I notice that colleagues I have worked with in Defra and statutory agencies are moving on - some are taking early reitrement others are taking voluntary redundancy and yet others have lost their jobs.
Natural England is, as much earlier revealed in this blog, shedding 400 jobs this year of the 800 that will go from the organisation over the next few years.
Here at the RSPB we are making difficult decisions about which projects we can take forward and which we cannot. This year there has been quite a lot of juggling to try to protect our conservation work - but that can only be done at the expense of other things. Other things like salaries, computer upgrades, pension contributions etc..
I've had to halt conservation projects because of the sudden and unexpected disappearance of external funding and that hurts. And there is great uncertainty about which projects may be funded by agencies such as Natural England and the Environment Agency next year - and next financial year starts in about 9 weeks time.
Similar things are happening across all sectors so I am not saying that nature is being hit hardest of all - although it is being hit hard (and nature is blameless in our financial difficulties). I'll share more of the consequences over the next few weeks.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
All - thanks for your comments.
Ecostudent - good luck! A life in conservation or the environment has rewards that are not just financial (but everyone needs to pay the bills).
Hear hear Bob lets hope he stays in conservation as although it is often nice to have a change of occupation for the individual it is sad to have all that knowledge lost.
EcoStudent. Re "I think it'll take quite a while to get as much experience and expertise as Mark!"
He's not that old.
The Cotswold Water park sightings website
My Flicker page
It's all quite depressing really. The charity sector seems to be one of the few areas left that will get things done and even that will be much less as funding dries up. Natural England will put all their resources into HLS, which can be useful and ELS which clearly isn't. Hopefully we (actually you Mark) can force them to keep the National Nature Reserves. Funding for local projects will be completely scuppered as there will be no money from the centre and nothing much from local government, who will also be in the offloading land market.
Getting things done means talking to landowners at the local level. Leaflets and reports are not a substitute. I think of the excellent job that RSPB has been doing in the Upper Thames tributaries. getting landowners restoring grazing marsh, so there's more than Otmoor, and BBOWT's Sustainable Wetland project in the Ray Valley. Other projects have been told that they have to become "self sustaining". If your not charging owners for advice then where does the money come from? There seems to be little prospect to raise enough funds for a professional project officer. As far as I can see just about everything that has been built up over the last twenty years, in my area, is going to swept away. But in reality the cost of all this work is quite small. The lottery funding is so tied in with community based work that they can't find enough projects to fund. The Aggregates Levy fund has gone.
The white paper will probably have high ideals but there will be little left to achieve them. High ideals released into a black hole for local action. The last decades have seen the development of partnership working and co-ordination. Lots of localism, local groups and community groups usually helped by these local projects. We can all forget this. It's up to the charities now. Everyone else will have to do what they can with no support. Throwing the tools away before you decide what your going to do is no plan at all. Decide what your going to do and keep the tools you need.
EcoStudent -----good luck think the most important thing for you is perseverance,always in life chances come along and sometimes you have to perhaps lower expectations for present if chances of promotion are possible in future.