AGM 2020

QUESTIONS PUT TO THE AGM PANEL BY MEMBERS AND ATTENDEES

ANSWERS ARE IN BLUE

Q. How many subscribed members does the trust have? Roughly?

A. The Trust currently has 25,400 members and friends.

Q. What impact has Covid had on external funding streams in the new financial year? e.g. the proportion of total income affected? And how will any reduction affect your plans? Broad thoughts only.

A. At the beginning of the year, we estimated the impact of coronavirus restrictions on the Trust as we had to cease face to face fundraising and various activities. We were anticipating a drop in income of around £480k when we first looked at this. However, we were able to take advantage of the government furlough scheme and other emergency grants such as that provided by the National Lottery Heritage fund. We have made various cuts in expenditure and thanks to you, our members, our membership income remained strong. As a result of all of this we are forecasting ending the year 2020/21 in line with our original budget.

Q. Many charities appear to be getting ever increased levels of restricted donations. Is this something the Trust is concerned about?

A. Not really, we have a healthy balance of restricted and unrestricted funds within the Trust. We keep an eye on this to ensure we have a robust and diverse range of different income streams.

Q. Why is the Trust not selling Christmas merchandise (cards, calendars, gifts etc) online, as so many other organisations are this year? This seems a lost opportunity.

A. We took a decision even before the Coronavirus crisis hit that we would stop producing the calendar. Over the course of the last few years sales and interest in this product had decreased to the point where the calendar was costing the Trust money in terms of staff resource to produce and distribute. Although it was a difficult decision at the time it is always important that we think carefully about how we spend money to bring the biggest benefit to the Trust. Our early decision was helpful in the sense that we simply would not have had the resource to fulfil this in the light of Covid. The resource required for the return on investment for merchandise such as calendars and cards is significant and the Trust decided to channel this into other areas of fundraising and profile building.

Q. Who do you bank with?

A. Unity Bank.

Q. What is your financial reserves policy?

A. The Trust’s Reserves Policy is to hold 4 months of unrestricted reserves, which currently equates to around £1.25m. 1

Q. Do you plan to leave the investments where they are as one presumes they are recovering?

A. Yes, we do. The investments have shown an unrealised gain of £166k to the end of September 2020. We recently moved our investments to a climate-friendly ethical investment fund with CCLA.

Q. Have you any guidance on how Corporations can invest in companies that are supporting wildlife, or how they can invest in wilding with a look to achieving a return for their investors?

A. We are starting to explore investment models and this could be something that is available in future.

Q. Looking forward, what do you see as the biggest challenge for the Trust as you enter your 60th year?

A. Scaling up activity to match the severity of the ecological and climate crisis.

Q. Is the 30% of land and sea target 30% of each, or is it for example 15% and 15% or any combination totalling 30%?

A. 30% of land and 30% of sea. https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/our-strategy

Q. With regard to your excellent Wilder strategy, is the multiplicity of conservation NGOs (such as RSPB, Butterfly Conservation, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, species-specific and generalist) a help or a hinderance when it comes to influencing decision makers in local and national government?

A. It is very helpful and we would go further and say that it is vital that we collaborate. As NGOs we are all part of Green Alliance and Wildlife and Countryside Link (Link) which provide a mechanism for collaboration on influencing government policy.

Q. I work for Wightlink Ferries. We are proud to work with you by welcoming Marine Champions on board our crossings. They inspire our customers and staff with fascinating facts about marine wildlife. My question - how many local companies do you work with as it’s such a great way to connect with the community?

A. We currently have 35 Corporate Members, as well as several other partnerships with other businesses such as Southern Co-Op, DP World, Vitacress and Hildon Water. This is an area of fundraising that we are developing so if anyone is connected to a local business and would like to make an introduction for us please contact [email protected] .

Q. What are your plans for Deacon Hill in Winchester?

A. The Trust will be erecting fencing and corrals to enable grazing and will be installing a couple of benches and a viewing platform over the next few months. We would like to see grazing reintroduced this winter. Over the longer term we will need to carry out a programme of scrub management in conjunction with the grazing regime to restore the hill to former glories.

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Q. How much has “bad behaviour” on our nature reserves cost us, e.g. in staff time?

Q. How much does it cost the trust to clear litter and rubbish dumped at nature reserves?

Q. During the first lockdown and since, we have seen anti-social behaviour at the Tern Hide car park located at Blashford Lakes! Can you please advise what is being done to prevent and stop this going forward, and when this car park will return to normal?

