Future of several RSPB nature reserves at risk as charity cuts costs

The future of several RSPB nature reserves is in doubt as the charity makes cuts, citing cost of living pressures.

The bird charity told its workers at an all-staff meeting on Thursday that cafes and visitor centres across some of its sites would be closing, and staff would be made redundant. It also said it was in the process of transferring ownership of some of its sites to other companies.

Reserves at risk include Flatford Wildlife Garden in Suffolk and RSPB Rye Meads in Hertfordshire . At others, facilities are closing. At Rainham Marshes in Essex, the retail facility and cafe will shut and the visitor centre is under threat. The retail facility will shut at Loch Garten nature reserve in Abernethy, Perth and Kinross, RSPB Newport Wetlands in Newport, south Wales, and RSPB Dungeness in Kent. The visitor centre and retail facility will close at RSPB Fairhaven Lake in Lancashire.

The charity said: "Every one of us is feeling the cost of living crisis and inflationary pressure, and many people are having to make difficult decisions in their day-to-day lives to make ends meet. This situation also impacts the RSPB, and indeed many in our sector, in several ways, including increasing cost pressures as suppliers put up prices and rising energy costs across our large estate. To give a sense of this, it took £150m to deliver our work two years ago. Today that same work will cost us £165m, a 10% cost rise."

The RSPB said other as yet unspecified sites would be offloaded on to local councils, charities or community groups: "At others, we are reducing our work in order to do more elsewhere. At these sites, totalling less than 1% of our landholding, this will mean working in partnership with other charities, community groups or local councils to find sustainable futures for these places."

The charity said it was refocusing on larger nature restoration plans rather than the maintenance of smaller reserves. Since 2017, the charity has bought more than 8,500 hectares of land to restore, and said: "The science tells us that nature does better in these larger more ecologically joined-up places and we have a number of exciting and large new acquisitions in the pipeline to be announced in the coming months."

Staff across RSPB sites were told on Thursday that their jobs could be at risk. The charity promised that its flagship reserves were safe: "To be clear, it doesn't mean selling off large areas of land to the highest bidder and it doesn't mean that any of our flagship reserves will disappear."