Social media - are smaller conservation charities getting it right?

Trying to identify meaningful social media statistics is hard. I feel evaluation by counts alone are unhelpful. Below I have tried to look at the number of twitter followers, for a range of conservation charities, relative to the number of members. Whilst we might expect the percentages to be similar, they are not at all.


The crude analysis suggests the social media strategy of smaller charities is more effective. Certainly those at the top are not those with biggest budgets. It's going to be interesting to see how this one evolves. 

1st - Bat Conservation Trust - 5,600 members; @_BCT_ (13,324) = 237%
2nd- Marine Conservation Society  - 7,000 members; @mcsuk (11,952) = 170%
3rd - Butterfly Conservation - 12,000 members; @savebutterflies (14,392) = 119%
4th - British Trust Ornithology - 17,000** members; @_BTO_ (19,650) = 115%
5th - Plant Life - 10,500 members; @loveplants (8,194; 15) = 78%
6th - Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust - 20,000; @gameandwildlife (2,524) 12.62%
7th - World Wildlife Fund - 300,000* members; @wwf_uk (36,064) = 12.02%
8th - Woodland Trust - 500,000 members; @woodlandtrust 41,409 = 8.28%
9th - Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust - 200,000; @WWTworldwide (14,867) = 7.43%
10th - Royal Society Protection Birds - 1,100,000; @natures_voice (76,309) = 6.94%
11th - National Trust - 3,700,000 members; @national trust 190,935 = 5.16%
12th - Wildlife Trusts - 800,000 members; @wildlifetrusts (19,722) = 2.46%


Apologies for any incorrect numbers and those charities not included.

* extracted from 2010 review "people now give us a regular gift"

Beautiful RSPCA pheasant card

Well it is October and pheasants are in many peoples minds. Delighted to see this beautiful card in our local stationers shelves.

If you would like one it is produced for the RSPCA. A good cause and a good buy.

How did we survive last time the climate changed? - start farming

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has, in the course of its research, seen the impacts on wildlife of current changes in our climate. Whilst there are plenty of column inches devoted to these impacts, it is interesting to think about what happened last time man was faced dramatic climate change.

Common sense suggests that humans probably didn't take up farming because they wanted to. After all, who would have wanted to be a farmer? These days it's comparatively easy thanks to modern technology such as: tractors, ploughs, machines for milking, threshing, bailing and harvesting. But that was not the case 12,000 years ago, when people began to sow wild seeds hoping for a half decent crop from which they could make their first loaves of bread.

Compared to the easy life of the hunter, with plenty of game around, the lot of a crop farmer was painful and arduous. For a start, crops could only be harvested at certain times of year, so arable farming was certainly no substitute for traditional fast-food culture of meat on demand.

Unpredictable, unpleasant and just plain hard work - that's what farming crops was like 12,000 years ago. Persuading wild animals to do what you wanted them to wasn't much easier. Thousands of years of genetic modification have led to sweet, easy-to-harvest crops and obedient, compliant domestic animals; but back then it was uphill all the way.

A two words can explain the reason for the rise in agriculture: climate change

There was a 'big melt' of ice which started 14,000 years ago as temperatures rose. This change was nothing to do with man but it had profound consequences for him. The oceans rose by a massive 25 metres in just 500 years. For mankind it meant that many traditional hunting grounds simply sank beneath the oceans. Regions of the world that were once rich forests, ideal for hunting and gathering, were reduced to barren deserts as patterns of rainfall and weather systems rapidly changed.

In many parts of the world people were forced to move upwards into hills, or closer to freshwater lakes and rivers. In some areas the traditional lifestyle of moving from place to place became just too risky. There was either too little good hunting available, or the land was too dry to sustain sufficient vegetation. This warming episode suddenly switched in just 50 years to another Ice Age which would last 1,300 years.

It sounds perfectly sensible that experimenting with sowing seeds themselves and deliberately clearing the land to make it suitable for cultivation grasses such as wheat, barley and rye was undertaken in the face of starvation. Skeletons of early farmers tell us how hard it was: twisted toes, buckled, arthritic knees and in some cases lower backs that are completely deformed due to the exhausting task of grinding grain into flour between slabs of stone.

The legacy of these early farming are dramatic. When the Ice Age suddenly finished, the effect on people living in Europe and the Mediterranean was profound. As the climate recovered to its previous balminess these people were equipped with a raft of potent new technologies, in the form of breeds and seeds that gave them the opportunity of living a radically different way of life.

Pheasants and potatoes - How can numbers alone inform us about impact?

Invasive species are a real threat to our countryside. The distinction between which introduced species are causing a problem and which are not is often blurred. The pursuit of headlines and, more often than not, fundraising, adds to the confusion.

When the pheasant shooting season opens at the beginning of October pheasants are propelled to the front of this discussion. Despite the fact that the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) has researched the net gain to nature, when best practice is followed (I have blogged about why this should be celebrated before) some involved in this non-indigenous discussion then manage to ignore this and just lob around statistics on the number of pheasants released 35 million (PACEC) as though that, in itself, is clear evidence of 'harm'.

Well, if high numbers of a non-indigenous species alone is supposed to demonstrate harm - let's think about that. Most farm crops are non-indigenous.

Potatoes were first domesticated in Peru and Chile and introduced to the British Isles around 1600AD, possibly from the wrecks of the Spanish Armada. Very quickly they became an important part of our diet. Initially they were grown in gardens and on smallholdings but it was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that potatoes became popular as a field crop. Tubers were used for human consumption and for fattening pigs while the crop provided a good break in the cereal rotation.

If we take the UK's annual production of potatoes each year and divide it by the average weight of a potatoes per tonne we could estimate that we grow...

16,115,970,000 non-indigenous potatoes in the UK every year.

16 billion non-indigenous potatoes will keep us well fed. Do they do harm? No impact at all? Not even 16 billion? Well, just like the 35 million pheasants, there are impacts. Our farmers recognise, as do game keepers, that there are issues and strive to address or reduce them. For example, potato production regularly requires the control of slugs, for pheasants that might be foxes. As ever in conservation, the issues are complex; foxes eat slugs etc.

So it is not necessarily the act of growing a potato, or releasing a pheasant, that is the issue - it is the impacts on the environment. Both have impacts but the number of potatoes grown or pheasants released does not, on its own, tell us that they are causing 'harm'. Headlines about high numbers can serve us all in thinking though the issues - that is a good thing; as long as we consider all the issues.