I have to say we seem to be in a purple patch of positive news at the moment – and long may it last! In England the announcement of 12 Nature Improvement Areas and two very different but successful planning cases in Dorset at Talbot Heath and in Suffolk at Kiln Meadow. In Portugal, authorities have taken a robust line with a developer illegally damaging coastal wetlands ... and next in line is some hugely welcome…

I was delighted to hear last week that, in a long-running court case in Portugal, a property developer had been given a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 150,000 euros for habitat destruction to the Ria de Alvor marshes.

I first visited these marshes more than 15 years ago. The Ria de Alvor is one of the most important wetlands in southern Portugal, and is protected as a Ramsar and Natura 2000 site. It…

The time and commitment my colleagues put into developing our case to protect nature at public inquires is considerable – but time is only part of it.  Stepping up for nature in the crucible of a public inquiry is often tough, as it is by its nature, adversarial.  Then there’s the wait for the outcome, lose and nature will be in greater jeopardy.

The wait has been on for Talbot Heath in Poole since the public…

Even small steps can make a big difference. As Sue Lees found out when she stepped up for the wildlife of Kiln Meadow.

'It all started when I heard about Ipswich Borough Council's disgraceful 2010 plan to cover the well-loved local nature area - Kiln Meadow - with 170 new houses.  

Even though I lived outside the area affected, on finding out that the building programme would effectively take a slice of land linking…

Here's the list of Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) in England announced today by DEFRA.

• Birmingham and the Black Country Living Landscape: includes urban, wetland, river and heath habitats.  It will create heathland on brownfield sites and 40 hectares of new native woodland;
• Dark Peak: includes moorland and woodland in the Peak District National Park.  It will restore habitats such as upland heathland and create…

So, children of the future, we wish you better health, education, job prospects – a life better than ours.  Oh, but sorry about the planet, you’ll have to get on with a diminished environment, I’m sure you’ll work out a way to cope.

Our current rate of progress is unsustainable – and one of the costs is found in the attrition of our natural world.  The weight of evidence to back up the vital…

There's a Klondike rush for wood at the moment.  Burning the stuff in biomass power plants is a green con, yet 57 plants in the UK are already up and running or in the planning stage. They will draw in timber from overseas, from countries like Brazil and Canada - driving further un-sustainable loss of precious forest habitat.  The decision to scrap plans for a biomass generator at Drax in Yorkshire is a welcome piece…

According to Natural England “Maerl is a collective term for several species of red seaweed, with hard, chalky skeletons. It is rock hard and, unlike other seaweeds, it grows as unattached rounded nodules or short, branched shapes on the seabed.” 

Like the tropical corals it resembles, maerl needs sunlight to grow, therefore is restricted to shallower, sunlit waters. Although the diversity of life to be found…

I’ve written previously about the threat that planning reform poses to the natural environment, and particularly the draft National Planning Policy Framework. The rationale for planning reform is often posed in terms of the way the planning system is supposed to hold back economic growth. But is this what the evidence really shows?

 We teamed up with the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the National Trust to…

The idea to build a major airport in the Thames is nothing new - the first suggestions came just after the Second World War.  The latest wheeze would see four runways built on Kent's Isle of Grain, spilling over into the estuary itself with supporting infrastructure cutting through Kent and Essex.  The concept is in the public mind now as a means of forcing the agenda for a Government review of aviation that will kick…

Yesterday was World Wetland Day. It was also the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens – so I took the opportunity to link the two through the medium of the Thames Estuary, well known to Dickens and the setting of memorable scenes in Great Expectations.

The Thames is also a coastal wetland of global importance – just the place to celebrate on World Wetlands Day. February 2^nd is also Groundhog…

BBC 1’s Breakfast carried a report to mark the 200 anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. The location report came from North Kent from the Medway Towns that Dickens knew as a child, from Cooling Church and from the evocative North Kent Marshes where Pip’s Great Expectations were launched by his act of kindness to the escaped convict Abel Magwitch.

If, in some crazy future, this area was to be the foundations…

Just over a week ago the Thames estuary in general and the Isle of Grain in North Kent in particular, were propelled into the media as the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, tried to stack the odds in favour of a Thames Estuary Airport in the forthcoming strategic review of aviation.

