Literally London

One of the rewards of being a speaker are the questions that interested listeners ask at the end of a talk or workshop. The church group that I met recently was especially well informed and their questions were perceptive and probing. My statement that I would be travelling to London after the lunchtime session to attend the launch of the Cheltenham Literature festival prompted the response – Why London and why the festival? Good questions, thoughtfully placed by a polite sceptic.

I met my colleague Emma, who had the bright idea of linking with the festival, at the launch party. She was already deep in conversation with a member of the festival launch team. The reason that the Cheltenham Literature Festival was launched at the London Library in St James’ Square was quite simple. The majority of literary folk and media promoters are based in London and a reception there is much better attended than one at the Pump Rooms. Writers, publishers and publicists are all happy to visit Cheltenham for their respective events, but not for canapés and speeches.

The trip was well worth it for us. We did not go just to mix with Barry Norman, Claire Short, June Bakewell or Kate Aidey, we particularly wanted to meet the managing team and speak with them about our Manty Don event in October.

The Chairman of the festival, Sir Michael McWilliam KCMG, was particularly interesting and interested. He understood very well that one of the big challenges for nature conservation charities like the Trust is to explain its work to the widest audience. He fully understood that our interest in the Literature Festival is that nature has been a theme within the Arts for millennia. Art lovers are a natural audience for the message and by supporting Monty Don, a passionate enthusiastic for plants and wildlife, the Trust will benefit from his personal commitment and networks.

Train services from London to Gloucestershire in the evenings are poor and Emma and I had to leave the event early for Paddington station. Always the good leader, Emma made sure that her support team back at the office did not miss out on one of the goody bags. Frankie and Alice, who will be working with Monty Don at his talk on October 17th were very happy not to have been forgotten Cinderellas!

Electric Blue

The electric-blue flash of a Kingfisher on the River Cam this morning made my walk with Millie the Labrador special and suggested that this might be a special day.

It is not yet 3:00pm but things are going well. I have finished a successful talk to the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network at our centre at Robinswood Hill and I am waiting to make a journey to the official opening of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

My first meeting of the day was a really pleasant catch-up session with Richard Skeehens, MD of Grundon Waste, and Ruth Roll of RR Environmental Communications Ltd. We have not met for a number of months and an update on the biodiversity work that the Trust has been able to compete with Landfill Community Fund donations from Grundon was very timely.

Grants and donations are the route by which the Trust is able to supplement the generous contributions that our members make to run the Trust and enable it to carry our novel conservation work in the county. Grundon have been extremely generous since the inception of the Landfill Tax scheme in around 1993.

The current total that Grundon has given the Trust to spend on its work is a massive £1.3 million! These donations have transformed the Trust’s ambition and capacity and enabled it to plan further ahead, in reasonable confidence of success.

Planning for 2010 is well underway and the continuing support of Grundon is enabling us to design a major new conservation campaign. The electric blue Kingfisher is a good symbol of the new work that will be started next April. I am not a believer in synchronicity, but sometimes I wonder if chance is more than a statistical function.

Kingfisher (c) Kenny Crook

Arvicola terrestris – The Water Vole

An important part of ensuring that the Wildlife Trust runs smoothly is the care that is taken of the staff and volunteers who drive our business of conservation.

Each month a simple questionnaire is whizzed around on email so that individuals can comment on how things are going. This time my colleague Elaine asked us all to give any reasons we have for enjoying working with the Trust. My two most important statements (excluding the strong birthday cake culture that we have!) are those of ‘enjoying the work’ and ‘achieving conservation results’.

Our current focus for conservation programmes is the lovely little Water Vole. This creature is an icon of what conservation is all about. It is harmless, does not damage river banks or nearby crops, does not carry any serious diseases and the chance of this small vegetarian harming livestock is remote.

But the Water Vole is in big trouble. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust surveys, completed periodically across the past thirty years, have revealed a massive decline in water vole numbers.

On the Cotswold Rivers, those small populations that still survive are all too small and isolated for long term survival. If no action is taken, this harmless and attractive creature will become extinct here as it has done already in Cornwall and is perilously close to in Devon.

As much as we like Stephen Fry, we would not want him puffing along the River Churn in twenty years time looking for our last remaining vole! But the case is frighteningly close. Gloucestershire people can not expect rhinos, dolphins, manatee and other exotic creatures to be conserved if we do not look after our own native wildlife.

The great news is that there are good value solutions and they are already working in another part of the county. My colleague John Field has been busy for the last 18 months turning conservation theory into new voles. Working with landowners, who are the single most important people in water vole conservation, he has been successful in achieving measurable results (more voles!) along lengths of watercourse in the Vale of Berkeley. The techniques are simple and straightforward, but their application takes time, patience and careful riverside management. These factors are not cheap but the results are very encouraging.

