Every so often, an article appears
haranguing 'today's youth' for their lack of engagement with nature. We sit on
our Playstations all day, with an iPhone on our laps so we can flick between
screens every second to absorb a constant stream of meaningless celebrity
gossip whilst mutilating zombies, never having seen so much as a blade of grass
in the flesh. As a young birder growing up reading this sort of article (or the
endless, tedious Birdforum comments on the issue), I can only say that they are
counter-productive and dispiriting for the very people they aim to encourage.
To hear that there are no young birders around, that you are isolated and different,
creates a barrier that is difficult to overcome. Why would you put effort in
trying to find other people your age who share your passion when you have
already been told there is none?
Danny's argument differs slightly from this familiar
narrative, but I fear with the same negative, off-putting outcome. In this
reading, there are plenty of 'interested' youths, signing up for conservation
courses and over-subscribing any available jobs, but they are not of a high
enough calibre to properly support the work of the current conservation NGOs,
and they do not constitute a coherent (yet undefined) movement. The blame for
this, rather than being the fault of the youth, is a lack of engagement from
the large conservation NGOs, particularly within the 18-25 age bracket.
Essentially there are too few engaged 18-25 year-olds with the ability to make
a difference, and it is the responsibility of large conservation NGOs to
resolve this problem.
From my point of view, this reading of the situation is wrong
in several ways, and is even harmful in the way the older, more clichéd
articles were. Whilst I don't wish to comment too much on an overarching
'conservation' movement, I do know a bit about the birding scene, and I suspect
that it is reasonably reflective of any larger nature or conservation movement.
Within birding, whilst it may have been true a few years back that there was no
coherent, appealing youth groups within birding, it no longer is. Both Next
Generation Birders and A Focus on Nature (for more general naturalists) provide
a fantastic forum- one of the recommendations for action in Danny's blog- from
which young birders can meet, share ideas and generally evolve a sense of
community. To characterise today's young enthusiasts as naïve, un-knowledgeable
people prepared to drop £30,000 on a university course they know very little
about, is not only to ignore all the people on NGB and AFON who are the very
opposite of this, but it will also actively discourage the less engaged and
knowledgeable from looking for these communities by denying their existence.
It's not even clear that attempting to engage with this age
group in the way advocated by Danny's article would be positive for the larger
NGOs. It only takes a brief look through the annals of Twitter marketing
failures to see just how hard it is to appeal to this age group, and it is
often huge corporations with massive marketing budgets that are making this
cock-ups. Do we really want our environmental NGOs diverting vital resources
away from conservation in order to work out a strategy to appeal to an audience
that is notoriously difficult to connect to? A large part of the problem is
that those in this age bracket (including myself) often want to create our own
identities, to differentiate ourselves from what went before, hence the
advantages of groups like AFON and NGB. The RSPB have been remarkably and
commendably quick in recognising this, offering assistance to NGB to grow
support for conservation in a way that wouldn't work if operated through official
channels like RSPB Phoenix. It may be in the nature of these newer
'un-official' groups to be somewhat ephemeral, with each new generation wishing
to create new identities and doing things their own way, but surely it is better for
NGOs to offer a dynamic, supportive response to these groups as a strategy,
than to risk diverting £1000s of pounds of funding finding strategies that are
always likely to prove unappealing to its' target audience.
That's not to say I disagree with all Danny had to say – or even
the main thrust of his argument, that environmental NGOs are failing the 18-25 age group in becoming the
future of conservation. To work out the best way for the RSPB and other groups
to engage with this audience, it is necessary to look at what young people have most to offer.
Clearly it's not money, of the RSPBs million plus members only a small
proportion are ever going to fit into this category, and they are going to be
less well off. I would envisage that the vast majority of the RSPBs youth membership
have their membership paid for by well wishing relatives, or as family
memberships, regardless of any interest shown by the younger people themselves.
The dynamics of birding have changed as well, it's no longer a hobby adopted at
a young age and continued through into older age, there are now far more beginners in the 40+ age bracket, replete
with top range optics and DSLRs wandering round RSPB reserves. From a purely
economic perspective, this should be the target audience for new membership campaigns,
for finding new volunteers and support- instead of trying to develop a
potentially non-existent loyalty from a dwindling group of youngsters.
Instead, what's there is dynamism, energy, new ideas and
enthusiasm, the same young people have to offer any corporate company. Many
industries and companies acknowledge this, and offer an array of internships
and graduate roles to young people to gain broad experience in their chosen
career paths. It is here that the RSPB and other large environmental NGOs (although
not all) let young enthusiasts down the most.
The RSPB job application forms are an exercise in
intimidation, with huge amounts of skills and knowledge required for often the
most simple of roles. Invariably a degree in a related subject is required.
Furthermore, it is often the case that months of free labour, in the form of
volunteering, is often required before even being considered for a job.
Volunteering in general is of course a good thing, but as a pre-requisite for a
job, can become a hurdle that rules out many talented individuals if they do
not have the wealth to work for free for extended periods of time, or suitable
access to reserves etc. For those coming out of university with upwards of
£20,000 debt, finding any sort of paying job can take precedence over months of
unpaid labour, regardless of the calibre of the individual. All of this serves
to put off many talented young people looking for work within conservation
NGOs, and substantially narrows the pool of people likely to be applying for a
role, thus unnecessarily ruling out people who could be doing fantastic work
for conservation.
In my opinion, the best thing the RSPB and other large
conservation NGOs could do to help and encourage young people is to establish
an annual 6-month paid graduate internship programme, for those with a genuine
interest in conservation and nature. Ideally this would be done in combination
with several NGOs, allowing different experiences within different
organisations, and spreading the costs. Roles could be offered in different
areas, 'field and reserve work' for example, or 'research', 'campaigning and
media engagement' and other important aspects of these NGOs work. Importantly,
however, recruits should be drawn for the broadest possible of backgrounds,
paid so as not to rule out people on a financial basis, and regarded as a way
of finding the best 'raw materials' to train and teach, rather than as a route
in for those already with huge skill-bases.
This in turn I feel would further encourage the 'youth
movement' so advocated by Danny, by showing that efforts and enthusiasm can be
rewarded and appreciated by the large NGOs, that what can be accomplished by
young people is still valuable.
-Oliver Metcalfe
Oliver is a young birder employed as an Ornithologist by Arcus Consulting, a job that gets him out and about birding all over the North and East of England. He lives in York, so regularly goes birding in the Lower Derwent Valley and spends his winter birding time at Rufforth tip. Oliver's Spring and Autumns are spent trudging the cliff-top paths looking for migrants at Whitby.
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