Amid the political maelstrom surrounding Brexit this week, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered a Spring Statement today which gave us grounds for cautious optimism.

As I commented previously, even with existing levels of protection and funding we have failed to halt the loss of biodiversity, let alone made a serious progress with its recovery.  Even the UK Government’s own (slightly rose-tinted)…

Sometimes it only takes one person to change the course of history.

Just look at Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who hit the news recently because of her climate strikes. It started in August last year when Greta sat outside Swedish Parliament every school day for three weeks in protest at Sweden’s lack of progress on tackling climate change. In September she vowed to strike every Friday until Swedish policies…

Here are few things you may have missed if you have been a bit busy or distracted this week…

…the new “Sector Deal” partnership announced yesterday between the UK Government and the offshore wind sector is a big deal.  It signals the latest steps towards a low carbon future with the promise of a tripling of the amount of energy generated by offshore wind farms by 2030.  For nearly two decades,…

The RSPB's Regional Director for Eastern England, Jeff Knott, explains what it will take to ensure one of the UK’s most important sites for nature is protected from harm as EDF Energy look to build Sizewell C next door.

On Monday 25 February,  EDF Energy issued a statement setting out how they propose to address the potential for Sizewell C nuclear power plant to have a significant negative impact on neighbouri…

Joe Harkness has been writing his Bird Therapy blog for the last three years. He has written for Birdwatch magazine, The Curlew and the i newspaper, amongst others. Joe also speaks about his experiences and has recorded three ‘tweets of the day’ for BBC Radio 4. He works as a Special Educational Needs Coordinator and has worked with vulnerable groups for nine years. He lives in Norfolk.

 

Six years ago, I…

Vultures are in trouble. My colleague Lizzie Bruce explains what the problem is and what she's doing to help

Do you remember the BBC series Dynasties? Do you remember watching the young lion and its aunt die from eating a poisoned carcass? I do. I cried. I wanted to do something about it.

The lions filmed were from Kenya. Poisoned carcasses left out by local farmers to protect their grazing animals. Yet these poisoned…

Birds and other migratory wildlife do not respect borders, and the challenges facing nature are too big to be solved by any one country alone. Ever since tackling the global plumage trade in the nineteenth century, the RSPB has been committed to comprehensive international agreements for nature conservation.  

For example, here in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, around half of our bird species migrate…

Here is some good news that you may missed...

...an assessment compiled by the Web of Science has shown that three NGOs (BirdLife International, BTO and the RSPB) are in the top 6 of UK institutions that undertake the highest impact research on biodiversity conservation.  That is why, in a letter in Nature published this week, the top scientists from BirdLife International, RSPB and BTO suggest that "NERC could better…

Whilst looking at twitter on Sunday evening I saw this amazing tweet from New Zealand.  The sheer number of moths involved reminded me of the ‘moth snowstorm’ that environmental journalist Mike McCarthy described in his wonderful book of the very same name. A sight that no longer occurs in the UK. A thing of the past.

So, it was sobering to see Monday’s Guardian front page carry the story about ‘insect-ageddon…

Last week, the Prime Minister promised the House of Commons that ‘we must and will embed the strongest possible protections for workers’ rights and the environment’ after Brexit.  She also indicated that the UK should match (and in our view hopefully exceed) future EU environmental protections and indicated a willingness to legislate ‘to ensure that those commitments are binding’.

These are…

Planning to remove invasive mice from a UK Overseas Territory to save two Critically Endangered species from extinction has stepped up in recent weeks.  The Gough Island Restoration Programme is one of the RSPB’s highest priorities and we are determined to get the best plan together to give ourselves the greatest chance of success.

If you have been watching closely, you will know that we decided to delay the proposed…

My weekend started badly.

An evening with my neighbour was spoilt by the failure of our football team to progress to the next round of the FA Cup.

I used the excuse of a radio interview (a pre-record with LBC) to escape the misery after our opponents scored their third goal.  It was cathartic to have the chance to talk about the benefits of spending an hour watching birds in your garden before a segway into what we need…

The long wait is over and you can now buy chocolate bars made from forest-friendly cocoa grown by the communities living around the Gola Rainforest in Sierra Leone.  Our Gola Rainforest chocolate is now available to buy online and will be in our shops on our nature reserves in the next days.

