annual report and accounts 2012 - RSPB

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RSPB trustees’ report and accounts 2011-12 Education and communication • We work with the support of our members and other supporters to use their voice most effectively to benefit nature conservation. • We seek to connect young people to nature at all stages of their development through their formal education and their leisure. Membership services and enquiries • We provide services to our members and supporters and respond to more than 240,000 enquiries each year. • We administer our relationship with around 2.5 million individuals including members, supporters and volunteers. • We send our members a magazine to keep them aware of and involved with the work of the RSPB. • Our website received just over 16 million visits in 2011-12. Generating funds • We receive most of our financial support from individuals through a range of activities. RSPB supporters are the foundation of everything we do and we endeavour to increase this each year. • We also aim to build lasting support from institutional bodies. These include statutory grant funders, trusts and corporate bodies. • Much of what we do to deliver conservation also generates income. This ranges from land and farming income through to the sale of research to other appropriate organisations. • Our trading operation focuses on the sale of bird care products, optics and educational material to support our work. In all of these activities, we receive extensive assistance from volunteers, who are at the heart of what the RSPB does and achieves; without their help, the RSPB’s work would be greatly diminished. Volunteers founded the RSPB in 1889 and they are still fundamental to our work. They carry out a variety of roles, from practical conservation and field surveys, to support for office and retail activities. All the volunteers are doing vital jobs that help us to undertake our work. In addition, we have hundreds of thousands of people who put time and enthusiasm into our citizen science projects, such as Big Garden Birdwatch. Trustees’ report Achievements The RSPB’s long term vision is set out in its strategy document - A voice for conservation: Future Directions IV – our plans for 2007-2012. Our medium term objectives are drawn from the strategy albeit that some have had to be modified in the light of the economic recession. We report here on our achievements against the following indicators of performance: Indicators of performance • Acquisition of land as nature reserves • Populations of priority bird species on RSPB reserves • Status of other special wildlife in the UK and on RSPB reserves • All designated land on RSPB reserves in good condition • Status of priority bird species in the UK and abroad • Healthier bird populations in the countryside outside nature reserves • Protection of key sites and habitats • Stopping extinction • Securing the most important sites abroad • Futurescapes • Rainforest destruction prevented • Reduced carbon footprint • Supporting BirdLife International Partners • Numbers of children learning in the natural world • Involvement of people • More people making a gift of time • RSPB membership • Money for conservation For further details on our achievements, please refer to the RSPB 2011-12 Annual Review available from Membership Services, The RSPB, UK Headquarters, The Lodge, Sandy, Beds SG19 2DL: Telephone 01767 693680 membership@rspb.org.uk or our website www.rspb.org.uk. For further information about the RSPB, please request a copy of our leaflet Introducing the RSPB, or visit our website: www.rspb.org.uk. www.rspb.org.uk 5
RSPB trustees’ report and accounts 2011-12 Trustees’ report Acquisition of land as nature reserves Objective Achievement Future challenges We will continue to seek new sites and extend existing ones to add to our nature reserve network. Extending existing sites is sensible for both ecological and financial reasons. Our nature reserves managed for conservation are impressive: we care for a wonderful selection of superb sites for nature and for people. We added 1,392 hectares during the year, including two new reserves, at Pagham Harbour, West Sussex (342 hectares) and Loch Lomond, West Dunbartonshire (228 hectares). We manage 143,780 hectares, at 211 nature reserves. In England, we extended existing reserves at Snape, Suffolk; South Essex Marshes and Wallasea Island, Essex; Freiston Shore, Lincolnshire; Langstone Harbour, Hampshire; Dungeness, Harty Marshes and Seasalter Levels, Kent and the Dee Estuary, Cheshire. In Scotland, we added land at Forsinard Flows, Highland and Crook of Baldoon, Dumfries & Galloway. We will continue to make existing, high priority nature reserves “complete” by adding to them; we will continue to refine our criteria for buying reserves, and will acquire new, high priority sites wherever we can. Conservation on RSPB nature reserves Populations of priority bird species on RSPB reserves Objective Achievement Future challenges We will continue our work to maintain or enhance the populations of priority bird species. There are 26 priority bird species on our nature reserves. We have accurate breeding population trends for 24 of them. Four made good progress towards 2012 “enhance” targets. We expect them to increase their populations on the area of RSPB reserves that existed in 2005, to reach the often ambitious targets that we set. Eleven species are expected to achieve targets to maintain stable populations. Seven species appear unlikely to achieve their “maintain” targets for a variety of reasons, some outside our control, such as the effects of recent severe winter weather. Two species have failed to colonise or re-colonise reserves as hoped. Just some of the successes on reserves in 2011 are: • Slavonian grebes increased, and had a productive breeding season, at Loch Ruthven, following three years of decline. • Bitterns continued to increase, despite the hard winter, with 37 booming males, compared with 34 in 2010. • Design tweaks to a predator-exclusion fence at Otmoor kept out foxes, and lapwing productivity was the highest ever recorded there. • Numbers of breeding stone-curlews continued to rise at Winterbourne Downs and on acid grassland created at Minsmere. Since 2005, the number of breeding pairs of stone-curlews at these two sites has increased from two to thirteen. We must maintain or increase numbers of breeding lapwings and redshanks, against a backdrop of catastrophic declines of both species in the countryside outside reserves. We need to maintain numbers, and increase productivity, of little terns and will continue to face difficult challenges to benefit capercaillie at Abernethy. 6 www.rspb.org.uk
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