A2. Taking action for nature: volunteer time spent in conservation

Summary

• The amount of time people spend volunteering to assist in conservation in part reflects society’s interest in and commitment to biodiversity. The work undertaken by conservation volunteers includes: assisting with countryside management, carrying out surveys and inputting data, assisting with administrative tasks, and fundraising.
• Between 2000 and 2011 the amount of time contributed by volunteers has increased by 39 per cent. 
• Owing to a need to impute missing values for organisations that did not provide data for all years, the data series has been revised since the last publication in 2011.

Indicator description

The indicator presents an index of the number of hours worked by volunteers for 18 UK conservation charities and public bodies (see Background section for list).  Conservation volunteering includes any voluntary activity for an organisation or community undertaken to further the understanding, protection or enjoyment of the natural environment, including wildlife recording and survey; practical countryside management; providing education, training and guided walks; and administration or other office support.  

There has been a substantial increase in volunteer activity between 2000 and 2011. The assessment is based on a three-year average from the baseline, using the three earliest consecutive years available. 

A decrease in time spent volunteering between 2000 and 2001 can be attributed to a decline in all conservation activity due to controls on countryside access during the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak.  The small peak in volunteer time in 2007 is largely driven by an increase in volunteer numbers at the BTCV which initiated a number of large youth programmes in that year.  The increase in 2012 is partly due to an increase in volunteering activity by British Waterways. 

Relevance

Volunteer time is one way of assessing the level of public engagement with biodiversity. Volunteering for conservation charities is critical to the successful delivery of many of the objectives of the country biodiversity and environment strategies – for example, volunteers collect much of the data used for monitoring the status of species and also undertake practical work to manage threatened habitats.

Background

The indicator is based on data on volunteer hours supplied by 18 UK conservation charities and public bodies:

• Bat Conservation Trust
• Botanical Society of the British Isles
• British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (trading as The Conservation Volunteers)
• British Trust for Ornithology
• British Waterways
• Butterfly Conservation
• Exmoor National Park Authority
• Lake District National Park Authority
• Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority
• Natural England
• Northumberland National Park Authority
• North York Moors National Park Authority
• Peak District National Park Authority
• Plantlife
• Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
• Soil Association
• The Wildlife Trusts
• Woodland Trust

Table A2i. provides information on whether the organisations contributing to the indicator provided data for the whole or part of the United Kingdom or Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales). 

Table A2i.  Organisations contributing data to the indicator.

Some organisations were able to provide accurate figures for number of hours worked, others provided estimates based on the number of volunteers and an estimate of average days worked by their volunteers each year.

Most organisations supplied data for calendar years, although the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority, Northumberland National Park Authority, North York Moors National Park Authority, Peak District National Park Authority, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds figures, and the Natural England figures for 2008-9, 2009-10 and 2010-11, were provided according to financial years.  Financial year data were allocated to calendar years prior to indexing; for example 2010-11 data were allocated to 2010, and Defra estimates were made for 2011.

As not all data providers were able to supply a figure for the total hours spent on volunteering in 2011 these figures had to be estimated using interpolation from the volunteering organisations that were able to provide data.  This occurred for five organisations: the Botanical Society of the British Isles, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority, Peak District National Park Authority, Natural England and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  The 2011 data provided by Natural England were not used as the data collection method changed at the end of 2010-11.  Updated data from Natural England will be included in next year’s Index once data for two years are available.

Only the data provided by each of the organisations is given in the downloadable data tables (not the interpolated data).  Data were not available for all organisations in all years.  In previous years, the indicator has omitted organisations without a full run of data because if included, some years had more organisations contributing than others – artificially inflating the figures in those years.  For the current indicator, missing values have been estimated by Defra statisticians, by interpolating from the figures provided.  These estimates were based on (a) the trend in the data provided by the organisation with a gap in their records, and (b) the trend in the data provided by other organisations for the missing years.  This has led to a revision of the data series since the last publication in 2011. 

In broad terms, the type of work undertaken by volunteers falls into four categories: countryside management; survey and data input; administrative and office support; and ‘other conservation volunteering’, which includes activities such as fundraising, training and educational events.  Work in all four categories has risen between 2000 and 2011, but in the last year there has been an increase in countryside management and advisory support, and ‘other’ types of conservation work (Figure A2ii).  However, as a large proportion of the 2011 data has been interpolated using data from those organisations that have provided data, this apparent trend should be viewed with caution.

For this reason, and because of the differences in data quality, the numbers of volunteer hours for the four categories were converted to separate indices prior to combining them into one overall index.  The indicator therefore shows the change in relative rather than absolute number of hours worked by volunteers.

Figure A2ii.  Index of volunteer time spent in selected UK conservation organisations, shown by category of work, 2000 to 2011.

Notes:

1. Interpolated data have been used by Defra to fill missing years for British Waterways (2000 to 2009), Butterfly Conservation (2000 to 2002), British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (2000 to 2005), Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority (2000 to 2001, 2003), Lake District National Park Authority (2000 to 2005), Natural England (2000, 2002), Northumbria National Park Authority (2000 to 2003), North York Moors National Park Authority (2000 to 2003, 2005, 2010) Peak District National Park Authority (2006 to 2008), Plantlife (2000 to 2006), Soil Association (2000 to 2006, 2008), The Wildlife Trusts (2000 to 2005, 2010) and the Woodland Trust (2000 to 2001).
2. Interpolated data has also been used for 2011 for Botanical Society of the British Isles, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority, Peak District National Park Authority and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 

Source: Bat Conservation Trust, Botanical Society of the British Isles, British Trust for Ornithology, British Waterways, Butterfly Conservation, Exmoor National Park Authority, Lake District National Park Authority, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority, Natural England, Peak District National Park Authority, Plantlife, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Soil Association, The Wildlife Trusts, Woodland Trust.

The indicator has been expanded in scope over time (eight new organisations were added in 2010) and the current indicator is not comparable with earlier publications.

Goals and targets

Aichi Targets for which this is a primary indicator

Strategic Goal A. Address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society.

Target 1: By 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably.

Aichi Targets for which this is a primary indicator

None

Web links for further information