PAWS
Newsletter
for Parks and Wildlife Supporters
Issue 3 Autumn 2004
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PAWS |
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PAWS Dear Parks and Wildlife Supporters,
At the beginning of 2004, after years of committed support from our donors, many conservation projects like the DREAM dolphin program have reached completion. Some new projects like the study of the impact of woodchipping on wildlife are just about to start this autumn. A heartfelt thank you to all of you who have made this possible through your generous donations of time and money. The Foundation receives a lot of requests to provide funds for projects. As well as being on the Board, my assignment for more than 20 years has been on the Projects Committee which considers these requests and recommends to the Board which ones we should try to fund. The range of projects put to us is extensive. They include land acquisition for parks, helping threatened species (current projects include grevillias, lizards, whales and snails) restoring degraded environments, improving public access to parks by building or restoring walkways and other facilities - the list could go on. We would love to fund them all, but we can only help to the extent we are able to raise funds in the community from business and private donors. We have many exciting and worthy projects just waiting for the right sponsor or donor to come along, with a cost range from a few thousand dollars to millions. We are always happy to talk to anyone who wants to help in any of these areas – we have a project that would suit YOU. We often look at our government to meet increasing charitable needs. But just as in the case of children’s hospitals or cancer research, there are never enough resources to provide what is needed to create a better environment for all of us. I have never forgotten a discussion I had a number of years ago with the then Financial Controller of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. He explained that while the Service received substantial funding from the government (in his opinion, needless to say, not nearly enough), most of the money went on unavoidable recurring expenditure like wages and maintenance of facilities. I
can’t recall the exact figures, but in that year I think we had
provided funds for projects to about a million dollars, and he said the
Service had about three million dollars it could spend on discretionary
conservation projects. In other words, our contribution increased from
three million to four million dollars the amount the Service could spend
on conservation projects. |
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In this issue
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