Gerard,
Not only do I fully appreciate the excellent work, which is carried out by field staff on the network of reseves, I am a regular volunteer at one of those reserves conducting regular surveys etc. I also conduct BTO surveys.
My reservations about the RSPB are NOT about their staff in the field. It is about the attitude and priorities of senior administrators and the policies they determine. A few examples:
. Seeking injunctions against local birders protecting vulnerable nest sites, then failing to provide adequate protection themselves.
. Refusing to address the question of the impact of the country's cat population on wildlife. This is to avoid the loss of membership and income from cat owners.
. Spending large sums on the re-introduction of Red Kite and Great Bustard but doing nothing to protect the Eagle Owl, for which they do not have outside funding.
. Using unemployed young people as free labour, with the carrot of a tiny fraction of them later being gaining positions with the organisation. With the large cash flow, surely minimum wage could be paid?
I could bore you with many more examples but believe the above suffice. I have written several letters to them on the above and other subjects. I have yet to receive an adequate respone to any of them... just appeals for more money.
QED
I don't believe the above suffices at all. To me it looks like a list of pet hates and minor quibbles.
Using young people as free labour? Why not? Surely no-one is forcing these young people to do anything? I'm sure a lot of young people realise that a bit of voluntary work on your CV looks great - and might open more doors than just with RSPB.
Protecting the eagle owl? You mean the probably escaped eagle owls that might have detrimental effects on populations of hen harrier, goshawk, and black grouse among others?
The cat issue? Why is it specifically up to RSPB to address that? Why would a body that relies on the publics money alienate a fair whack of it's potential support? If cats do have a big impact on the UKs wildlife (and I don't doubt that they do) why isn't that an issue for the UK government?
I have no idea about any injunctions taken out to find out about the locations of rare breeding birds, but I can't imagine that the RSPB offer any less adequate protection than a single observer could.
Look at the bigger picture. Look at the network of reserves, the success stories (avocet, bittern, marsh harrier, corncrake etc), the lobbying of the government on all sorts of issues, the sometimes cutting edge research and perhaps most importantly, the promotion of conservation and wildlife to the British public. If we are to become a nation where green issues are really deemed to be important, it will be in part due to very visible conservation bodies like the RSPB.
Lest anyone forgets, we are currently living in a country where badgers, buzzards and gulls are being culled under government issued licences with no scientific backing, and where politicians will allow golf courses to be built on SSSIs. We live in a world that climate change looms ominously over. Nobody else does as much active conservation work in the UK as the RSPB. Surely thats worth supporting - even if you do have some issues with some of their policies.