Working for Wildlife Website
Imagine you've got forty large wildlife sanctuaries covering two thousand acres, but you can't open them to the public. How do you go about publicising the good work that you are doing?
Well, what we did was create a huge, fun, educational and interactive website which gave the overall effect of a virtual visit to the League Against Cruel Sports' wildlife reserves!
The Working for Wildlife website included trails to follow through the site, masses of photos, videos, factsheets, articles, e-postcards, games and screensavers.
There was a warden's diary with photos and news, and a Q&A section where the general public could get answers to their wildlife questions from a real-life warden.
There was also a searchable database which had facts and photos from each of the forty sanctuaries, which included several ancient woodlands, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and areas populated by otters, badgers, hares and dormice, as well as rare plants.
The focal point of the website was a specially written program which posted a new photograph from the sanctuaries on the front of the website every day.
The Working for Wildlife website was enormously successful in attracting new and repeat visitors, and the special features - in particular the pic-of-the-day and the e-postcards - made it extremely popular and effectively self-marketing.
Following the hunting ban, the sanctuaries were no longer seen as central to the League Against Cruel Sports' work. The Working for Wildlife project is therefore consigned to the history books, but this remains one of our favourite websites and we have included elements from it - including the fiendishly difficult Warden's Quiz and the Butterflies Screensaver - in the scrapbook.