Shooting Times & Country Magazine
The GWCT launches appeal for vital funds
If we can’t pay our scientists our work will stop, says chief executive, as coronavirus cripples the charity’s usual fund-raising initiatives
The scale of the funding challenge faced by the GWCT has been confirmed in a letter to members from the Trust’s chief executive, Teresa Dent CBE.
The Trust was widely rumoured to be in significant difficulty after the cancellation of its spring fund-raising events and the loss of paid work due to the COVID-19 crisis.
In the letter, Ms Dent said: “We don’t know what the next few months will bring. The immediate impact on the Trust is likely to be a loss of £1m, which is 15% of our projected income. Income may fall considerably for some time, so trustees have taken measures to protect future activity. Sadly, we have already had to place many staff on furlough and reduce most others to a four-day week.”
Accounts filed with the Charity Commission show that the Trust has been steadily increasing both income and expenditure over the past five years, bringing in £8.5m last year and spending £8.7m.
The organisation is now launching an appeal for donations in an attempt to make up the shortfall.
Ms Dent went on to say: “When people make wild accusations or use bad information to argue their agenda, our research comes to the fore. We can call upon more than 50 uninterrupted years of data from farmland in Sussex, 25 years of annual count data in the uplands, and
11 years of tagging 10,000 salmon on the River Frome. But if we can’t pay our scientists, this all stops.”
Trust member and Shooting Times contributor Richard Negus said:“people with a passion for British wildlife regard the GWCT as a trusted and practical conservation organisation – regardless of whether they shoot or not. “The sport we enjoy today, and the increasing dovetailing of farming and conservation, is in no small way thanks to the meticulous work of the GWCT’S scientists and field workers. Personally, I believe
“When people make wild accusations, GWCT research comes to the fore”
membership of the Trust should be mandatory if one shoots game, they are that integral to the wellbeing of our sport and many of our most threatened species.”