Natural England is crowdfunding to carry out its statutory responsibilities.
This public body is now crowdfunding for habitat management of sites such as Castle Hill National Nature Reserve (and Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area for Conservation for heavens sake!) on the outskirts of Brighton. According to Natural England this is ‘arguably the finest example of ancient, wildflower-rich chalk grassland in the country‘ and yet ‘with your support we will continue to protect and enhance‘ its biodiversity. I’m pretty sure that’s what my taxes are paying for already and what I’m expecting you to do anyway.
The same goes for Lullington Heath NNR and SSSI ‘One of the largest areas of chalk heathland remaining in Britain‘ and Pevensey Levels NNR (and SSSI and SAC).
i can’t quite understand what is going on here as NE is not the land owner on any of these sites, as far as I am aware. It is the regulator – its job is to make sure that landowners comply with the legislation and maintain these sites and their biodiversity. So why is NE stepping forward to raise these funds?
Other projects in this list include the daft idea of reintroducing Hen Harriers to southern England – which appears to have had another blank year of trying to persuade real nature conservationists in Europe to hand over their Hen Harrier chicks to the public body that has caved in, very willingly and enthusiastically, to grouse moor managers over brood meddling. Natural England has the nerve to fail to allude to the fact that illegal persecution is rife in northern England and to claim that there is no danger of persecution in the south of the country. The latter is disputed by RSPB and many others and this project is opposed by most nature conservationists to whom I have talked. But NE is asking for your cash for this project that looks as though it is going nowhere.
Close to my home NE is asking for money to ‘look after’ sites such as Barnack Hills and Holes NNR (and SSSI and SAC!!)(where I see Pasque Flowers most years – including this year).
I won’t be donating to any of these projects. For one thing the terms and conditions make it clear that …
Although you may have made your Donation in response to a specific cause of a Recipient Charity, and in order to avoid creating restricted funds for the Recipient Charity, if we pass your Donation and any Gift Aid on, the Recipient Charity is not bound to only use the Donation/Gift Aid for that cause. It may use this for its other charitable activities.
https://platform.nationalfundingscheme.org/terms-and-conditions
Now, NE isn’t a charity but I assume that this T&C applies to them too – if not, then the site’s T&C are unclear. General principle a) of The Fundraising Code (to which NE says it signs up) states that ‘A legal principle underpinning fundraising is that all funds raised for a particular cause MUST* be used for that particular cause’ which seems to me to be contradicted by the quote above, so it’s unclear to me where my money would go anyway.
Our wildlife NGOs will be less than thrilled to see NE entering fundraising in this manner. But then, many of them are less than thrilled by NE already.
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This is unbelievable! So, if I send them some cash they could hand it over to the Hawk and Owl Trust to brood meddle Hen harriers? Do not donate to these con artists.
Beyond belief! But I guess with a no-deal Brexit on the cards, we ain’t seen nothing yet – will priority be given to nature reserves in marginal seats I wonder? (My understanding is that the Hen Harrier reintroduction is “paused” btw.)
I am appalled. I might need a lie down in a darkened room to get over the shock of that one.
I’m now waiting for NHS England to crowd fund for the local Hospital League of Friends. (Though they could give the money to Virgin Health instead.)
The NHS has been begging us all for money for many years through its various charities. Why does a public body need a charity to fund it? Why, only because we live in a capitalist society that is hell-bent on destroying anything vaguely socialist. We vote them in every time. This is what will happen.
Just follow the links to the HH project. There sre already donations of £3050 from only five donors! One big one and four small ones? Average £610, very generous, very odd.
Is this a scam? If it isn’t it could bring NE down. A quick scan of the Charities Commision webste shows that the National Funding Scheme, setting aside throughflow of donations, is a tiny donation platform charity based in east London and with a going concern note on its accounts.
NE could well be a charity, I know SNH used to be a charity…it was something to do with avoiding paying local council taxes.
Do NE not have a legal obligation to look after NNR’s. The government have a legal obligation to look after Naura sites.They have powers to make sure he owners keep the sites in good condition.
Crikey you lot are never happy are you!?! They are probably strapped for cash because Wild Justice keeps making them spend loads of cash on legal advisors! 🙂
Just when I thought the world couldn’t get any more bonkers!
Please somebody fix the glitch in the matrix, we’re living in a nightmare.
This seems to be administered by something called the National Funding Scheme, which on its home page proclaims “Making it easier for millennials to give “. Rules me out luckily.
More seriously this is yet another symptom of the small mindedness of conservation in this country, focusing on a few fields of archaic agricultural land that have no chance of surviving without constant management and a bottomless pit of money. Grander schemes are called for.
