In September this year the RSPB announced that sixty of their reserves and widespread staff will likely be affected by budget cuts. At least 380 people have been informed that their jobs are 'ceasing or changing significantly'.
The document, circulated amongst RSPB staff, also reportedly states that 32 RSPB reserves are planned to be mothballed or ‘disposed’ of completely.
Yet, what is really the cause of these cuts? The RSPB is generating more money than they have ever had before. In the year 2023-2024, their total income increased by £5.2 million to £169.9 million. £54 million of this came from members and donations, with £33.9 million coming from ‘grants, corporates and trusts’, with an increase in grant income of £1.9m.
They are, by a long stretch, the most well funded conservation charity around. Something that has often caused anger amongst smaller, more effective wildlife groups.
Yet, despite this colossal amount of funding, the RSPB have resided over a catastrophic collapses in wildlife on a number of their reserves. Spending money on expensive gimmicks like 'predation fences' that don't work.
© Breeding Wader Survey Forest of Bowland
They have also wasted huge resources on programs like their 'investigation unit', run by the preposterous Mark Thompson, who, despite spending millions of the charities money has very little to show for it other than a handful of over dramatised fundraising videos. As Thompson claims in his fundraiser: "No-one investigates crimes against wild birds like we do". Well that's certainly true because we can not think of any other department that would tolerate such a waste of money, with so little to show for it, against a backdrop of birds of prey being at a record high in this country.
Perhaps if the RSPB actually got back to doing the job they were founded to do, and managing nature reserves properly with cost effective predation control, they would not be in such a financial mess and so many people would not be losing their jobs.