A recent tweet on Twitter from Mary Creagh MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defra, said that Defra Minister Richard Benyon had described the relationship between nature charities and Defra as ‘edgy’. The ‘really quite admirable’ Mr Benyon did use that phrase, in a debate, when expressing his pleasure at having his report card…
Category: THE WILDLIFE NGOs – RSPB, Wildlife Trusts Wild Justice, BSBI etc
How social is your charity?
A fairly recent ranking of how UK charities use social media makes interesting reading. There is a league table – we all love league tables – which puts the Royal Airforces Association as the 100th charity and Cancer Research as number one. On this list the National Trust is #7, the RSPB is #13, WWF…
Top scientist slams government
In his acceptance speech when receiving the RSPB Medal, Professor Sir John Lawton FRS described the coalition government’s proposed ‘dismantling of the planning system‘ as ‘truly terrifying‘ and the ‘backpedalling‘ on climate change in George Osborne’s conference speech as being ‘deeply worrying‘. Sir John, who is an RSPB Vice President, Chair of the Yorkshire Wildlife…
RSPB AGM
Yesterday’s RSPB AGM was, for me, the most relaxed one I have ever attended, as I was there as an RSPB member rather than an RSPB member of staff. And the most difficult question I had to answer was ‘Mark – how are you?’. You do learn a bit by attending these events and keeping…
Guest blog – Peter Marren
Following his article in The Independent, and the flood of views on the subject that have washed through this blog, I asked Peter Marren whether he would like to comment on the views expressed so far. Here is his response: When you embark on a new venture you feel very alone, so it is…
Guest post on Friday – Peter Marren
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Peter Marren will be the guest blogger here on Friday – commenting on the discussion that has sprung up here since he dropped a pebble in the wildlife NGO pond with his article in The Indpendent newspaper. And the offer is open to the Chief Executives of any and all of the wildlife NGOs to…
Not too reserved
The latest annual RSPB reserve report is out – with a very attractive black guillemot on the cover. Right up front, the first article, is an account of the numbers of various bird species on RSPB nature reserves in 2010 and their target populations in 2012 – the year when this RSPB nature reserve conservation…
Untangling the tangled bank – 3
I am now a proud member of Buglife – why don’t you join too? I am going to write mainly about closer collaborative working in this blog but I do want to put in a word for mergers before I do that. Let’s take some of the smaller wildlife conservation organisations as examples. Let’s imagine…
Untangling the tangled bank – 2
There are some great comments on yesterday’s blog – do have another look at them if you first read the blog yesterday morning. One aspect of the work of wildlife conservation NGOs which needs considering is that of devolution. These days, and it’s been true for quite a while, decisions on most (not quite all)…
Untangling the tangled bank – 1
Peter Marren dropped a stone into the pond whose ripples continue to spread. His article in the Independent, followed by pieces (here and here) by the Independent’s Environment Editor Mike McCarthy, and aided and abetted by this blog, have opened up a debate on the tangled bank of UK wildlife NGOs – do we have…