My September copy of British Birds is still mostly unread (and October popped through the door recently) but an item in Adrian Pitches's excellent regular feature News and Comment drew my attention.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service have established that a fifth of the US population 'count' as birders if you include anyone who has travelled more than a mile from home for the primary purpose of observing birds and/or anyone who closely observes birds at home. These yanks spent an estimated $36bn on birding goods and services - about $750 each - annually. This spend generates lots of jobs and lots of taxes for the government and, the argument goes, is a measure of the economic and therefore political clout of we birders.
I wonder how many UK citizens would qualify as birders by the same measure? A fifth of the population? Maybe - I wish the RSPB had 12 million members!
But I also wonder whether this economic angle is the right one. We are so used to seeing 'worth' and 'value' expressed in terms of money. The more these people flew, the less efficient their cars and the higher the price of telescopes then the greater worth to the US economy. Is that really a good measure of the relevance of this activity?
You can't measure everything's importance in financial terms - that's my belief anyway. The economic value is important, but of greater interest to me is that so many Americans make nature part of their lives. That's fantastic - and if you add in the hunters and walkers and fishermen too (obviously there will be lots of overlap) then the number will be very high. If those people ensure that politicians take notice of the natural world in their policies then the world will be a better place in future.
But is there much evidence that recent US Presidents have taken a very pro-nature view of the world (yes! and no!)? Maybe if 48million Americans made their views known to politicians then we would see more sign of environmental sympathy in US international policy. But you do have the chance to make your love of the natural world clear to UK politicians by signing the RSPB Letter to the Future - and please ask a friend to do so too!
I had some further thoughts on this and I wonder if there is also an issue of identity in the UK. This is a subject I have been wrestling with for the last two years in trying to write a book.
In the USA, hunting and conservation seem to sit more readily alongside each other even if uncontrolled hunting remains a concern. In the UK we have too many hunting people that see conservation as the enemy and never the twain shall meet. Then we have people into animal welfare that also see conservation as too brutal to support along with their favourite charity. I know the RSPB is very sympathetic towards other organisations but this is seldom reciprocated and is often seen as an opportunity to strip membership or support. It gets even worse because there are snobbish elements in birding from the hardcore twitchers or local patch birders looking down on so-called dude birders or people calling themselves ornithologists to avoid association with anyone else (the latter based on two separate experiences) in birding. One of the latter thought himself above supporting the RSPB and I suspect a lot of local birders are not members despite taking advantage of facilities. It all makes you wonder how many people are involved in birdwatching and/or conservation but it must certainly be greater than the one million members.