The Natural History Museum has recently been awarded a grant to enable it to fund and support the development of Natural History Societies.
As part of OPAL, the Natural History Museum is running a well-resourced programme that aims to promote and enhance the vital role that natural history societies and recording schemes play in developing the understanding and conservation of UK biodiversity, and in communicating this to the wider public. A core element of this will be a funded support and development programme for societies that will run from December 2008 to December 2012. Before this funding stream begins, the Natural History Museum wishes to identify the factors, which currently limit the functioning and development of natural history societies in the UK (with a particular focus upon England). The results of this consultation will inform their funding programme and research activity, and ensure that resources are channelled towards areas of greatest need and maximum benefit.
The Museum would therefore be grateful if you could fill in this questionnaire on behalf of your society. It should take no longer than 30 minutes to complete and the findings will be invaluable in determining the needs of as many societies as possible. Please return the questionnaire by 20th February if at all possible. All the contact details appear on the form.
The following briefing note provides the background information to the project:
The Future of Natural History Societies in England
This brief note is to bring to your attention a three-year PhD research study on the above subject which is part of the OPAL project and will start in early 2009. This PhD research will compliment and enhance the present consultation the Natural History Museum has commissioned with an analytical characterisation of the voluntary natural history sector in England.
The research seeks to engage, through interviews and other methods, with the broadest breadth of the voluntary natural history sector — in charities, associations, Local Record Centres, for example — to gain an extensive and in-depth understanding of the current status of the sector as well the perspectives of its members on the current and future challenges it faces.
David Allen has provided a basis to understand natural history as part of British culture[1], but contemporary voluntary natural history is less fully characterised. This is a deficiency given that the Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism has stated that “every Government department is trying to grow the volunteering capacity” in society. [2]
The House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee has also recently raised issues about voluntary natural history in the light of the UK’s ability to generate taxonomic information essential to the challenges presented by biodiversity conservation. These include the advanced age of many important naturalists, particularly in relation to key groups, and the falling away of voluntary interest in less ‘charismatic’ groups.[3] A recent edition of the Royal Entomological Society’s bulletin, Antenna, identified a connected issue: that of the extent of natural history’s appeal to younger people, and the debate about how best to enhance such appeal.[4]
The PhD researcher is Joel Hacking (MSc Manchester), who will be based in the School of Built and Natural Environment at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan). Joel’s doctoral supervisors will be Dr Mark Toogood (Uclan) and Dr Gill Stevens at the NHM, London.
We will bring you updates as the methodology is further developed, and we very much hope that you will be willing to contribute. If you have any immediate queries please do not hesitate to send them to the primary supervisor of the study, Dr M Toogood, mtoogood@uclan.ac.uk.
[1] Allen, D (1994) The Naturalist in Britain. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ., 2nd Edn.
[2] House of Lords Science and Technology Committee (2008)Systematics and
Taxonomy:Follow-up. 5th Report of Session 2007–08, HL Paper 162. TSO, London, 23.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Royal Entomological Society (2007) Issue on ‘Who will watch the small things that run the world?’ Antenna 31 (2), April.