About Phil Brown

A career in communications and conservation

Communications

A long career in the communications industry culminated in his becoming a senior planner in an international agency working on a major global pet foods account where, amongst much else, he conducted an extensive market research study into cat and dog ownership across Europe.

Conservation

Having begun in the late nineties as a part-time volunteer at a Natural England NNR, in 2001 he decided to become more actively involved in the conservation field. Initially he worked just as a ‘grunt’ and then as a bird surveyor and field researcher. But then, as his communication skills proved a valuable asset, he was used as a consultant and commissioned to write for a wide range of environmental clients, including Natural England, the Forestry Commission and various East Anglian county councils.

In 2005, whilst working as a bird surveyor on a Stone Curlew and CRoW access project in the Brecks, he became aware of the widespread antagonism existing between conservationists and dog walkers.

This friction chiefly arose from many dog walkers being oblivious to Nature and their impact upon it. Consequently, the average dog walkers’ behaviour on nature reserves was often rightly deemed inconsiderate and conservationists were antagonised by this. So he was spurred to set about remedying this situation by finding a way to build more rapport between these two opposing groups.

Share-with care^®

A successful bid for HLF funding in late 2008 allowed a pilot project for a new communications-based approach to dog disturbance to be run across three North Norfolk nature reserves in 2009.

While this pilot approach proved effective, it was significantly refined from 2011 to 14 with the scheme’s focus being switched over that period from concentrating on the provision of communications materials, to the use of volunteers (dog ambassadors) as the primary vehicle for message delivery and developing an effective educational package to support them.

Then, from 2014 to 2018, three further projects allowed the tactics to be further refined. So that by 2019 a Share-with care scheme could convert dog walkers into assets that improve all visitors’ site experiences, reduce the management’s need for firefighting, free up volunteers for other tasks and ease the pressures on site managers, as well as enhancing the latter’s wellbeing. This is the Share-with care Training Package.