Q. My question was about the anti-social behaviours shown at different nature reserves at the end of lockdown: After the important media coverage featuring HIWWT about this issue (TV interview, social media posts etc), did you see a decrease of the negative impact on the reserves afterwards?

A. It is difficult to give a definitive answer regarding the total costs of addressing anti-social behaviour because much of the overall cost was in the Officer time that was needed to clear up after the problems (and which, of course, meant staff resource was diverted away from other more wildlife-focused work). A rough estimate of direct costs, i.e. the removal of litter, repairs to fencing and gates etc, would be that the Trust spent circa £10,000 on addressing these issues over the summer. If we factor in staff time then the costs were probably well over double that figure.

Unfortunately the only thing that appeared to reduce anti-social behaviour this summer was the arrival of the colder weather. Next year we are planning to increase our presence on the ground at a number of sites where pressure was particularly acute, we will also be aiming to increase our presence earlier in the year in an attempt to address problems before they get out of hand.

Q. How are you balancing ambitions to acquire new sites with making sure you can employ enough staff with appropriate skills and expertise to manage them, plus the resources more generally to do the necessary conservation work? I ask this as I am aware of members who are far more experienced than me who worry about existing sites that they feel have deteriorated in recent years, partly through lack of resources and/or the right expertise.

A. We would be interested to know which sites people feel have deteriorated as we regularly monitor sites, both in house and via a long-term contract with Biodiversity Information Centre (HBIC), and we are not picking up any trends within the data that suggests sites are going downhill. If there are specific areas of concern please do let us know. Having said that some sites are challenging to manage and recruiting the right people is not always easy with the price of housing in our two counties being a particular stumbling block for some potential job applicants. The funding for nature reserve management is going to be under pressure when we leave the EU and we are developing alternative funding streams that we hope will enable us to continue to resource our reserve management at the appropriate level.

Q. Connected with the previous question, how do you monitor and assess reserves to ensure you achieve continuous improvements for nature on each site? And how do you decide what the ‘right’ improvements are given that there are often conflicting conservation priorities?

A. Monitoring on our reserves falls into a number of categories. We carry out regular species monitoring across our estate, looking at butterflies and birds in particular as part of national programmes. We also commission specific surveys for important groups on a more ad hoc basis. Botanically we carry out annual rapid condition monitoring in-house, this follows a standard methodology and provides a fairly rapid indication of the condition of different habitats types. We also commission HBIC to carry out a rolling

3 programme of more in-depth surveys of our sites; as well as including an assessment of condition these provide an external validation to our in-house surveys.

Q. Great to see the real progress during lockdown, despite the problems of people not observing requirements. But how are you planning to cope with the aftermath, when vaccination is enabling a return to work? Doesn’t this imply a low priority for activities such as yours’ in the face of panic to get people back to work/funding priorities elsewhere, plus of course even more irresponsible behaviour from newly “liberated” people.

A. We are concerned that the behaviour we witnessed last year will become ingrained however it should also be noted that in contrast to the anti-social behaviour we also had great support from local communities in tasks such as litter collection, checking our livestock and general patrolling of our sites. One of the issues appeared to be lots of people on furlough with not much to do. Hopefully a return to normality will see a decrease in problems.

Q. Can the government take back land the Trust has purchased if they want to build on it?

A. Usually no, we hold our nature reserves as heritage assets for ever. In very rare circumstances land can be compulsorily purchased but these would usually be for national important infrastructure or for roads and transport infrastructure. We have been threatened with Compulsory Purchase (CP) orders in the past and have successfully resisted at least one. The Government could not CP our land simply to build more houses and in general our experience is that they try to avoid the sort of high profile fight we would put up if confronted by a threat of CP.

Q. How are we engaging with the farming community on wilding as it can be a controversial “food vs wildlife debate”?

A. We have positive relationships with farmers and landowners and a number of specialist farm advisors and senior estates officers work directly with them on a multitude of projects that fall within our ‘wilding’ work. We have been quick to define wilding as something that covers a diverse spectrum of approaches as well as a journey to attain environmental and financial sustainability while also contributing to the nature recovery network. The importance of integrating strategies for soil health and pesticide reduction should go hand-in- hand with wildlife recovery as well as longer term climate resilience for farmland. These have been particular themes for our officers where the wilding journey has been broached with farmers. The land sparing and food debate is often misconstrued as a threat to food security, but availability of land devoted to food production in our two counties continues to be far above any legitimate threshold. Conversely, a significant amount of farmland is given over to alternative, arguably unsustainable, uses (e.g. maize for bio-energy) that exceed the current trajectory of land being converted to rewilding or wildlife focussed management.

