Conserving animals and birds attracts more than 10 times as much money from green foundations and philanthropists as campaigning on the overriding crisis of climate change, a report reveals. Zac Goldsmith, one of the country's leading activists, describes the disparity as "crazy" - and points out that, if global warming accelerates, countless species will become extinct, whatever conservation measures .

"If you want to raise money to save the polar bear you can do that easily," he said. "But if you try to get it to campaign for increasing the fuel efficiency of cars to combat global warming, that is very difficult, even though polar bears will not survive climate change. "It is so much easier to give money to soft, feel-good things. But if you want to change things, you haveto go for grittier stuff."

The report, Where the Green Grants Went 3, has been compiled by experts working for the Goldsmith family, whose green giving was started more than 30 years ago by the entrepreneur Sir James Goldsmith. The third of a series produced for the Environmental Funders' Network, it analyses funding in 2004-5. It finds that grants worth £8,294,767 - more than a quarter of the total amount provided - were given for work on "biodiversity and species conservation" and only £742,807 to campaigning on "climate and atmosphere".

Other big winners are "agriculture" at £5,608,269 and "countryside preservation and open space" (£3,183,476), both of which are related to conserving species. Other big losers are "human rights and environmental justice" (£432,794) and the controversial areas of biotechnology and nanotechnology, which between them received only £209,144. The proportion of grants for "advocacy and campaigning" is falling and, the report adds, pressure groups "had difficulty securing funding for work directed towards the political parties in the UK. Given the competition between the three main parties over environmental issues, it may be that trusts are missing out on an opportunity."

A survey of the incomes of environmental groups from all sources tells much the same story. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is very much the richest, amassing an annual income of more than £80m, nearly 20 per cent of the total. WWF UK (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) comes in second at just under 10 per cent. Six of the richest 10 are wildlife organisations. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, Britain's two top campaigning organisations, weigh in at eleventh and twelfth, with only about two per cent of the total income apiece.

The Goldsmith family itself gives up to £2m a year, three-quarters of it to environmental causes. But Zac Goldsmith finds it "depressing" that only 25 of the top 500 fundraising charities in the country are environmental groups, receiving only 6.5 per cent of the total income. Only a tiny proportion of Britain's charitable giving goes to tackling global warming, which he calls "the biggest issue we have ever faced". He hopes for increased attention, following Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, and urges changes in charity laws to make it easier for philanthropists and funders to give money to finance campaigning activities.

Who gets the green pound?

The top six:

1 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Collected: £80,848,000

Remaining after cost of fundraising: £63,022,000

2 WWF-UK

Collected: £39,364,000

Remaining after cost of fundraising: £29,327,000

3 Federation of Groundwork Trusts

Collected: £38,515,719

Remaining after cost of fundraising: £37,658,407

4 Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts

Collected: £26,485,343

Remaining after cost of fundraising: £25,951,594

5 Sustrans

Collected: £23,563,049

Remaining after cost of fundraising: £23,089,216

6 British Trust for Conservation

Volunteers

Collected: £23,074, 000

Remaining after cost of fundraising: £16,586,00
(By Geoffrey Lean, The Independen, 27/05/2007)