This is a great achievement and is a result of five years hard work by our team working with farmers who live in and around Gola.

…

Following the comprehensive rejection of the Prime Minister’s proposed Withdrawal Agreement by the UK Parliament last night, and without stronger assurances which would avoid a disorderly Brexit, the risk of leaving the European Union on 29 March without a deal remains. 

As politicians scrabble around to work out what happens next, I want to outline why the RSPB, and many other environmental NGOs, believe that ‘no…

One of the benefits of kids growing up is that, if given the chance, they stay in bed.  So, between Christmas and New Year, while my 14 and 11 year old children slept soundly I had the mornings to myself which meant I read “The End of the End of the Earth” by acclaimed author and birder Jonathan Franzen.

Through this collection of essays, Franzen offers a mix of hope and despair about the state of the planet…

In case you missed it, because this will definitely be my last blog of 2018 and I have run out of energy/inspiration (!), here is the blog I posted last Friday showcasing RSPB conservation highlights in 2018.  And because the world just keeps on turning, I can now add the positive news about our long running battle to #SaveLodgeHill!

Enjoy!

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It has been quite a year.

The UK vote to leave the European Union…

Amidst the political debate/furore/row about our future relationship with the EU, the Westminster government has snuck out an early Christmas present. Yesterday Defra published the draft Environment Bill that the Prime Minister promised earlier in the summer. The Bill sets out how the UK Government intends to fill the governance gap on our exit from the EU and secure the environmental principles in domestic legislation…

Yesterday DEFRA closed their call for views on England’s National Parks and AONBs. Kevin Cox, Chair of the RSPB and a resident of Dartmoor National Park, shares our thoughts on the review and our hopes for the future of these protected landscap...

There has been some encouraging news this past week about our attempts to save a crucial site for nightingales, Lodge Hill. My colleague Adrian Thomas has all the details...  Image credit: John Bridges (rspb-images.com) Many of you wi...

After a tough fortnight of negotiations in Poland, my colleague Melanie Coath reflects on what progress has been made in tackling climate change. 

Finally, two weeks of UN climate change negotiations came to an end late on Saturday evening in Katowice.

For many of the preceding hours it had felt like a meaningful conclusion was out of reach. While the conference end edged ever closer, progress felt snail-like as consensus…

It has been quite a year.

The UK vote to leave the European Union has dominated the political agenda and continues to pose both jeopardy and opportunity for environmental protection.  And while the excitement/turmoil will continue in 2019, some important markers were set in 2018 in terms of…

…renewed ambition to restore nature in a generation as laid out in the 25 Year Environment Plan launched by the Prime…

Our Senior Policy Officer, Melanie Coath, is out at the UNFCCC negotiations in Poland. Here she sets out some of the big picture challenges negotiators are facing and RSPB’s efforts to secure a good outcome for ecosystems and the climate.

It’s just started snowing here in Katowice, Poland, and temperatures outside have plummeted. But there’s a certain diplomatic chill in the air too after a dramatic war of words…

Amid the excitement/turmoil of this week's debates at Westminster, it is possible to think that Brexit* sucks in all the political oxygen and there is little space for anything else. 

Yet, globally at least, the wheels of multi-lateralism and cooperation keep turning.  This month there are conferences of the Parties to two international conventions (on biological diversity last week and climate change this week) and…

The RSPB does an amazing amount of work with partners across the four countries of the UK, the UK Overseas Territories and internationally for a wide variety of species, habitats and places. In this blog, I try to give a taste of the breadth and diversity of this work. However, over the years I have frequently returned to one particular bird.

The hen harrier has taken up more blog posts than any other, and for good reason…

There is a common refrain that environmental NGOs should work better together.  I agree, we should – we have much more to do to ensure we punch above our collective weight. 

What is often missing from any critiques is…

…the acknowledgement of what we are already are doing together and therefore how we can build on what we have

…the importance of broader collaboration beyond just environmental NGOs, to…