I have my doubts about the wisdom of conservation organisations, as such,
owning and managing land.
The problem is that land ownership and mangament for the benefit of
wildlife is expensive; it's easy enough to to put out an appeal to raise
the money to purchase a place, but much more difficult to continue to ask
for money, or to budget, for day to day maintenance.
There is a danger that bodies which own land would continue to raise money
to buy further properties (because this is a way of appearing to be doing
something), whilst the properties they do own are not managed properly, and
whilst they are saved from complete destruction their wildlife value declines.
The other danger is that conservation organisations operate in the market
economy; they recieve funding from governments when there is some money to
be had, and when funding for nature conservation appears to be in the
political interest of the government of the day (as in the so-called
Heritage Fund). But in the lean times they have to scale back. Likewise,
although their membership is probably more loyal than that of many
organisations it will fluctuate from year to year.
It seems to me that what would a better situation for nature-conservation
in Australia at present would be to have conservation organisations (like
Birds Australia) which would be organsiations which would lobby, inform,
educate, campaign and use government funding (when available) to carry out
research &c, and have organisations like the Bush Heritage Fund which
single-mindedly campaign for money to build up a system of properties, AND
A CAPITAL FUND TO MANAGE THESE FOR THE LONG-TERM (sorry about the caps, I
don't have italics in this program).
John Leonard
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
John Leonard (Dr),
PO Box 243,
Woden, ACT 2606,
Australia
http://www.spirit.net.au/~jleonard
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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