It Shouldn't Be a Lottery!

There has been a loud fanfare, from the UK government and Natural England, around the award of a £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bringing-englands-wildlife-back-from-the-brink-of-extinction). The grant will be distributed to help save 100 endangered species in the UK. The trouble with leaving conservation to lottery money, however, is that it lets government off the hook for undertakings to encourage biodiversity. Lottery money is often sporadic and not always focused effectively on essential work. Choices of which schemes to support, may be more on the basis of their appeal to the 'punters' than on need. Lotteries linked to the natural world, appears to be a growth area for gambling. In many such schemes, administration costs and/or profits to shareholders take up a considerable proportion of the cash spent on tickets.