The answer is anything and everything.
Volunteers are out on our nature reserves undertaking practical conservation work, they protect rare nest sites from egg thieves, they run social media accounts, help with administration, attend events, speak to the public, show people birds, take photos, organise filing and generally do whatever’s needed.
More than 12,000 volunteers account for 85% of our workforce – and we couldn’t do our work without them. Between them, they do around a million hours of incredible work for us.
Over the past year, the pandemic has meant they’ve had to adapt, shift, pause their work and perhaps stand down. But we’re still in a nature and climate emergency, and volunteer work is needed more than ever.