. So, unless you promised, cross your heart, that you were going to leave all that campaigning outlook behind you, show a bit of fight. Push the boundaries and take back some independence of thought and view to NE. Say what you feel you can get away with without making Mr Gove look foolish – it will be much more difficult not to make Therese Coffey look foolish because she has been a dead hand on nature conservation. You can make Gove look good – or at least better – withut sacrificing your principles. If you haven’t said half a dozen pro-Nature things that are exciting enough to make the newspapers by Christmas then you aren’t really doing what is expected of you. And remember, you’ll be doing your job when Gove, Goodwill and Coffey are doing new jobs. You might even be doing your job under a different government entirely. They won’t sack you for at least six months and if they do sack you for being a nature conservationist then you’ll walk into another job straight away!
- Stakeholders. There are those who are friends, those who aren’t friends but pretend to be friends, and those who don’t even pretend. Remember, many groups wanted NE to be abolished completely when the coalition government came in in 2010. NE has tended to turn its back on its real friends and take them utterly for granted (or worse) in recent years, and has invested massive amounts of time and effort in appeasing those who pretend to be friends. This has to stop otherwise the organisation will continue to achieve little. Your friends, that includes me, will cut you some slack for a while, but since you aren’t Andrew Sells or Poul Christiansen we are expecting rather more from you. If you could aim much more for a Martin Doughty then that would be good. Going back to the pre-NE years then Barbara Young and William Wilkinson would be pretty good role models.
- Nature. Wildlife won’t seek meetings, telephone you or threaten you. It will ignore you completely – don’t ignore Nature! Write ‘Don’t Ignore Nature‘ on post-it notes and carry them with you. Leave copies in every NE office you visit and give out cards saying ‘Don’t Ignore Nature‘ to every NE staff member you meet.
Anyway – best of luck. We all expect you to be brilliant (no pressure).
Today is St George’s Day – time to slay some dragons!
PS You might want to have a look at Wild Justice’s legal challenge of the General Licences and throw in the towel – if not, we’ll see you in court.
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NE has three audiences…
1. The politicians with their ideas and whims.
2. The stakeholders who want to see it do a good job.
3. The public who pay their taxes.
I would recommend that you conduct a bit of market research to find out what the third group wants and expects from NE. You will need that information to be able to stand up up to the first group and ensure that you can protect your budget.
Good luck to Tony Juniper. Very glad he is confirmed in the post. I hope he will be a breath of fresh air for our wild life. However it won’t be easy for him having to deal with the dead hand of Coffey and the vested interests of the Tories as a whole. As you say Mark let’s hope it is not too long now before he is dealing with a different Government.
Gove appoints TJ to tell us, what?
TJ accepts poison chalice, knowing what?
Gove leaves TC in her job, what does that tell us?
If I only had a brain:(
I would have NE staff do a Doomsday report, if I were him. The erosion of our natural environment stops here, not one single ladybird more. He should document every single scrap of land in the country, with a full ecological survey. It may turn up some quite pleasant surprises too, all those urban waste grounds and all those dry stone walls and hedgerows.
It saddens me, to see every year more and more rough grassland going under the plough, to be replaced by this bland, green ryegrass desert. Also, in the area of Derbyshire where I live, there seems to be a quite a lot of hedgerow clearance and drainage going on at the moment. I thought the consensus was that this land should be rewetted?
Two thoughts:
Natural Capital is the route into the Treasury – and its not all (or even mostly) about wildlife
and, leading on from that,
What about trying to make a real family out of the so called Defra family of NE, EA,FC etc – not an amalgamation, every one has been as disaster, but rather matching aims and objectives and harvesting specialists skills to inspire multi-objective, multi-benefit big land use thinking.
We all need a real family member who is not afraid to tell you the truth…..whats the point of a uncle who wont tell you that you flies are down.
Have you seen this?
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/general-licences-for-bird-control-major-changes-to-licensing-requirements?fbclid=IwAR1dWdIYOKd1fMtucrKSo39r-0NCPTNKutCEOP1MJ2ZoXOsblPoNYELKywE
Here’s hoping this was Tony’s first act and sets the tone.
Palustre – well, I guess that this was decided by NE at their last Board meeting about 10 days ago…
Top priority will be to appoint a new chief executive because Marian Spain is only in post in an interim capacity (unless she’s applying to become permanent).
In the interests of transparency, I hope TJ will ensure that, in future, NE board meetings are open to press and public.
It says in the NE governance section that they are open, but in my experience of trying to attend , almost all proceedings are held behind closed doors. It’s far too secretive an organisation.
I hope TJ might also review NE’s Dynamic Dunes project which aims to eradicate vast swathes of sea buckthorn around our coastline to encourage wild flowers. If this initiative is too vigorous, it will lead to immense loss of migration/roosting/feeding habitat for millions of birds.
So many competing ideas! TJ will definitely have a lot to think about – and a lot of difficult decisions to make!
Good luck to the fellow!
James, thank you for that comment. The dunes from Skegness to Gibraltar Point have been totally trashed due to the removal of sea buckthorn. It will grow back eventually anyway so a complete waste of money, meanwhile, what do the birds do?
It would be so lovely to have an umbrella org that then branches into general species ie birds mammals cetaceans ( do you know how many of these there are) flora then broken down into areas so everyone can join in – sigh I can dream