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Q. At the Trust’s recent Zoom meeting on Rewilding it was mentioned that the Trust had been speaking to Highways England about a green bridge across the M3 - Winchester? Did the Trust learn anything about the costs of such a bridge and its dimensions etc and does Highways England now have a policy and funding for other such projects?

A. We continue to promote a green bridge as part of our Wilder Winchester vision and in partnership with the South Downs National Park through their Partnership Plan for the South Downs ‘gateway’ area. We understand that a costed feasibility has been produced by Highways England but have not been in receipt of the report or costings. At present HE are not viewing the current Junction 9 scheme or the separate Smart Motorway scheme as funding mechanisms for the bridge. Precedents elsewhere have now been established for green bridges, as part of new road infrastructure or as part of reversing landscape severance. We believe that this should be viewed as a strategic priority by HE as part of their commitments to biodiversity net gain in conjunction with their road network.

Q. Has Hampshire County Council and any other authorities offered to cease selling land for development so that more can be reassigned for restoring nature?

A. We would like to think that they are considering this, but we are not aware of anything at present.

Q. Has the Trust considered reintroducing polecats to the New Forest to feast on grey squirrels?

A. We take this to mean pine marten. We plan to partner with Forestry England on a survey to establish the status and health of the current population in the New Forest (which is currently believed to be fairly small, circa 20 animals, although the data is poor). We wish to understand more about their range and use of the forest habitats as well as establish the status of their genetic health. This information would form the basis for further work or indeed a reintroduction project. The Trust wants to see pine martens return to the Forest and restore part of the species jigsaw that has become so depleted.

Q. Any further thoughts on pine marten reintroduction?

A. As above. We would certainly like to see becoming a central ‘hotspot’ for pine Marten activity.

Q. Does the Nitrate Solutions give a possible get out of jail free card to developers in the way that some poorly structured carbon offset schemes have? How can that be avoided?

A. No, we have established a screening process within our Nitrate Reduction Programme so that developments need to meet our tests, this is explained further here: https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/reducing- nitrates-solent

Q. At the Examination of the Council Local Plan the Wildlife Trust, RSPB and others categorically stated that the Council had not shown that it could adequately mitigate the impact of 10,500 homes (built at four times the current rate of development in the district). The Examiners completely ignored this in their approval of the plan. How can we hope to protect against rampant inappropriate development, in and alongside our protected habitats (including the development hard against the Blashford Lakes reserve)?

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A. We continue to lobby, along with other NGOs, for the planning system to be improved as we fully agree the current system is deeply flawed and is one of the drivers of environmental decline. If done well, the planning system could help to deliver nature’s recovery but the current proposals for planning reform are worryingly off the mark.

Q. What is the Super Peninsula project about? Could it be possible to give more details about it and when this plan is supposed to happen?

A. We are campaigning against the proposed development at Tipner West because it could set a very damaging precedent which could affect other internationally protected sites as well as the local damage to the Harbour SPA itself.

Please see the link to the Tipner pages on our website: https://action.wildlifetrusts.org/page/70887/petition/1

Q. Has there been any Trust input on proposals for the development of Marchwood Port?

A. The Trust has not commented on this proposal but we have sympathy with the concerns of locals that this could cause increased levels of traffic and contribute to air pollution in the area.

Q. How do you explain the disconnect between government positive policy initiatives, the Lawton Report, the 25 Year Environment Plan, and Nature Recovery Networks, and the White Paper on Planning which ignores these including the very clear prescriptions in the Glover Landscape Review for "A strengthened place for national landscapes in the planning system"? And how do we address that disconnect?

A. We agree there is a disconnect because Government generally works in silos. One of the things we try and do as environmentalists is to show the connections between the economy and the environment, how we need to tackle the climate and nature emergency, and how vital it is that we have a green recovery after Covid19. In terms of planning reform, we are promoting the concept of a Wild Belt which would provide a mechanism for nature’s recovery through the planning system, providing a link between this and the Environment Bill and Nature Recovery Networks. https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/blog/sue-young/planning-changes-england-needs-wildbelt-protect-land- recovery

Q. Can we really trust a government that underfunds Natural England to adequately fund an Independent Environment Watchdog?

