This blog is filled with references to some of the top sites for wildlife in the UK, Europe or even at a global scale.

But this weekend the focus is on that special place close to our own backdoors.  Our gardens.  It’s Big Garden Birdwatch  weekend!

How many of us have had a lifetime’s interest sparked by getting to know the birds and wildlife we share our gardens with?  Jack (who’s five) was watching BBC…

In the time of foot and mouth, when the countryside was closed I visited Dungeness.  It felt like half the population of Kent was clinging to the furthest extremity of the county, evicted from more familiar landscapes. 

Dungeness is not like other places.  A tiny railway a huge nuclear power station and, in their season, alive with birds. 

Here’s a compelling evocation of the place – part of BBC Radio 4’s Nature…

One theme that should stand out from this blog is that protected areas are extremely important places!  In the European Union, wildlife legislation – in the form of the Birds and Habitats Directives – has enabled real gains to be made for wildlife.  

Yet wildlife in these protected areas, along with the rest of life on this planet, faces the unprecedented challenge of climate change. What will be the role of…

I’m often asked if the current proposals to build an airport in the middle of the Thames estuary with roads and barriers linking both the Kent and Essex’s coasts is ‘serious’?  The sub-text for the question is usually ‘should the RSPB be putting resources into developing a position on what looks like a project unlikely to happen’.

It feels serious – and it would be wise to assume that…

This year, 2010, was to have been the year when the decline in the biological diversity of the EU had been halted.  The target won’t be met.

But – 2010 is also the year in which Governments across the European Union and around the world will come together in Nagoya in Japan in October at a meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).  The significance of 2010 for the future of all life on earth…

Here is BirdLife International's reaction to the launch of International Year of Biodiversity which was the subject of the last post on this blog.  Celebrate biodiversity, recognise the global failure to halt it's loss and work hard for binding future targets.

The International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) has got a hard act to follow.  It is true to say that the global climate crisis is but one side of the coin shared with the parallel biodiversity crisis but following the climate bun-fight that was Copenhagen, the devastation of our natural world has some ground to make up (in media terms at least).

Well the year has now been launched – it hasn’t yet led calls to hold the front…

The big freeze cropped up in this blog yesterday – and it is inevitably going to occupy our thoughts for some time to come.  For wild birds, the impact is likely to be felt well into the future.

Yesterday I focussed on Dartford warblers – we are considering whether it will be possible to put out supplementary food for them, though one real key to the survival of individual birds is how well they can continue to…

The news, today, has been featuring footage of the crushing winter of 1962/63.  I can just remember it.  My Dad and I rescued half a dozen moribund redwings from under the garden hedge and took them inside to warm up.  Looking at those huddled bundles of feathers standing on the kitchen table is one of my earliest bird memories.

That winter occurred at the dawn of organised monitoring of common birds and the data showed…

Some good news from South Africa (in stark contrast to the current state of the third Test Match in Cape Town!) is that high profile campaigning by our partner organisation, BirdLife South Africa, has succeeded in saving the Langebaan Lagoon from a proposed port expansion.  This Western Cape wetland is the most important site for wading birds in South Africa and is designated as an Important Bird Area and Ramsar site as…

Time will tell if this year, dubbed the International Year of Biodiversity, will be all it’s been cracked up to be. 

New year is a time for optimism but the start of this new decade feels a bit like an uphill slog for optimists.  Copenhagen faltered and failed to deliver and across the world, targets to reduce the loss of biodiversity (and actually halt its decline within the EU) by 2010 are not being met.  That…

It’s the dream of every footballer to walk out on the pitch at the Bernabeu or the San Siro or Old Trafford.  Opera fans plan their pilgrimage to La Scala.  No tourists worth their salt would fail to miss St Mark’s Square when visiting Venice or not bother to view the Old Town from the Charles Bridge in Prague.

Europe’s natural world, too, has its Premiere league.  A heritage that predates the oldest…

It’s already well over a month since I reported the publication of the Government’s national policy statements for energy (all six of them) and ports.

If it has all seemed quiet on the blog front, that’s because we’ve been wading through more than 1,700 pages of statements and background documents, trying to make sense of it all. The pace quickened when it became clear that the Parliamentary committees which…

The race is on to stop Kenya’s Tana River Delta becoming another tragic example of the rush for short term gain crushing the interests of local people and destroying a vital natural environment.

You can read about why the Tana River Delta is so special here and there’s an update published, here, by BirdLife International. 

To cut a long story short, an array of multinational companies and an agency of…

A couple of weeks ago I met the BBC Richard Hollingham at Wallasea Island to record an interview for One Planet – broadcast on the BBC World Service.

And here is the programme. 

We look at how exactly do you value nature - there are real and measurable benefits to the Wallasea Island project beyond the obvious that it will become a great place for wildlife once again.  How we value nature and bring it into the…

Back in November, we reported on the parlous state of Bulgaria’s protected areas. A big concern was the threats to these sites from dozens of inappropriately sited windfarms.  Well, here’s some good news.  The Minister of Ecology in Bulgaria has just announced a halt to all new renewable energy projects until a Strategic Environmental Assessment has been carried out to identify the possible environmental impacts…

Like Mr Toad unable to resist squandering his inheritance on the latest must-have motor-car, poop poop – the siren-voices of massive tidal power generating barrage proposals dominate the thinking around how to harness the power of the tides.

Philip Stafford, writing in the Financial Times, takes his readers past the much-vaunted credentials of the Cardiff-Weston barrage proposal on the Severn and starts to describe…

The Canary Islands are hotspots for many reasons – not just because they’re volcanic!  The flight of the Great British Tourist has made them a favourite holiday destination; boosting the economy but bringing relentless pressure to these small, isolated islands.  Increasingly these one-time visitors are now chosing to set up home on the Islands, building the pressue that risks sacrificing more of the island's unique…

My appearance on BBC World Service’s One Planet has been postponed until next Thursday – for some reason the focus this week was on Copenhagen!  I will be talking about Wallasea Island and the ecosystem services it will provide (plus a good few birds).  Had the piece gone out yesterday I would have been able seamlessly to link the story to a new BirdLife International report published to coincide with Copenhagen…

Trying to do radio interviews on the East coast in December is always a bit of a challenge.  Not only do you have to remember what you wanted to say, you need to make your lips work in the cold as well.

Last Friday I was visiting the Wallasea Island Wild Coast project in Essex where I met Richard Hollingham who is compiling a programme for the One Planet series on BBC World Service (to be broadcast on Thursday 10 December…

From getting our faces painted in the morning through the build up to the start of the march, to the cheering as we completed our encirclement of the House of Parliament with The Wave; the day was a joyous coming together of people (as many as 60,000) to send a clear message to our politicians to press for the best outcomes in Copenhagen.

And they appear to be listening – the buzz built as news spread that a delegation…