Water voles need plenty of riverside cover, toothsome grasses and sedges, and no Mink. To achieve this mixture, cattle and other large creatures must be kept well back from the waterside with fencing and overhanging trees thinned or pollarded. Predatory Mink are the critical ingredient in the water vole recipe. Careful and continuous control of this efficient non-native predator is critical. American Mink ‘hoover up’ Water Voles, the two animals just don’t get along together!

In the course of designing the next phases of the Trust’s vole programme we have enjoyed much amusement whilst planning and budgeting furiously. The vole-word has become part of a continuous stream of odd jokes, much in the vein of Radio 4 ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue’. Puns about Voleunteers, Voletmeters and Revoleution give fun to the working day. However, the cleverest joke of all was made by the photographer from Cotswold Life who came to take photographs for their October edition in which I'm interviewed. Her instant response to one of our dodgy vole jokes was to respond with "Volegarians"!

Water Vole (c) Steven Dorey

Raising Funds

I am proud to be a Rotarian, albeit a serial underachiever due to work time restricting my freedom to attend meetings. Rotarians raise enormous sums of money both at the local level, such as my Dursley Rotary Club and through Rotary International. The Jessie May Trust, GL11 Community Project, Acorns, Yercombe Lodge and Cotswold Care Hospice are all currently benefiting from the Dursley club’s activities.

Amateur fundraising is impressive but as charities grow, the need for a professional approach becomes essential. The Wildlife Trust needs £800,000 a year to carry out its core work protecting Gloucestershire’s wildlife for Gloucestershire people. This is no minor challenge and needs a very organised and hard working team to keep the funds flowing.

When we want to carry out ambitious, cutting edge work, the costs are quite scary. My current challenge with the team is to safeguard the future of the water vole in the Cotswolds. To employ expert staff to do this for the next five years will cost over £0.5M! If we take no action we could end up like Cornwall, which has lost its whole water vole population.

I recently met the creative minds of Square Peg with my team. This specialist agency is advising us how to explain the mysteries of isolated water voles populations, habitat fragmentation and predation by unwanted foreign mustelids, into plain English. We know what we want to do and how it will prevent the water vole becoming extinct along entire reaches of the Rivers Leach, Evenlode, Windrush and more. If we take no action the future for the friendly and harmless little Ratty, the character from Wind in the Willows, is bleak.

If a rich and prosperous county like Gloucestershire does not take action to protect a rapidly declining mammal, we do not have any right to expect third world citizens to defend the Tiger, Rhinoceros or Panda. Creativity and professional fund raising can make all the difference between success and failure. But we all share a responsibility for keeping the county the wonderful place that makes it such a joy to inhabit.

Water vole (c) Paul Gregory

Living with Change

The Parliamentary year of 2009 will go down in the memory of professional politicians as not their finest period. Sub-let flats, houses for ducks and the odd moat clearance have created in public mind the appearance of a culture based on the self interest of members, rather than the discharge of democratic and party duties.

I am not a political animal, (although my wife says I should be one when I start up on one of my heartfelt rants about environmental issues). I do, however, value the hard work and commitment that MPs apply to their constituency duties. I have worked alongside many Gloucestershire parliamentarians and I have found them all to be dutiful and cooperative. Our very biased family favourite would be the late Charles Irvine MP who not only hosted a Wildlife Appeal event at his home in Cheltenham, but also reduced my daughters to beaming happiness with large tins of House of Commons butterscotch (he chaired the House catering committee)!

The Trust’s cruise along the Gloucester-Sharpness canal featured a large group of distinguished and most welcome guests. David Drew, MP for Stroud, and his wife were particularly welcome and I was very pleased that they had been able to make space in their diaries for our four hour excursion. Indeed, David was typical of the majority of our guests as he had not before been able to justify the trip. Like me he was struck by the totally different view of the Severn Vale that is given from the perspective of this functional canal.

I emailed David on a business matter following our trip and last Thursday I spent a full hour talking about a wide range of matters with him. The theme of our discussion, although not the issue that I had raised originally, became that of the general failure of Gloucestershire folk to show off the wonders of their county. Indeed, I have never quite understood how one of England’s most diverse historic, cultural and ecological landscapes is so poorly promoted. Even worse is a general belief that the countryside is to be taken for granted, that the people who live there are overly fortunate and have no social problems, and that there no real jobs or prosperity in rural industries.

The environmental and land-based industries generate almost 6% of Gross National Product. Across the UK almost 1 million people are paid workers in these industries and another 0.5M give their time voluntarily. The upshot of this is the quality of life that Gloucestershire people (and the South West RDA) take for granted. Gloucester City and Cheltenham Town both benefit from their settings within the Severn Vale, framed by the hills of the Forest of Dean and the Cotswolds. Neither location would be nearly so fine without these backdrops or the wonderful green spaces and street trees that set off their buildings and urban features.

