The Big Three
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
Britain’s (and Europe’s) largest wildlife and conservation society was formed in 1891 and acquired its Royal Charter in 1904. However, the RSPB’s mass popularity and power are relatively recent. It broke the 100,000 tape only in 1972, but in the 1980s its growth was meteoric, reaching half a million members in 1989 and one million by 1997. The RSPB ‘works for a healthy environment rich in birds and wildlife’. It has good things to offer to its million members: free access to most of its 140 nature reserves and an excellent quarterly magazine, Birds. The RSPB has a grand UK office at Sandy Lodge, Beds, and separate headquarters in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as nine regional offices. It employs around 1,000 full, part-time and contract staff; its network of nature reserves throughout the UK covers some 111,500 hectares and receives over a million visitors a year. With in-house science expertise, RSPB investigates the impact of human activity on birds, as well as the needs of threatened species both at home and overseas. It has acquired matchless skill in presenting the conservation case, and in detecting and admonishing failures of policy. It has also successfully mounted legal challenges over conservation designations, and deals with an average of 350 planning cases per year. With birdwatching a popular hobby on both the Government and Opposition front benches, British birds receive far more sympathetic attention than any other forms of wildlife. The RSPB has been criticised in some quarters as exercising too much power; for example, in buying up a lot of land in Orkney or the Hebrides, where it is seen by some as an inappropriate outside influence. Gamekeepers have also fallen out with RSPB over raptors.
From the start, RSPB has been active in education, with special clubs for children (the Young Ornithologists’ Club, recently renamed ‘Wildlife Explorers’, magazine Bird Life) and teenagers (‘RSPB Phoenix’, magazine Wingboat). It claims to have helped make the national curriculum more wildlife-conscious (though it would help to have more teachers who know their natural history). Internationally, RSPB represents the UK on Birdlife International, and contributes to bird protection overseas (for example, the publication Important Bird Areas in Europe was largely RSPB-funded). The RSPB is now rich: income in 2000 was £38 million, mainly from membership subscriptions and legacies, supplemented by grants, fund raising appeals and sales of goods. Today it often works in partnership with other conservation charities, and also with farmers and land owners. Increasingly RSPB champions wildlife more generally, as well as their habitats. Its slogan: ‘for birds for people for ever’. You can read a sympathetic account of the RSPB’s eventful history in For the Love of Birds, written to celebrate its centenary (Samstag 1989). For hostility, try Isles of the West by Ian Mitchell (1999).
UK Headquarters: The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire SG19 2DL.
Chief Executive: Graham Wynne.
The county wildlife trusts
Membership of the wildlife trust of one’s home county is the logical first step for anyone interested in natural history. Nearly every county in England and Wales has a wildlife trust, many of them based on older natural history societies. Most of them were formed in the 1950s and 60s. Some, such as the trusts of North Wales or ‘Bucks, Berks and Oxon’, are federated, and Scotland has a federal system with different regions under a unified Scottish Wildlife Trust. The purpose of the trusts is to acquire land as nature reserves and encourage interest in wildlife. The founders of the Kent Naturalists Trust (now the Kent Wildlife Trust) spoke for many others who ‘saw the speed of change of farming practice and urbanisation as a severe threat to our lovely county’.
The first county to receive its own wildlife trust (as opposed to a natural history society or field club) was Norfolk. The Norfolk Naturalists Trust was established by Dr Sidney Long in 1926 as a ‘special non-profit paying company to hold and manage nature reserves’. Behind its formation lay a dissatisfaction with the National Trust, which came to the boil when the latter refused to take on Cley Marshes on the grounds that it was only of interest to naturalists. Norfolk had acquired several nature reserves by the 1950s, but although F.W. Oliver’s prediction that one day every English county would have its own county trust proved right, it took a long time. It was not until 1946 that the Yorkshire Naturalists Trust was founded, on the Norfolk model, and again with the immediate purpose of looking after a nature reserve, Askham Bog. The Lincolnshire Naturalists Trust followed two years later, largely through the efforts of A.E. Smith, later Secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR). With the support of the Nature Conservancy, many more county trusts sprang up across England in the 1950s – Leicester and Cambridgeshire in 1956, the West Midlands and Kent in 1958, Surrey and Bucks, Berks and Oxon (‘BBONT’) in 1959, Essex and Hampshire in 1960, Cornwall and Wiltshire in 1962. The first Welsh trust, the West Wales Naturalists Trust, was formed in 1956, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, covering the whole of Scotland, followed in 1964. Many of them emerged from the embers of an earlier natural history society, often through the efforts of a few dedicated local naturalists. For example, the Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation was formed in 1964 by members of the venerable Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, led by Ernest Neal and Peter Tolson. The Cornwall Naturalists Trust took over and much extended the activities of the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society. Many county trusts have changed their names (and acronyms) two or three times since. Originally they were naturalists trusts. Later some became trusts for nature conservation. Now they are nearly all wildlife trusts – and one rather dreads their possible future reincarnation as sustainability or biodiversity trusts.
Most trusts acquired a full-time conservation officer as soon as they were up and running, with the help of ‘pump-priming’ grants from the NCC and other bodies. During the 1980s, NCC grants helped the trusts to become more professional and to acquire a small corps of promotional, educational and marketing staff, as well as computer systems. In the 1990s, some trust nature reserves profited from English Nature’s Reserve Enhancement Scheme, and still more by the Heritage Lottery Fund which, by 2000, had awarded a total of £50 million to buy land as nature reserves or fund capital improvements. A further £6 million worth of projects came from the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. At the same time, increased public interest in nature conservation resulted in big increases in membership. For example, the medium-sized Somerset Trust, with 9,000 members, now has an annual income just over £1 million and assets of £3 million, together with about 30 full-time staff housed in beautiful surroundings at Fyne Court. Between them the county wildlife trusts now manage some 2,300 nature reserves, ranging in size from under a hectare to several square kilometres, and extending over nearly 70,000 hectares.
The activities of the county trusts have much in common, but they always reflect the nature of their constituencies. The Welsh Trusts have become adept at running seabird islands and restoring reed beds; the Scottish Wildlife Trust specialises in restoring peat bogs. Among their core activities are acquiring and managing nature reserves and campaigning against harmful developments. More recently, their work has become more inclusive, embracing ideas of sustainability enshrined in Agenda 21 and interpreting them on a local scale (see p. 78), or helping farmers to sell environment-friendly products, as in the Devon Wildlife Trust’s ‘Green Gateway’ scheme. The nature of the membership is also changing. Twenty years ago, most trust members were keen naturalists. Today, many join out of a broader concern for the environment (that is, for our own quality of life), and often include whole families. Trust activities reflect such