Countryside Management Association News

Dear Member

While the early years of the Countryside Management Association and its administration are unfortunately lost in history, it has been obvious for sometime that we need to re-organise ourselves by adopting a modern constitution and become a formally registered charity in order to obtain substantial tax and other benefits.

With several name changes over the last 40 years and at least one major new constitution, I appear to have inherited an organisation that is neither incorporated under the Companies Acts nor recognised by the Charity Commission. In fact even our name does not appear to be registered, so any other organisation could probably set up in direct opposition and literally steal our identity.

With the full support of your National Council, I believe that we must protect our future interests by establishing a new Company incorporated under guarantee with the Registrar of Companies, as a matter of urgency. Hopefully, that new Company will be called Countryside Management Association Limited (or something very similar) and will have a constitution (Memorandum and Articles of Association) structured to conform with the requirements of the Charity Commissioners, so we can obtain full charity status.

Full details of our progress will be circulated in time for the AGM early in August and as the last AGM had to be aborted due to lack of a quorum, on this occasion we will be tabling Accounts for the two years ended on 31 March 2007, supported by the work of a suitable reporting accountant.

Yours sincerely

Mike Woods
Chairman

A £2m scheme encouraging young people to apply for funding for projects to improve their communities is to be launched later this week. (YPN)

Greenprints is being set up to encourage 16- to 25-year-olds to get involved in environmental projects in their areas.

MP for Wentworth in Rotherham John Healey, is due to launch the scheme at a nature reserve in Doncaster on Friday. It will be managed by the SITA Trust - an offshoot of waste management company SITA that allocates funding from the Landfill Communities Fund -and environmental charity BTCV.

Volunteers will be able to apply for small grants for one or two-day projects, headed by BTCV and the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, or up to £10,000 for larger projects taking place over several months. The SITA Trust and youth volunteering charity have each put in £1m for the two-year scheme.

The scheme hopes to attract 7,000 volunteers with 700 projects completed over the two years.

Miles Sibley, development director of BTCV, said: "We will support the young people in terms of shaping their ideas but also when they get started we can be there to help with providing tools and equipment, leadership and basic first aid." He said that the scheme would give harder-to-reach groups the chance to get involved in volunteering.

Wildlife Trust mentors will be on hand to help youth organisations and schools with projects.

Julie Fulton, head of people and wildlife at the trust, said: "More young people will engage with their local environment and understand the value of it."

Guardaparque is a bi-weekly publication prepared and issued by the International Ranger Federation (IRF), an organization of about 60 non-governmental and governmental ranger organizations from around the world.

Guardaparque carries reports on emergency service and law enforcement incidents, reports on protection of parks and the natural and cultural resources within them, reports on programs to educate visitors and communities on the values of parks and protected areas, and reports on the people who are responsible for all these activities.

Guardaparque contains information from rangers in the field on operations conducted in the field. From time to time, it also reports on political issues affecting those operations. It is supplemented by a quarterly newsletter, The Thin Green Line, which focuses on IRF activities.

If you have a submission for Guardaparque, please send it to the editor, Bill Halainen, at Bill_Halainen@nps.gov.

See sample edition here