One of my favourite jobs each year is writing the previous year’s annual reports. It’s rather satisfying to look back over what we’ve achieved over the previous 12 months and also set out what we’re hoping to get done in the year to come. Plus, I’m a bit of a nerd and like a good PowerPoint presentation.
Yet, here we are, in late February, and there’s no report. What gives?
To be honest, the last 6 months or so have been monumentally horrid. We’ve had what can only be described as bullying from two rescues who didn’t like some administrative decisions we made on HelpWildlife.co.uk and decided the appropriate response was to leave us fake negative reviews and spread lies about us both as a charity and personally. At the same time, we had a close family bereavement and all the resulting fall out which I won’t detail here out of respect for others’ privacy. And, in addition, we’ve been dealing with truly awful anti-social behaviour from neighbours which has interfered with our sleep and focus, and means we’ve been spending a lot of our time and energy looking into moving out of the house we’ve loved for over 20 years.
On a related note, you may have noticed that we closed our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages in 2024. This was mostly down to the worrying developments on those platforms which allowed or even encouraged misinformation and hate speech. But the way our Facebook page was used to bully us was also a factor, as was the time needed to maintain 3 different platforms. So we’re now exclusively on BlueSky.
So, with all that going on, there just hasn’t been much time or energy for anything other than the essentials in keeping the charity going.
That said, I am finally caught up with stats, accounts etc so I did just want to give some headlines on what went on last year and our plans for the future.
Animal Rescue
Somehow, considering we’re supposed to be closed to new intake, we actually took in 32 new animals in 2024 – the most since 2021. These were 24 feral pigeons, 6 Racing Pigeons and 2 other domestic pigeons. Of those, 2 sadly died, 5 are still here, 9 were reallocated to other rescues (or were temporary admissions from other rescuers), and 16 were released.
Altogether, we cared for, or supported the care of, 102 animals in 2024. There were
- 32 new admissions
- 3 pigeons from 2023 who were released in 2024
- 43 permanent residents admitted in previous years
- 24 pigeons in need of ongoing support which are cared for at Linjoy Wildlife Rescue with our financial support
As for the future, we do remain closed to new admissions and we really mean it this time! Moving house with 20 years of accumulated human and animal junk will be difficult enough, without having sick birds in the house. I’m already having cold sweats at the thought of moving the aviary and it’s 30ish occupants!
Poo Sampling
We continue to offer free faecal sampling to other pigeon rescues. 2024 was our busiest year yet and we tested 343 samples for 224 birds, saving rescues more than £5000 in testing costs! All in all, the total saving to rescues through our free sampling offer over the last 5 years is around £19,000!
We’ll be carrying on as we are with this for 2025. Ideally, I would like to do more and be able to test for more illnesses but, being realistic, 2025 will not be the year for taking this on.
HelpWildlife.co.uk
In 2024, Jetpack, the plugin through which we used to get our visits data, decided that any website running ads (which we do to raise money for rescues) or seeking donations (which we obviously do) was ‘commercial’ and would have to start paying. We weren’t about to spend donations on that, especially when there are free alternatives, so we had to disable the plugin. Unfortunately, with everything that has been going on, I haven’t had the time or energy to set up a new plugin for this so I can’t tell you how many people used the site in 2024, sadly.
I can tell you that HelpWildlife.co.uk raised more than £1800 to support the work of UK Wildlife Rescues, and there’s about £250 more to come through Gift Aid. We’ve continued to make donations of £100 a month to eligible rescues in our directory so that leaves us with a small nest egg for some targeted donations in 2025.
We’re still struggling to recruit or retain volunteers to help with directory admin which means we still have a large backlog of rescues to add, and I’m still spending a lot of time on this rather than moving other projects forward. A shout out here to Penny who has been devotedly helping with directory maintenance for many years now – I don’t know what I would do without her! Overall numbers of rescues listed remained around 700, with similar numbers of new rescues added and existing rescues closing.
We moved to a new tool for our HelpDesk in 2024 which was a bit easier to manage. But volunteer shortages here, too, mean that we had to take further steps to limit the number of tickets received. This has just meant encouraging site visitors to help themselves using the site library and rescue directory first and only contacting the HelpDesk if they couldn’t find what they needed there. Nonetheless, we still helped or advised on around 840 animals through our HelpDesk in 2024.
A key priority for 2025 is to rebuild the directory, refreshing the appearance and adding new features. We’ll also be reviewing policies in light of the abuse we received in 2024 and taking time to document them clearly on the site for transparency.
Pigeon Project
I was certain, at the end of 2023, that 2024 would be the year this finally went live. It didn’t happen for all the reasons given above – lack of volunteers and too much else zapping our energy and enthusiasm. Realistically, I think I have to accept that this isn’t something I can run on my own without more help. So either we need more volunteers to help with current activity and free up my time, or we need to look at collaborating with other pigeon rescuers to share the work. I’ll look at this in more detail once I’ve completed the HelpWildlife directory refresh.
In Summary
2024 was a difficult year with volunteer shortages and personal challenges limiting our work and progress in some areas. But, we did help more animals through our rescue than expected, and did a record number of faecal tests for pigeon rescues.
In 2025, our progress will be limited by our need to move house which is going to mean we can’t take in new animals and we’ll need to spend a lot of time and energy away from the charity. It will mostly be a year of keeping on keeping on but we do hope to do a major rebuild of the HelpWildlife directory and try to progress the Pigeon Project in some way.