In an article I posted last week I questioned one of the arguments in support of Birdfair highlighted by Stephen Moss in his response to Mark Avery’s article (Birdwatch September 2024).
I address here two further arguments made by Stephen Moss regarding the funding generated for conservation projects and the importance of the event as a meeting place for the conservation movement and the birding world.
Regarding the money generated by Birdfair, Stephen Moss notes that this is ‘more than 7 million pounds’. I haven’t been able to find the source of this figure, but Anthony Biddle, the chair of the Leicester and Rutland Wildlife Trust (LRWT), said in November 2021 that it was ‘more than 5 million pounds’. The figure given by Tim Appleton in his response to my letter in British Birds in December 2019 was ‘over 5 million pounds’. The event was cancelled in 2020 and went online in 2021 (when it raised 15,005 pounds) and according to the figures provided by Birdfair, the money raised from 2022 to 2024 has been around 297,000 pounds (year and amount in the currency provided by the organisers: 2022: 100,000 euros; 2023: 120,000 US dollars; 2024: 125,000 US dollars). If these figures are correct the amount generated in 34 years is over 5.3 million pounds.
This gives an average of 156,000 pounds per year. A considerable figure, no doubt. But is an event like this, in its current format necessary when other forms of fund raising are possible? For example, the book Red Sixty Seven has generated more than 40,000 pounds and last summer Katie Monk and Indy Kiemel Greene raised 21,000 pounds by walking from Wales to Scotland. It is clear that other ways of raising funding are possible without all the unnecessary carbon and with simpler logistics. Birdfair could organise, for example, annual fund raising competitions with teams in different regions and focusing on different topics, and all this money could still go to Birdlife International.
Stephen Moss also asks, if Birdfair didn’t exist, where would people meet. The response was clearly suggested when the LRWT announced their decision to stop running the event. Younger people proposed an alternative fair, one more representative of their concerns and climate friendly. There was no lack of enthusiasm for such a proposal and some people started to ask for expressions of interest in organising it. It is reasonable to assume that, if Global Birdfair ceased to exist today, the enthusiasm to organise something fresh and different would again be there.
Another issue to bear in mind is that Internet has changed the way we create social networks and collaborate with others in profound and lasting ways. It has made places of face to face interaction less necessary. A little known aspect of the book Low-Carbon Birding is that it was produced without any face-to-face meeting with any of the 30 authors nor any of the staff at Pelagic. All contact was made by email and a few direct messages through Twitter. In fact, as of today, I have only met one author face-to-face. Nonetheless, I agree with Stephen Moss that meeting others in person can be pleasant and lead to productive collaborations. But whatever this meeting place looks like in the future, it cannot be one that by its celebration of high-carbon holidays is de facto denying the scientific evidence about the role that lifestyle change and leading by example plays in enabling wider systemic change to reduce emissions.
Related to this, a reason why Birdfair, in its current format, is ill suited to be the meeting place for conservationists to discuss the challenges of the 21st century was hinted at by Stephen Moss in his article. The friends and contacts he made at Birdfair opened the door to his career as a film maker and writer. Gaining visibility at this event, whether you are an aspiring ecologist or an established writer, can be a career boost. It is a place where you may meet your future mentor, where you can talk to the person who may be your future employer. The problem is that at a place so invested in high-carbon holidays (and where many of the people who have figured most prominently in the programme of activities over the years were themselves personally invested in high-carbon tours) there is an incentive to follow what people intuitively perceive as the official script. Add to this the fact that many of the most visible voices of the conservation movement are professional or semi-professional communicators, with their income dependent on being seen as a legitimate voice, then the result is a manufactured silence around the necessary scale of mitigation and the role that lifestyle change plays in this.
Just to give an example, when the LRWT announced that it had stopped running Birdfair, people who had never before talked about climate change did so and proposed a new climate-friendly wildlife fair. When the Global Birdfair was announced, these voices became silent again.
Ideally things would be different. But if the system of incentives in place discourages talking openly about mitigation options, there will never be an honest conversation about how to tackle climate change and the role conservationists and birdwatchers should play in this endevour.
Photo: Promotional poster for bird tours exhibited at Birdfair. Credit: Javier Caletrío
Low-Carbon Birding 