The UK’s largest garden retailer has switched its bedding plant production away from peat.

 Why is that a good climate change story?

Peat has been a big part of gardening and horticulture since the 1960s, when mechanised extraction of peat began in earnest. Lowland raised peat bogs, many of them SSSIs, were drained and the peat-forming vegetation stripped off, for the peat soil scraped away and bagged for gardeners…

Alongside our nature reserves and species recovery work, the RSPB has a major landscape scale programme, working with other land interests in more than three dozen large areas of the UK – covering over a million hectares.

This programme is called Futurescapes – so it’s apt that I’ve just been to a meeting for our Trent and Tame River Valleys Futurescape exploring how climate change will affect…

Continuing the theme, Are we fit to frack? Here's a post from The Wildlife Trusts' Paul Wilkinson...

Fracking, like many controversial issues, is complicated.  It has the power to polarise opinions. We must therefore seek answers in the evidence, and press strongly for appropriate actions to be taken as a result.

That’s why we have worked closely with the RSPB, and a range of other organisations, to produce…

Following last week's launch of our report, Are we fit to frack? we invited Martin Salter, National Campaign Coordinator for the Angling Trust to share their thoughts on the subject...

It takes something to get groups as diverse as the RSPB, The National Trust, the Angling Trust and Salmon and Trout Association, and the Wildlife Trusts to sit around the same table for weeks on end to hammer out a shared position…

There was widespread agreement yesterday that frack-free zones to protect the nation's most special places are common sense and should be central to the good regulation of the shale gas industry. That’s one of my conclusions from the reaction to the publication of our report Are we fit to frack? yesterday.

You can read the evidence report, which was peer-reviewed by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and…

Storms, surges and the sea: Coastal Habitats 2100

The RSPB was well represented at a fascinating meeting about what the stormy weather brought to wildlife habitats along the eastern England coast. That’s not surprising given that some of our best known nature reserves are in this area – particularly Minsmere in Suffolk, Titchwell in Norfolk.

We heard that wave heights varied from around 4 metres at Blakeney…

The awful floods we’ve had have re-awakened the some of the old climate change arguments. Were they, or weren’t they, caused by climate change? Are our greenhouse emissions really at the root of climate change? And what should we best do to address climate change?

The leading science institutions in the UK and the US have come together with a timely report that answers such commonly asked questions. Having…

Ivan Scrase Senior Climate Change Policy Officer, The RSPB.

National governments agree that greenhouse gas emissions must go down, but disagree on the policy details. In particular they disagree on the role of renewables and energy efficiency, and whether any new targets should be binding on national governments.  What comes after the clear targets and policies for climate and energy up to 2020 in Europe, is stil unclear…

Guest blogger Matthew Carroll, a member of the RSPB’s conservation science team, tells us about a project he's working on investigating the impacts of climate change on the breeding success of threatened seabird species including kittiwakes.

We know much about how climate change is impacting wildlife and ecosystems. Many of the best-studied examples come from terrestrial systems, but some of the earliest and…

The Big Garden Birdwatch is celebrating its 35^th year this year and has got us all thinking about what we see in our garden and when. We may notice fewer of some species and more of others, but rarely is the number the same. Did you take part and if so, have you sent in your results? 

We experienced some technical issues over the weekend when large numbers of people were submitting their Big Garden Birdwatch counts. We…

Wetlands are home to a broad range of species from bitterns and swans to water voles and dragonflies, and managing them for wildlife results in large amounts of waste organic material. But a new project is looking at how the latest technology can be used to turn reeds and rushes cut from these areas into heat and electricity.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change is funding a competition, which is being trialed…

Ivan Scrase, Senior Climate Change Policy Officer - Renewable Energy

On Wednesday the European Commission released its proposals for a European  policy framework for climate and energy in the period from 2020 to 2030. At first glance the proposals look quite ambitious. However NGOs have been unanimous in their alarm at what it will mean for people, the environment and nature - see these press releases from the RSPB, B…

Ivan Scrase, Senior Climate Change Policy Officer - Renewable Energy

Tomorrow we will find out how the EU sees its role in climate and energy policy after 2020. In the mean time, the UK Government is reviewing of each area of EU policy ‘competence’, from agriculture to taxation. This includes reviews of environmental, climate and energy policy making in Brussels. We see the EU as a positive force for environmental protection…

