annual report and accounts 2012 - RSPB

RSPB trustees’ report and accounts 2011-12
Trustees’ report
Securing the most important sites abroad
Objective Achievement Future challenges
We will help to
increase the
number of
Important Bird
Areas (IBAs) that
are legally
protected in
countries in
which we are
working with
BirdLife partners.
IBAs are sites which are the most important for the
conservation of birds and other wildlife. Over 11,000 have
been identified around the world but they are increasingly
under threat.
Latest information indicates that each of 1,084 (of 2,073) IBAs
had more than 75% of their area legally protected by 2010,
against 1,006 (out of 2,040) a year earlier.
We supported our BirdLife partner, the Association for the
Conservation of Biodiversity in Kazakhstan, and the
Government of Kazakhstan to designate a sensational 900,000
hectares of new steppe and wetland protected area in Altyn
Dala.
To our great relief, G4 Industries pulled a proposal to grow
28,000 hectares of jatropha in the magnificent Tana River Delta
in Kenya, following pressure from our BirdLife partner with
strong RSPB support.
IBA site support groups are growing across Europe, Africa and
Asia, and grew most significantly in India with a 35% increase.
In EU member states, there
has been clear progress in
new site designation and this
is slowly moving into active
management work. In non-
EU countries however, there
has been virtually no change
to the number of IBAs
designated as protected
areas or the management of
those sites.
We must continue to support
our BirdLife partners to help
communities in developing
alternative livelihoods and to
strengthen their advocacy
capacity to achieve sustained
IBA protection.
Futurescapes
Objective Achievement Future challenges
We will work
towards the 2020
target of 10
“Futurescapes” of
large contiguous
blocks in the UK,
in total covering
up to 550,000
hectares, each
giving sustainable
land management
via a mosaic of
appropriate land
uses to benefit
nature.
We secured support from the EU Life Communications fund.
A €2 million grant will help recruit eight Futurescapes staff
and many people engagement staff to work on the
programme. Local management and governance arrangements
have been established across the UK to help facilitate
conservation on a large scale. Advocacy work was rewarded
with the establishment of 12 government sponsored Nature
Improvement Areas in England.
We need to be more
innovative to extract the
most from existing sources
of money and to identify and
use emerging funds.
We need to broker and
maintain relationships with a
range of partners including
governments, other NGOs
and landowning interests to
create landscape scale
conservation across the UK.
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