SARBN: BirdLife South Africa
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Trevor Hardaker
Apr 13, 2017, 1:55:21 AM4/13/17
to SA Rare Bird News
Greetings SARBN subscribers,
Occasionally, I use this forum to talk about something else other than rarities… it’s probably a lot rarer to have this happening than many of the birds that get mentioned here… but today is one of those days.
I’d like to quickly talk about BirdLife South Africa and encourage all of you that are not yet members of this organisation to consider joining it. BLSA is the only conservation NGO in our country that concentrates solely on birds and does fantastic work protecting many of our threatened bird species as well as their habitats. I’m not going to detail out all of their various projects and successes, but will rather just invite you to go and have a look at their website at http://www.birdlife.org.za/ and find out more about the organisation and their work for yourself.
For a conservation NGO to have the desired effect, they need a number of things… they need a driven team of passionate conservationists to do the actual work (which they clearly have), they need the funds to actually do the work (which is not always that easy to get hold of in today’s economic climate, but they seem to be managing successfully so far to source interested donors at this point) and, perhaps most importantly, they need to speak on behalf of a large group of people in order for their “conservation voice” to be taken seriously. In other words, they need a large membership base and this is where all of you come in…
There are a number of benefits to joining BLSA, not least of which is the incredible bi-monthly African BirdLife magazine that you will receive as part of your membership. You can read about more of the benefits on their website but I think a point which I would like to make here is that one should join BLSA not for what you can get out of it, but rather because you are wanting to be part of something bigger that is working towards conserving the birds and habitats that we all enjoy so much.
It's certainly not expensive – a standard membership is only R 475.00 per annum whereas students and senior citizens pay only R 335.00 per annum. Break that down and it’s only R39.58 per month for the standard membership or R 27.92 per month for students or senior citizens. It’s basically nothing if you consider what you might spend on other “luxuries” every month…
For those of you that can afford it, I would, however, encourage you to perhaps consider rather becoming a Conservation League member, rather than just an ordinary member. This is a bit more expensive and currently costs R 2 900.00 per annum. That might sound like a lot but, broken down, that’s still only R 241.67 per month and you will be making a big contribution to a very important organisation that we all rely on to protect our birds. And I believe in trying my best to not just talk about things, but rather do them as well, so can tell you that Margaret and I are Conservation League members of BLSA (and have been for a little while already) and we get a much better feeling out of being part of this than the feeling we get from paying around 3 times that amount monthly to have a bunch of satellite TV channels that we hardly ever end up watching because they are always playing repeats of everything…😉
Further to this, for those of you that happen to be going on the Flock at Sea cruise and decide to join or upgrade your membership to Conservation League status (or are already CLM’s), you will be placed into a draw to win a very exciting prize. See the attached form for details.
Now all that remains is to encourage every single one of you to get hold of BLSA today and sign up as a member – let’s see if we can break their membership system today with everyone that is going to sign up and let’s show the rest of the birding fraternity that we don’t only care about rarities, but we also care deeply for the conservation of our birds and their habitats!
Now back to birding and hopefully a mega or two in the not too distant future!
Kind regards
Trevor
Occasionally, I use this forum to talk about something else other than rarities… it’s probably a lot rarer to have this happening than many of the birds that get mentioned here… but today is one of those days.
I’d like to quickly talk about BirdLife South Africa and encourage all of you that are not yet members of this organisation to consider joining it. BLSA is the only conservation NGO in our country that concentrates solely on birds and does fantastic work protecting many of our threatened bird species as well as their habitats. I’m not going to detail out all of their various projects and successes, but will rather just invite you to go and have a look at their website at http://www.birdlife.org.za/ and find out more about the organisation and their work for yourself.
For a conservation NGO to have the desired effect, they need a number of things… they need a driven team of passionate conservationists to do the actual work (which they clearly have), they need the funds to actually do the work (which is not always that easy to get hold of in today’s economic climate, but they seem to be managing successfully so far to source interested donors at this point) and, perhaps most importantly, they need to speak on behalf of a large group of people in order for their “conservation voice” to be taken seriously. In other words, they need a large membership base and this is where all of you come in…
There are a number of benefits to joining BLSA, not least of which is the incredible bi-monthly African BirdLife magazine that you will receive as part of your membership. You can read about more of the benefits on their website but I think a point which I would like to make here is that one should join BLSA not for what you can get out of it, but rather because you are wanting to be part of something bigger that is working towards conserving the birds and habitats that we all enjoy so much.
It's certainly not expensive – a standard membership is only R 475.00 per annum whereas students and senior citizens pay only R 335.00 per annum. Break that down and it’s only R39.58 per month for the standard membership or R 27.92 per month for students or senior citizens. It’s basically nothing if you consider what you might spend on other “luxuries” every month…
For those of you that can afford it, I would, however, encourage you to perhaps consider rather becoming a Conservation League member, rather than just an ordinary member. This is a bit more expensive and currently costs R 2 900.00 per annum. That might sound like a lot but, broken down, that’s still only R 241.67 per month and you will be making a big contribution to a very important organisation that we all rely on to protect our birds. And I believe in trying my best to not just talk about things, but rather do them as well, so can tell you that Margaret and I are Conservation League members of BLSA (and have been for a little while already) and we get a much better feeling out of being part of this than the feeling we get from paying around 3 times that amount monthly to have a bunch of satellite TV channels that we hardly ever end up watching because they are always playing repeats of everything…😉
Further to this, for those of you that happen to be going on the Flock at Sea cruise and decide to join or upgrade your membership to Conservation League status (or are already CLM’s), you will be placed into a draw to win a very exciting prize. See the attached form for details.
Now all that remains is to encourage every single one of you to get hold of BLSA today and sign up as a member – let’s see if we can break their membership system today with everyone that is going to sign up and let’s show the rest of the birding fraternity that we don’t only care about rarities, but we also care deeply for the conservation of our birds and their habitats!
Now back to birding and hopefully a mega or two in the not too distant future!
Kind regards
Trevor
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