A. We have spoken out against the cuts to Natural England and we have lobbied for greater funding for them as it is vital that we have a strong regulator as well as an effective Watchdog. Along with other NGOs and as part of Green Alliance we have spoken out on the importance of the Office for Environmental Protection being adequately funded and also independent so as to hold government to account. https://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2020/10/28/environment-bill-must-not-undermine-environmental- accountability/

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Q. Should we be more vocal and engage the public more actively to counter the underfunding of habitat protection, lack of meaningful targets and lack of independent oversight in the Environment Bill?

A. Yes, we agree! As above, we are stepping our campaigning work on this at a national level and Craig Bennett, the new CEO of The Wildlife Trusts has been outspoken on this point recently, along with other NGOs.

Q. Boris has expressed "support" for many contradictory policies. I fear "Build, Build, Build" and economic growth will prevail in the end. Politicians do not think long term, just the next election. Is there real cause for optimism?

A. Short termism is a major issue, and we agree that long-term thinking as well as cross party policy making is vital for nature’s recovery. There are contradictions in government priorities, with significantly more funding going into road building for example, than into green recovery. However, we are seeing important changes with more environmental legislation coming forward and links between the value of nature and how it underpins the economy, through for example the natural capital committee and green finance institute. But fighting for nature continues to be a struggle which is why we need more people on nature’s side, supporting and working with us, to make the case to government.

Q. How do you see the indications that the new support structure for farmers will change the way that land will be managed, and will this be positive for wildlife?

A. The new Agriculture Act is a positive step and we fully support the principle of public funding for public goods. We have long worked with farmers through various projects and programmes and we know that many farmers want to farm in ways that help nature, but they need the right incentives to pay for this. https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/we-work-and-advise-others

The transition plan for the new Agriculture Bill however is frustratingly slow, and the changes will take a full seven years to come into effect, which we argue is not fast enough to tackle the urgency of the climate and nature crisis. https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/news/new-government-farming-announcement-will-frustrate- farmers-and-fail-help-nature-fast-enough

Q. Could we do something with educating children on better behaviour at Nature Reserves as they often tell adults how they ought to be behaving?

A. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that children have an impact on their parent's environmental behaviour so it is an area we focus on. All of our educational programmes including school trips, outreach and family events include elements of the countryside code and how to behave on nature reserves. As we expand the work we do through Team Wilder we will continue to ensure this is embedded in our delivery.

Q. Do you have any upcoming ideas for activists that we can do from home or socially distant? thank you for your inspiration in this area.

A. Join Team Wilder! https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/team-wilder

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Q. What are you doing to encourage greater diversity of participation in nature from non-white ethnic groups? Particularly important in urban areas, but also in helping people from non-white backgrounds feel welcome and comfortable in the countryside so that they come to treasure it. Also crucial in gathering support for nature and environmental policies across the general population and political spectrum.

A. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to experience the joy of wildlife in their daily lives and we are committed to putting equality, diversity and inclusion at the heart of our organisation and our growing movement for nature.

Our vision of a wilder future for all goes hand in hand with the creation of a diverse organisation that reflects the communities that we serve. The differences of thought, skills, ideas and experience brought by a diverse team of staff, volunteers, members and supporters will be invaluable in tackling the future challenges faced by nature and wildlife.

We have begun our equality, diversity and inclusion journey by looking internally at our own staff and volunteers in the first instance. We recognise that there is much work to be done on improving representation, particularly with regards to ethnic and racial diversity across our volunteer base, staff body and board of trustees. We are not as diverse as we want to be, or that nature needs us to be.

We are committed to ensuring we reflect and represent all parts of society by improving access to jobs and training opportunities for groups currently underrepresented in our sector.

We are committed to ensuring a working environment in which all individuals are free from discrimination and in which opportunities are equal to all.

We encourage applications from all sections of the community, particularly those underrepresented within our sector, including people from black, Asian, minority Ethnic backgrounds and people with disabilities.

We are committed to creating a movement that recognises and truly values individual differences and identities.

We are interested in partnering with individuals and organisations who can support us on this journey.

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