Thankfully all the stress of Christmas shopping is over. The veritable scrum to get into and around shops, the endless queues to pay for your gifts, the packed streets where you have to dodge the sea of people flowing around you. 

What if I could tell you that next year you could avoid all that hassle and help rainforests? Sounds good? Well read on!

For just £30 you can help repair 500m of rainforest trails allowing…

I want you to stop and imagine Wembley Stadium. Imagine the pitch and take in the sheer size of it. Now I want you to imagine the whole thing disappearing in 4 seconds. That’s the rate at which tropical rainforests are being destroyed – an area the size of a football pitch every 4 seconds. If we keep on going at the rate we are, then in no time at all there’ll be no rainforests left.

That’s why this…

You’ve probably had your fill of chocolate over the last couple of weeks, but once your sweet tooth recovers from the overdose, we’ve got a way you can enjoy a nice bit of choccie guilt free... Ok so not entirely guilt free – it’ll still contain the same old calories, but what it doesn’t contain is palm oil.

Clearing forests to grow oil palm is one of the key drivers of deforestation. Palm…

Imagine what you can buy for £2 – a magazine? A couple of loaves of bread? 4 pints of milk?

What if you could make that £2 do more? What if you could change someone’s life?

For just £2 a month for a year you can provide 50 cocoa seedlings, a hoe and a machete for local people around tropical rainforests. This means that they have a means of supporting themselves and their families. The seedlings…

I have to admit I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions. To be honest, it’s mostly because I’m not very good at keeping them. If I was I’d be super fit (we’re talking marathon-running fit), be able to speak another language properly as opposed to just being able to get by and would have done more new and exciting things this year.

However, I’ve finally found a New Year’s resolution…

As the first week of the UN climate negotiations in Durban draw to a close, support for protecting one of biggest assets in the fight against climate change has come from an unexpected place. Today the President of Sierra Leone is stepping up for tropical forests and helping in the fight against climate change by launching Gola Rainforest as a National Park.

Gola Rainforest is one of the last remaining remnants of tropical…

...Leave nothing but footprints
Kill nothing but time

Very wise words and a mantra we should all live by. But what if we could make our footprints mean something more? What if we could give them a higher purpose than simply showing where we’ve been? For the last six months we’ve been trying to make this happen and it looks like we’re not the only ones.

Since we launched our Stepping Up for Nature

Clipping your nails and cutting your hair isn't all that difficult for us. It can be done in a painless (unless you catch something you're not supposed to!) and non-lethal (unless you visit one Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street) way. Unfortunately, rhinos aren't quite so lucky. Their horns are made of the same material as our nails and hair (a protein called keratin) and are a sought after commodity in the Asian medicine market…

After an ingenious campaign by Greenpeace, Mattel (the makers of childhood favourite, Barbie) announced that they would stop buying paper and packaging linked to rainforest destruction this week. They've instructed their suppliers to avoid sourcing materials from companies “that are known to be involved in deforestation.” One such company is the  Asian Pulp and Paper Group (APP) who Greenpeace have shown to…

Bathin Sembilan children from Harapan’s mobile school became TV stars this week. They had parts in the first of two episodes of children’s series, Si Bolang, being shot in the forest. Si Bolang roughly means “Adventure Boy”. It is shown right across this nation of more than 230 million people. It’s a great way to raise awareness of Harapan, and forest issues. The children learned about the threat of fire. They are shown…

A child’s life at Harapan Rainforest isn’t just messing about in boats and flying kites. There’s a lot of that, but there’s also the serious stuff. Harapan supports the primary school in Sako Suban on its southern boundary. It isn’t yet ideal – one class for all 40 pupils, aged from 6-12. But without salary support for the teachers, the school wouldn’t exist. It’s a great first step that keeps these two boys in school…

There have been a couple of new snake identifications in Harapan. They are both pit vipers, Hagen’s Pit Viper Trimeresurus hageni and Wagler’s Pit Viper Tropidolaemus wagleri (shown in the photo). They have “pits” between their eyes and nostrils. These pits contain infrared sensors that help them detect prey. They will lie in wait for prey, usually small mammals. Because they can detect prey using infrared…