Over the past couple of years the RSPB has been working with our colleagues in BirdLife Europe to get reform of Europe's regressive biofuels policy. We've also had our work cut our supporting partner organisations, such as Nature Kenya, fighting damaging biofuel developments that are coming forward in response to this policy - like the Dakatcha woodlands, which were threatened by a jatropha plantation (pictured…

Harry Huyton, Head of Climate Change 

Some would have you believe that fracking is 100% guaranteed safe. The Prime Minister himself has assured us that the UK regulatory regime is one of the most stringent in the world and today Lord Deben, the Chair of the Committee on Climate Change and a respected champion for action on climate change, joined the chorus saying that fracking “poses no risk to the environment”.…

Lotte Large, RSPB Futurescape Officer, East of England

In the aftermath of the highest storm surge since the Great Flood of 1953, communities are now taking stock of the damage to our eastern coastline. As people assess the damage to their homes and businesses, our staff have been doing the same with our nature reserves along the coast.

The news has been focussing on the success of sea walls, which in the conservation…

Guest post by Tom Hooper, Head of Marine Policy here at the RSPB.

Yesterday, 28 November, was a fairly typical day for our times. We continued to wrestle with issues of energy prices, house prices and immigration. Also published yesterday was the latest report on how climate change is impacting the seas around the UK. The slow, out-of-sight changes taking place in our seas somehow seem unimportant and insignificant in…

 Today the fracking industry, represented by the UK Onshore Operators Group, and the water industry have announced that they will “work together to help minimise the impact of onshore oil and gas development in the UK on the country’s water resources”.

The deal is welcome recognition from both the shale gas industry and the water industry that the commercial exploitation of shale gas could threaten our…

Yesterday evening, during the second reading of the Water Bill, MPs debated who should pay if fracking goes wrong and pollutes our water. A number of MPs backed the proposal to make sure that fracking companies are liable for the costs of any accident and have the clean-up funds available.

This was a welcome debate of critical issue. Our rivers and groundwater are one of our most precious natural resources, but in…

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Adviser

It is just after 8pm on Saturday, 23rd November and I am on the overnight sleeper train from Warsaw to Cologne. Mohamed from Christian Aid is calling it the climate train because there are lots of people from the climate talks on board. I literally just bumped into Teri and Femke in the corridor both of whom work for Green members of the European Parliament (Satu Hasi from Finland…

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Adviser

A week ago in Warsaw they were putting out the bunting for Polish National Day.  This weekend they have been putting up the Christmas decorations, and very nice they are too.

It is half time at the UN climate change conference in the national football stadium.  Meetings ran through to four o’clock in the morning on both Friday and Saturday, or rather on Saturday and Sunday, as…

Scientists at York and Ottawa universities are suggesting that the warming slowdown of the last few years may be incorrect. Their new study suggests that average continued global warming has continued at 0.12°C per decade, rather than the 0.05°C per decade as suggested by the Met Office, NASA and NOAA. This is in line with the IPCC’s long term trend, and shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years…

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Change Advisor

Today, 11th November, is the first day of the UN climate convention meeting in Warsaw.  It is also Polish National Day and so the streets are hung with red and white bunting, the national colours of Poland, and the bars and restaurants were full last night.  Us NGOs were, of course, holed up in the Warsaw School of Economics finalising our strategy for the UN meeting.

As delegates head to Warsaw for the United Nations climate talks, the World Meteorological Organisation announces that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are continuing an upward and accelerating trend, which is driving climate change and will shape the future of our planet for hundreds and thousands of years.

Concentrations of CO2, the most important greenhouse gas, in the global atmosphere reached 393.1 parts per million…

Climate change can explain more than half the observed changes in numbers of breeding seabirds and wintering waterbirds over the last 30 years, says new research. Puffins and gulls, ducks and wading birds are among those most affected in the 62 species studied.

Furthermore the research, led by the BTO and involving the RSPB and others in the UK and France, shows a 4°C rise in average global warming would probably lead…