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RSPB flies into Westminster

Finance | Niki May Young | 2 Jun 2010

RSPB has undertaken a £20,000 tactical advertising campaign directed at MPs, covering Westminster tube station with messages calling for their support as “ambassadors for nature”.

The billboards and RSPB branding cover the station’s entrance hall, staircase, ticket barriers and both the district and jubilee line platforms. MP’s will be confronted with backlit images of RSPB members asking them to "be a voice for nature" until June 6th. 

“The aim is get under the noses of MPs as they start their new jobs at parliament -  the reason why we have only chosen one station and that particular one!” said spokeswoman for RSPB Gemma Rogers. 

“We hope that it’s a campaign they won’t be able to ignore on their morning commute and remember to invest in nature when making decisions about budget cuts and future funding,” she added.

The campaign is the first of its kind in Westminster tube and comes in the wake of several failed environmental targets, according to Rogers' colleague, Grahame Madge.

The spokesman for RSPB said: “Given the new intake of MPs we’ve got – which is thought to be the largest since the Second World War, we wanted to highlight the importance of nature in this, which is the Year of Biodiversity, where environmental targets are failing all around.”

He advised that the campaign had a three-pronged target: to increase MP’S awareness of biodiversity, to call on MPs not to cut budgets and to ask them to spend wisely within each of their budgets to minimise any negative impact on the environment. 

One of the RSPB’s current campaigns is directed at the Severn Barrage tidal range power project, which the RSPB believes could have extremely negative environmental effects on existing wildlife, despite the sustainable energy it would provide. The charity is hoping to work with the Government in its recently announced two-year study which considers whether the Government should offer its support to the power project or not.

Success of the £20,000 Westminster campaign will be measured anecdotally. RSPB spokesman Bryan Bland advised: "We have already had some very good feedback actually. Three days after we launched the campaign we had a meeting with DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with several civil servants and they mentioned the ad campaign and said what a good way to lobby parliament it was."

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Directory: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
Who's Who: Niki May Young