Impacts of coronavirus cause Avon Wildlife Trust redundancies

Impacts of coronavirus cause Avon Wildlife Trust redundancies

Avon Wildlife Trust has had to reduce staff team by 20% to mitigate financial impact of coronavirus.

Avon Wildlife Trust has made the difficult decision to reduce their staff team by 20% to help mitigate the potentially devastating impact of coronavirus on the charity’s finances as income is estimated to drop by up to £1 million in this year alone.

For Avon Wildlife Trust, the lockdown period has meant cancelled events and volunteering activities and furloughing many of their staff and membership recruiters. This has had a huge impact on the Trust’s finances as most of the charity’s operations have been shut down from April to July.

We estimate a drop in income of up to £1 million in this year alone, resulting in potential losses of £280,000.

The Trust has done everything it can to combat this. As well as using the Government’s furlough scheme, we have accessed a multitude of grants and loans and experienced extreme generosity from our members and donors throughout a very uncertain time. However, these estimated losses and added financial pressure caused by ash dieback has meant greater cuts have needed to be made. After a long period of consultancy, we have made the very difficult decision to reduce our staff team by 20%, resulting in redundancies and the loss of some talented, passionate, and much-loved colleagues.

Protecting our vital conservation work

These challenging decisions have been made to ensure our vital conservation work is protected so that people and wildlife in Avon can continue to flourish together. Our front-line delivery team are there to make sure we can deliver our core mission of protecting and restoring wildlife for nature’s recovery and encouraging people to take action for nature locally through our communities and engagement work. These aims are essential in working towards the Wildlife Trusts’ ambition for 30% of land and sea managed for nature by 2030.

Throughout lockdown, so many of us turned to nature on our doorsteps as a source of comfort and hope. More and more people are understanding the true value of the natural world and its critical role in combating the twin climate and ecological emergencies. We want to make sure we are here to make the most of that positive momentum to help wildlife fight back across our region. We have big plans to help wildlife, such as our B-Lines project which creates and improves a network of inter-connected wildflower habitats to increase populations and biodiversity of pollinating insects locally. We need your help to support projects like this to restore the natural world and connect local communities and businesses with wildlife in a positive way. 

We are in the grips of an unparalleled emergency, but nature needs our help now, more than ever. Please donate today to help local wildlife survive long into the future.
Ian Barrett
Chief Executive

Can you help secure nature’s future in Avon?

However, we need as much support as possible to secure the future for Avon’s wildlife. We are confident that with your support of an urgent donation today, we will be able to continue being the champions for local wildlife and making nature accessible to everyone in the region.

You can help today by donating to Avon Wildlife Trust’s Coronavirus Appeal to help secure the future of Avon’s wildlife: avonwildlifetrust.org.uk/coronavirus

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