I wrote last August about the outrageous cheek of Natural England crowdfunding for a variety of projects, some of which look very much like its statutory duties to me, and others look like a complete waste of time (see here, here).
In the ‘complete waste of time’ category is Natural England’s plan to reintroduce Hen Harriers to lowland England (when they should be pulling their fingers out and dealing with wildlife crime in the uplands). This is one of the projects for which they are crowdfunding and have been since early August (or maybe much earlier) last year.
So, how much has Natural England raised? Just over £3000 – in 6 months.
In contrast…
… in 24 hours we have raised nearly £5,000 to fund an appeal against a judgment last year which allowed Natural England to go ahead with brood meddling of Hen Harriers in the uplands.
Natural England has raised under £17/day to fund their project and we have raised £4,735 in a single day to fund ours. This might mean that our Hen Harrier project is c280 times as popular with the public as Natural England’s, mightn’t it? Well, we certainly know it is considerably more popular even if it is difficult to put a figure on it.
That must tell Natural England, Marian Spain and Tony Juniper something, mustn’t it?
Both crowdfunders are still open, here is the link to mine – click here. Thank you!
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There is, what I suspect will be a propaganda exercise, taking place in Somerset on 12th February, courtesy of the county wildlife trust. NE is giving a presentation on the reintroduction scheme presumably to rally support and boost the coffers of their appeal. The bottom line, of course, is that hen harriers don’t need to be reintroduced they just need to be left alone to expand their population naturally.
Number of donors would be another thing to compare.
BASC and the Moorland Association keep telling us how much money is involved in Grouse and Pheasant Shooting, and what a major contribution this makes to the rural economy and to environmental causes. Yet Natural England have to crowdfund from members of the public for Brood Meddling of Hen Harriers, and for the direct benefit of those same wealthy landowners and their clients by reducing predation of Grouse. Why haven’t those landowners coughed up for the full costs of the proposed programme?
This may be wrong, but I think the figure has not gone up at all in the last six months. I think they got a large donation or two to give the appearance of a good start but it has completely failed since then.
Alan – that’s my impression too.
A different reading would suggest that no one has been convinced to hand over hard-earned cash to a statutory body which should be funding it any way, and that NE aren’t as good at crowdfunding as you Mark.
Alternatively, it could simply means fools are easily parted from their money.
Stig – or a combination of all of those and more
Ne’s attempts to raise external funds has lacked any sense of commitment going back even before the swingeing Government cuts. It may not be helped by a turnover of directors that reflects an organisation that has never got to a point where it is comfortable with itself or its place in the world. When you are fundraising you do need to have an idea of where the money is going to come from – and as Mike so rightly points out the audience for whom this is being done should have been able to fund the project several times over – spending power is one area where they almost certainly have the edge on people trying to save hen harriers from them.
You’d have thought that the usual suspects behind the wildlife crime would have Whipped their members to support the brood meddling drive, for sheer PR value if nothing else. It isn’t like they cannot afford it. They drop the entire value raised so far on a single bottle of plonk for lunch.
Who made the decisions a) for Natural England to take the crowdfunding route and b) for hen harrier re-introduction to be one of the projects?
Give that both are contentious, I should have thought they would have come up for ratification by the NE Board.
But trawling through the minutes of last year’s meetings, there is no indication of any discussions having taken place at board level.
On that basis, the decisions would have been delegated further down the chain.
But who made them – and on what advice?
Did the chairman and chief executive even know about them?
Assume you’ve checked Mark but is it legal for an NDPB (if that’s what NE are) to crowdfund? Seems most odd. I’ve been a Board member of NDPBs in Scotland and we had a lot of training on Nolan rules and what individuals can and can’t accept (e.g. for giving a talk unpaid. e.g. to an NGO – long discussion about whether one bottle of whisky OK if offered – advice was best to accept politely but say that you would then donate to another charity (and do so!)). Why don’t same rules apply to all parts of a publicly-funded body? And although I see the logic – wouldn’t we all be up in arms if the grouse and pheasant shooters did fund it – ‘greenwashing’, buying favours etc.?