Natural England is not a charity. So far as I know, no charity is associated with the southern reintroduction which anyway we understand to be in suspension. I doubt very much whether it would be within the lawful charitable activities of the National Funding Scheme to channel monies to a non-charity. And anyway any monies received by Natural England must, under government accounting rules (at least when I worked in government,) go straight to the Exchequer and cannot be retained by Natural England.
Now all of this may be wrong, but the whole thing stinks, even if its real. No-one should put any money in this direction.
Of course this is appalling. However, I think we need to take a cold hard look at what is happening and why. Natural England is not just behaving like this because it’s management has randomly decided to take it in this direction, and the government is appalled, but powerless to do anything.
Natural England has taken this direction, because this is what the government, and it’s ministers controlling it want. On the face of it, NE may be supposedly a statutory conservation body, with a degree of independence, but the reality is the government has severely cut it’s budget, and it’s ministers constantly lean on NE, under the latent threat of more budget cuts, if NE don’t comply, to implement policy in the way it wants.
Just compare the NE that took a lead position on the illegal persecution of Hen Harriers, as documented in the ground breaking report in 2008, “A Future for the Hen Harrier in England”, firmly blaming the decline in Hen Harriers onto illegal persecution by the DGS – to the NE which turns a blind eye to this illegal persecution, and has come up with brood meddling of HHs, essentially a brainchild of the DGS, and now only really supported by the DGS industry, and allied bodies. It really isn’t a coincidence that NE’s political masters are now a political party where the owners of grouse moors have huge influence, are nearly all supporters and members of this party, are donors etc.
What I’m saying is that it’s about time the focus is put on who is really to blame for this parlous state of affairs, and that is the political masters of NE. The government and it’s ministers must be rolling around having a right old laugh about how conservationists are putting all the blame on to NE, and not on them. It is absolutely no good doing away with NE and replacing it with a new body, which would have the same political masters, and again be directed to do what this government and it’s ministers want. Does anyone really believe that if this government wanted to crack down on illegal raptor persecution, take a more pro-active role in tackling the perpetrators, was properly funded to do it, and had the full and vocal backing of it’s ministers – that NE would be focusing on brood meddling, and turning a blind eye to illegal raptor persecution? Of course not. Then why keep focusing this criticism on what is a government department, funded and controlled by this government, and not the real culprits – the government and it’s ministers.
It is utterly bizarre. We had the now ex-Environment Secretary Michael Gove being showered with praise by conservation figures and bodies, for the worst type of tokenism in merely saying the right things about some things, whilst all the blame fell on the department, funded and managed by his ministry, being covertly directed by ministers under his control (the actual directions, and coercion taking NE in this direction was never publicly visible). It’s Orwellian. It’s plainly obvious that this parlous state of affairs is not merely what the government and it’s ministers want, but that they have brought it about. Therefore focus the criticism where it should be, not on some name for a government department, entirely controlled by the government, through control of it’s finances, and other internal coercion.
NE staff are being encouraged to raise money from the public for various projects, it has been going on for some time! It is similar to the situation where our supposedly state funded schools need to go, cap-in-hand to parents to afford some essentials. How ‘legal’ all this is has never been challenged and I don’t know what accounting procedures are required to safeguard such funds. Certainly this is a development that needs to be investigated.
This is a very important point. It is not merely NE, but other supposedly publicly funded bodies are being encouraged to take a similar approach. My overall point is that this is not an idiosyncratic policy direction by NE, but an ideological drive for this type of policy, imposed on them by their political masters. The political masters of publicly funded bodies do not have to issue direct orders for, or make over policy decisions directing this. They merely have to make it known, that this is what is expected. It can be done through very indirect hints. In an era of austerity and cuts, most departmental managers soon get the message about what their political masters want, and in an era of cuts, cutbacks, re-structuring, departmental managers are wary of angering their political masters, being well aware that if they do, they will likely face bigger budget cuts, adverse re-structuring, or even closure. This is how this compliance is brought about.
These politicians, if they’ve any knowledge of recent history, have every reason to feel they have huge public support no matter how much devastation they cause in the name of their extreme neoliberal ideology. After all, we didn’t want Corbyn and his loony socialism, did we? We have no-one to blame but ourselves if we keep electing Tory or New Labour governments.
As others have said, this whole thing is truly unbelievable, but then with this clique in Government nothing should be really surprising. I would rather give my money a hundred times over to say, the RSPB, than to what is effectively this so called Government, because they won’t fund their responsibilities for nature anything like sufficiently.