Once we had recovered from the stunning news that RSPB had once again extracted a huge sum of money (£244,000) from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to conserve black grouse on other peoples' land in North Wales (something that they haven't been able to do on their own land in 40 years) we looked closer at the application.
The RSPB's ability to extract vast sums for purposes which they have repeatedly demonstrated are beyond their capacity to deliver is of course legendary. Perhaps a close study of their application would reveal their secret. What we found was there was no silver bullet, no unique key. Just a mass of words and phrases that could be found in a first-year conservation management studies paper.
Here is a sample. Don't blame us if you lose the will to live before the end.
“Due to the ecology of this species, it will be difficult to assess the impact the project is having on the population of Black Grouse within the two-year lifespan of the project. Furthermore, the uplands in Wales have been created over thousands of years thus the management of these dramatic ecosystems must also look long-term and encourage management plans which span decades, with results that can’t be seen for years. However, the demonstration site and landscape partnership will pave the way for a long-term robust way of working in the uplands and building resilient ecosystems for nature and people.
"The first objective of the project is to galvanise and redefine a partnership of key stakeholders in Northeast Wales who can work together to share resources, knowledge, and priorities. This will include NRW and the AONB. This partnership will not be confined to specific funding streams but become business as usual for the participants, allowing the partnership to continue once any funding has ended and ensuring Black Grouse and the uplands are sustainably managed. This project will allow the partnership to set terms of reference, produce a stakeholder and community engagement strategy, and identify future funding mechanisms to secure the sustainable management of the uplands and thus support Black Grouse conservation into the future”.
In plain English this means: 'We aren't promising more, or indeed any, black grouse after we have spent £244,000 over two years. We're not that daft. However we will still talk to other members of our elite group and periodically try to tell people what to do'.
There is more – a lot more – of this sort of stuff. Masses of words; never small, when a large one is available. Endless management and conservation industry jargon, intended to sound impressive, but designed to mystify and conceal. Here is another eye-watering example of what they are going to do. This time you may need a strong drink before you start.
“Facilitated engagement and the development of an upland landscape partnership will allow a collective focus to create a shared vision of how the uplands can be sustainably managed across different land uses into the future. The partnership will have the drive to co-design with stakeholders, a sustainable conservation management plan for Black Grouse which will take the initiative and nature-based solution landscape vision forward. It will progress favourable conditions of protected sites and their surroundings, improving habitats not just within protected sites but across the lands that connect them progressing recommendations from Welsh Government's Biodiversity deep dive within and adjacent to both designated landscapes and sites, encompassing evidence-based and adaptive management and enhancing connectivity of vision between and around designated sites.
"Partnership stakeholders will share resources, knowledge, and data, to inform the management plan that advocates for the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and nature-based Based Solutions that will have economic and environmental benefits for land managers, local organisations and local communities. Priorities detailed in NRW’s Northeast Wales Area Statement will be a key feature of the landscape partnerships priorities and management plan. The project will engage with local land managers to understand and support their voices, we will work with them to identify blockages and empower them to deliver sustainable management of upland resources across the landscape”.
The partnership that keeps being referred to actually doesn't yet exist, so it is difficult to see how they can guarantee that it will "have the drive to co-design with stakeholders ….". All that we are told is that it will be a "landscape partnership" and will be developed with "AONB, NRW and key communities to drive integrated landscape-scale management for a sustainable future and the proposed new National Park in North Wales'.
In other words, it doesn't exist, beyond the usual suspects of AONB, NRW and RSPB – and they are supposed to work together already. The problem is, as so often the case (in fact almost invariably), they don't own or manage the land that they are talking about. Not an acre of it.
An interesting aspect of this whole business is the way huge sums of money are given to the conservation sector on the basis of a collection of words. Look at any application and there will be sustainable, inclusive, partnership, deep dive, landscape-scale, communities, heritage, climate change, mitigation, legacy... but nothing about more black grouse, or more curlew.
Here is another one.
“As part of the North Wales Moors strategy, work with local communities and landowners to build positive relationships promoting a landscape approach across the North Wales Moors, work in partnership with North Wales Moors Forum members and private landowners to encourage and facilitate sustainable upland management on private/public land, work with and advise local people (mainly smaller farmers) on linking up with appropriate sources of management advice and funding, increase the North Wales Moors forum’s network of best practice sites”.
Sound familiar? We think it does. But it is importantly different. Despite sound just like the HLF bid, it's not. This is what the Welsh government thought the RSPB were doing between 2014 and 2019 in return for a 'Core Grant' of £867,454.
The Welsh government said additionally that, 'this Nature Fund Grant related to the North Wales Moors (NWM) Futurescape programme, incorporating Lake Vyrnwy and Sustainable Moorlands'.
That all seems clear. But when we asked some of the 'private landowners' if they had been part of the North Wales Moors Forum that RSPB had been tasked between 2014-16 with setting up and running to 'facilitate sustainable moorland management', they didn't know what we were talking about.
We asked the Welsh government what they had got for nearly a million pounds. What happened, how often the forum met, who was on it, and what it had done? They did not know. Even more bizarrely, they seemed surprised, and not a little annoyed, that anyone expected them to know the answer to such questions. Instead of answering, they referred us to the RSPB website, where we found some nice pictures of mountains.
Is it just us? Are we alone in thinking that what was promised for £867,454 in 2014 was just a slightly bigger version of what RSPB are now saying they will do for £244,059 from the HLF?
The core area is the same. The core activity – setting up a partnership to promote sustainable upland management – is the same. There is a specific reference to black grouse, but they make it clear that they aren't going to do much for them. Apart from that, even their mother couldn't tell them apart.
If you add these numbers together, you get £1,111,513. That is how much the RSPB has so far received to tell people in the uplands of North Wales what to do. This is despite the well established fact that they have far worse outcomes on their own land, in terms of their core business, the continued survival (abundance went long ago) of upland birds, including the black grouse, than any grouse moor in the land.
The latest payment is despite the fact that they were supposed to have already done most of what is proposed, years ago, at the cost of hundeds of thousands of Welsh taxpayer's pounds. It is despite the fact that the people who they are supposed to be working with now appear to be the same people they were supposed to work with before: and they seem to be unaware that anything ever happened.
Move these circumstances from the bizarre world of conservation to any other grant recipient and the issue becomes clear. Let's say a farmer gets a grant from the Welsh Government to plant a forest. If no one could be found who has ever seen the forest, is it likely that the government, when asked, would simply direct the questioner to the farmer's website, where they could see nice pictures of forests?
When subsequently, the same farmer asked for a grant from the HLF to plant a forest in the same place, would anyone be interested? We think they might be, especially if the government regulator was involved in both applications.
But none of this would matter if the RSPB and its friends in NRW were actually capable of saving the black grouse. The tragedy is that you can give them endless resources and they will still fail. Indeed they have already had an immense amount of treasure. If you add to that the £2 million they got specifically to for black grouse conservation in the late 1990s, they have had over £3 million pounds and achieved what? Disgraceful doesn't cover it.
Comments