In my book Reflections I make the point that a revival of wildlife in the UK will require political action: action on farming policy, energy policy, forestry 
policy as well as investment in the right wildlife conservation policies. You and I, as individuals, can have some influence on those matters but we’ll have most influence when we act together and, although you might not have thought about them in this way before, we already do have such mechanisms available to us – the wildlife organisations of which we are members or supporters. We, the wildlife-motivated public need to influence our (we fund them) conservation organisations to do the things that they can do on their own (eg buy and manage nature reserves) and also to influence the policies and practices that affect wildlife across all four nations of the UK. We need to think of our legacies, donations and subscriptions as our conservation investments, and aim to get the most conservation for our money. To do that we need to carry out due diligence of the potential recipients of our cash (and goodwill and time).
This series of blogs will ask a wide range of conservation organisations questions about their effectiveness and future plans on which I can base my investment decisions. I will post my questions and their responses. And I’ll be interested in whether you have made similar enquiries and what sort of answer you’ve had.
I’ll be posting blogs which ask big organisations and small ones questions. They will be my questions, their answers (or lack of answers) will influence my conservation investments. I’d encourage you to ask your own questions (but mine might give you some ideas and I’d be flattered if you did re-use some of mine).
I’ll kick off this series of blogs with the National Trust – I’ll post the blog on Saturday.
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