Here’s a flavour of the media last week in the Telegraph and Guardian.

The analysis has continued, revealing the array of issues that…

Helen Byron is a regular contributor to this blog, here she gives us the latest on her work to save the Tana River Delta in Kenya.

I’ve got a unique job working closely with some of our BirdLife International Partners on their campaigns to save their special places.    Our aim is always constructive engagement with developers and decision-makers to get workable solutions. But sadly this isn’t always possible, so some…

The landscape is changing. I don’t mean the landscape you can physically see from your window, but the way in which we plan for that landscape, its people, places and wildlife.

Where I live in Cambridgeshire, there used to be a strategic plan for the county, and then a more detailed, local plan for the district. In some parts of the country, mostly in the larger urban areas, these were combined in a single, ‘unitary…

I’m posting this at the end of long day in which the rhetoric around building a four runway airport smack bang in the Thames Estuary has gone up a couple of notches.

It sounds like the story blurted out into the media – with overtones of posturing around the elections for the Mayor of London. Dastardly politics, some might say, seeking to wreck chunks of Kent – who’s residents can’t vote for the Mayor of London…

Two posts have appeared today on other blogs and in a spirit of cross pollination I thought I would bring them to your attention.

Firstly, in Suffolk, we are working hard to ensure woodlands in Suffolk are not slashed in two by a proposed electricity line.  There are alternatives, so plenty to fight for.

Here’s the blog and here’s an article in the East Anglian Daily Times.

São Tomé is one of those places…

The Tana River Delta has featured a lot in this blog, but not recently. I’ve received an update from Helen Byron who, as the RSPB’s Senior International Site Casework Officer, has been working closely with our partners, BirdLife Kenya in their campaign to save the Delta.

I’ve reported on the Tana River Delta, Kenya including on the plight of the villagers who were forcibly evicted from Gamba village…

With the coalition Government’s announcement, today, that High Speed 2 is to get the go ahead, the lines are much more clearly drawn. Here's a link to the full documentation and background to the case here.

Parliament will debate the pros and cons and will hold the ring on the benefits of new rail infrastructure (in terms of transport, business and climate they could be considerable) versus the route that will…

The river Nene goes through a transformation as it flows from the English Midlands to the East ... refer to the ‘Neen’ in  Northamptonshire and you will raise eyebrows – you are in river ‘Nen’ territory!

The water carried from the heart of England towards the sea used to feed the Fens – once England’s Everglades. Now only carefully managed fragments remain, the RSPB’s N…

Happy new year.

Slightly belated, as we are already well into 2012.

If your definition of a special place is the sheer wealth of wildlife it supports – then tropical forests are going to be top of many lists. Here at the RSPB we’re proud of our contribution to some notable tropical forest success stories, we’ve been in it for the long haul, over 20 years and counting in West Africa.

You can find out…

A year ago, I gave you some wishes for 2011.

Perhaps some of them were a bit ambitious but let’s see how they turned out.

Wish 1.  Dungeness is, finally, given the protection it deserves and is cherished both for its wildlife and as a great place to visit and get close to nature. We’ll have to roll that one on as we await the outcome of the public inquiry that ran through much of 2011.

Wish 2. In England…

Step away from that tin of sweets!

OK - stick a few in your pockets - and take them with you, if you must! But do take the chance to get outside over the holiday period.  I'm sure you'll have your favourite walks and places to go - but do have a rummage through all the natural richness provided by RSPB's nature reserves. 

What's your favourite place? 

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I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and thank you for reading the Saving Special Places blog. I'm very grateful to several colleagues who have joined the blog team to bring you stories from the front line of nature conservation. 2012 will bring a lot of challenges and your support will more important than ever.  But in the meantime can I thank you and share a couple of pictures taken last winter at our own special…

The RSPB’s Minsmere nature reserve attracts 90,000 visitors a year, pumps nearly £3m into  the local economy and supports around 100 full time job equivalents locally .

Oh – and it’s one of Europe’s best nature-stuffed, life-enhancing, spectacle-watching places as well.  It's so good it is has collected the world's top wildlife designations and is part fo the EU's series of Natura 2000 sites…