The Trust’s Living Landscape programmes exist to show the importance of the environment as the key component within a healthy society that has an economy growing within environmental limits. The Severn Vale project that David Drew saw is the stage one of the first of these. In October, the Trust will be announcing its next visionary programme. Over the next decades of climate-driven change, without fully joined-up policies, programmes and investment decisions, our county will not continue to be the Living Gloucestershire that we all currently take for granted. The Trust intends to set the pace to support Gloucestershire living with change.

Licensed to Practise

My work with the Trust and Lantra give me the enjoyable combination of practical outcomes at county level and influencing strategy and policy at UK level. This work also gives me insight into the advantages and drawbacks of trying to work with Government.

The Wildlife Trust is a registered charity that is not at all restricted in its activities, other than to fulfil its members’ wishes whilst observing legal and regulatory obligations. That means that it is free to focus on its Vision of a Living Gloucestershire, rich in wildlife, valued by everyone. The Trust spends the monies that it raises through membership subscriptions and other fundraising on the county’s wildlife as it pleases, unrestricted by Government policy.

Lantra is also a charity that must observe rules and regulations at UK and Scottish level. But its special status is that, being licensed by all four Governments as a Sector Skills Council (SSC); it receives special funding to carry out specific qualifications and business development work. The downside to being the only body that represents all 17 of the industries that make up the environmental and land based sector, is the very thing that gives Lantra is status – its license to practise.

In 2006 Lord Leitch published a report commissioned on the future skills needs of the UK. In implementing most of the Leitch recommendations a decision was made by the UK Government both to set up a new regulatory body, the UKCES, and to carry out a review of all 25 SSCs.

Relicensing is now almost complete with the last group of five SSCs reaching the assessment stage. The principal source of evidence for the UKCES on Lantra’s performance is a detailed report drawn up by the National Audit Office. With Peter Martin, Lantra’s CEO, I will be interviewed by commissioners Sir Charlie Mayfield (Chairman of John Lewis Partnership) and Grahame Smith (General Secretary of the STUC) on Wednesday. I am confident that Lantra’s licence will be approved, but working with government means that this is not the end of the story.

Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Industry and Skills, is currently contemplating restructuring the skills framework for England. My worry is that one of the options under consideration could end the SSC network in favour of regional skills strategies drafted and overseen by the Regional Development Agencies. Whilst this might seem sensible, the damage for the 17 industries currently covered by Lantra would be that they do not rank highly alongside the usual suspects when measured in terms of GDP, employment footprint and urban relevance. In regional skills strategies environmental conservation, like forestry, horticulture and agriculture are very likely to be invisible, ignored and unsupported.

The excellent work that Lantra has carried out over the years would be wasted within a regional structure and organisations in the sector would not have a skills champion with vision, expert knowledge and a holistic industry view. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has benefited from several of Lantra’s skills initiatives. The environmental and land based industries would be damaged by the loss of the SSC network. The next few months will be critical in resolving the future of the skills framework for England.

Trust in Charity

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has been very successful over the years because of a not so secret ingredient. The success of a charity depends on the quality of its people, staff and volunteers. The most important group of unpaid workers are the Trustees, who carry a heavy burden of legal and regulatory responsibilities for no reward other than a sense of achievement.

Trustees are literally the heart and head of the Trust. They protect the values and vision of the organisation; ensure that the charity’s money is spent properly and within budget and look ahead to where the Trust might be headed. These are the same tests as commercial company directors but without any financial rewards.

I have had the pleasure of spending time with some of my Trustees over the past few days. Three sharp minds, experienced in a wide range of fields, have given critical insight into their views of the Trust’s challenges. Anthony Hird, Mike Martin and Gill Richards each share a passion for nature and believe that the Wildlife Trust is making a difference. They continue to give their time and energy in the knowledge that the next few decades will see the county’s climate changing more rapidly than at any time in recent history. This will add serious new pressures to plant and animal communities that are already restricted in range and abundance through human activity.

The Trust is reviewing its future strategy over the next few months and this is the most important contribution that trustees can make to a charity’s future. One of my favourite management sayings is that for every problem there is an obvious solution – that is almost certainly the wrong one. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s board will be questioning its future direction and the major problems that it will be facing.

A Trustee's job is to ask all those simple but infuriatingly hard questions that start with the letter W. What are we going to do, why will we be doing it and what will be the benefit? In heading up the staff team, my W words are to suggest the Way forward and how we will find the Wherewithal to pay for it! Wildlife will be the beneficiary if we get the mixture right!

We always welcome new applications to become a Trustee or a member of one of our advisory committees. See our AGM notice for more information.

Photography by Philip Precey