On a recent trip deep into the forest, we came across Pak Batyam and his family. They are jelutung tappers in Harapan Rainforest. They have been doing it for generations. As a sustainable activity based on non-timber forest resources, it is entirely in line with Harapan’s conservation and restoration vision. Jelutung is a natural latex that is used in chewing gum. It is sometimes called gutta percha. Jelutung tappers…

It’s the middle of the dry season in Sumatra. Everything is dry and dusty. Fire is a constant threat at the moment. But all Gatot Mandarsih is thinking about is planting trees. He is one of Harapan Rainforest’s tree nursery officers. He helps to produce up to two million tree seedlings a year. That’s enough to cover about 5,500 football pitches! All are native species grown from seeds collected in the forest. His seedlings…

Stephanie Sim from RSPB Northern Ireland is in Harapan Rainforest for a month. She's supporting the team there with the expertise she normally uses back home in Belfast - public affairs and media. Steph is recording her impressions and we’ll pass those on to you. As with most visitors to the camp, one of her first impressions was the wildlife. Even in camp. Normally it is the call of the gibbons that captures visitors…

Fifty-five pupils attend the mobile schools we run at Harapan. The schools are registered with the local education authorities. The pupils get a certificate when they leave, proving which grade they finished. It will help them get into further education, or a job. Not all of the pupils can attend all of them time. Many are from indigenous communities that move around within the forest to collect forest products. Without…

Camp Harapan has recently changed its water supply. The lake by the camp, the previous water source, had become cloudy. It got worse in the rainy season. Water is now being taken from another small lake close to camp. The water from this source is clear. The lake is sheltered by dense forest. A pump feeds a kilometre-long pipe to a new water tank holding 15,000 litres. The water is then distributed to buildings around…

Harapan’s patrol wardens, all local community members, are one of our greatest assets. In the field all day, every day, they have the most contact with the forest’s wildlife. Discovering what they encounter is vital for learning how wildlife uses the forest. The wardens were recently trained to record their sightings in a standardised way. Their findings can now be collated, and contribute to our overall research activity…

Grey-breasted babbler, lesser adjutant, spot-necked babbler and large-billed crow. Not birds you'd see on your average birder's list, but they're on the list for the Harapan rainforest team. These little gems have pushed the number of bird species seen in Harapan over the 300 mark, which is brilliant!!!

We knew there was more than 280 species living in the forest when we first started work there, but the…

Seedlings are very important at Harapan. The man for that job is Usman. He is a member of the Bathin Sembilan indigenous community. They have lived in Harapan for generations. Pak Usman manages the Durian Dangkal community nursery. It can produce over 160,000 seedlings a year. With a team of five to help, Pak Usman collects seeds and seedlings in the morning before it is too hot. They are left in a cool place such as…

It’s a macaque, and those teeth are very big. What more is there to say? Just enjoy the fantastic photo. Think how, if it wasn’t for Harapan Rainforest, this might not exist.

If you're in London town this weekend why not indulge your sweet tooth and head down to the Chocolate Festival on the South Bank. The RSPB team will be down there with our Sumatra stand and stocks of our "guilt-free" Love Nature chocolate.

Ok so it's not completely guilt-free because I'm afraid we haven't cracked calorie-free chocolate yet.However, you can treat yourself safe in the knowledge…

Harapan’s indigenous community is the Bathin Sembilan. They rely heavily on the forest to support their lives. It gives them materials needed to live day-to-day. They collect bengkuang leaves to weave sleeping mats, and rattan to fashion baskets. They collect damar tree resin and jelutung latex Dyera costulata. They sell those for cash that they can use to buy their other needs. This picture shows how bark is used…

Look what we've found! This Malay weasel ventured in front of one of our camera traps in the south west of the forest. It's the first one we've seen in Harapan Rainforest, so a new species for our list. Unfortunately, it was a little camera shy, but fingers crossed it'll get used to the limelight and we'll get to see its face some time soon.

What do you think?

A steady supply of seed is vital for forest restoration, so there are always seedlings to be planted out. Recently, three of us from the nursery team headed into the forest to collect bilakang seeds. As we headed out along the trail, our eyes didn’t stop scanning the forest floor – many seeds were ignored as we focussed on finding the bilakang seeds. There is an art to finding seeds of a particular type of tree – each…