Since hearing the EU referendum result in the early hours of 24 June, I have felt that we need to be at our best to ensure Brexit works for nature and for people.

And, when I say ‘we’, I mean the RSPB, other NGOs and, of course, politicians from all parties.

The headlines in the State of Nature report launched with Sir David Attenborough ten days ago provided a stark reminder of the scale of the challenge…

The good news keeps on coming.  The latest comes from West Africa showing that dreams can come true...

In 2009, the presidents of Sierra Leone and Liberia met together to announce the dream of a huge trans-boundary park to protect the precious Gola rainforest which straddles their two countries.  Yesterday, our BirdLife partner in Liberia, the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia (SCNL) was delighted to inform…

Earlier this week at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, Baroness Kate Parminter spoke about how much she liked coalitions.  Clearly, as the party’s environment lead she was proud about what the party had achieved in government but she was also talking about the impact that coalitions can have when people or organisations come together with an agreed purpose.  Together they can be mighty.

I agree and have spent much…

Party conference season is in full swing and over the next three weeks, the RSPB’s Westminster parliamentary team will be on the road heading for Brighton, Liverpool and Birmingham. 

The conference season has its own rhythm, marking the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.  Despite having been going for twenty years, I still enjoy the opportunity to encourage competition between the parties for the best environmental…

Hot on the heels of Wednesday's successful and hugely enjoyable launch of State of Nature 2016, the UK Government gave us a reason to be cheerful.  Here, Jonathan Hall, the RSPB's Head of Overseas Territories, explains...

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Yesterday was an absolutely massive day for the UK's marine environment. The UK Government and four UK Overseas Territory governments…

Today, our diverse, eclectic and brilliant sector comes together to report on the state of our nature.

Following on from the inaugural State of Nature report in 2013, 51 organisations have worked together to compile information about what is happening to wildlife populations on land and at sea across the UK, on our Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.

We shall launch the State of Nature 2016 reports and showcase…

It was a weekend of near misses. 

I helped my 81 year old Dad fulfil a promise made many decades ago by climbing Green Gable but only ‘on to’ Great Gable in the Lakes.  And then I completed the Great North Run one minute fifty seconds slower than my target time of one hour forty five minutes. 

The pleasures of the walk came for free, but the run means that I am a bit poorer as I had promised to double the…

It’s only just over a month since I wrote about the news that Natural England had issued a licence permitting the control of up to 10 buzzards to “prevent serious damage to young pheasants”.

At the time I said that “the decision sets a worrying precedent. What will be next?” Well now we have an indication of what the future might look like – the prospect of more legalised killing of buzzards.…

The summer holidays are officially over as the kids go back to the school on the same day that MPs return to the House of Commons.  

The dominant political debate this term will, of course, be the negotiation over Brexit.  Despite the first big Cabinet discussion last week and the words from Prime Minister May this weekend calling for a 'unique' deal, we we still really do not know what sort of Brexit arrangements Prime…

This week, I returned to RSPB Haweswater in the Lake District to see the final stages of the river restoration in Swindale Beck – a tributary of the River Eden.  It was a real pleasure to be able to stand alongside our partners in United Utilities and the Environment Agency as water was diverted into a new channel which had been specially designed to restore conditions of a naturally meandering river.

The project…

In the political tumult that followed the referendum, one of our most immediate concerns centered on what would happen to the EU funding that underpins so much of the nature conservation effort in the UK. This week saw the Governments first meaningful contribution to this debate, as the Treasury moved to guarantee a range of EU funding streams beyond Brexit. 

Despite ongoing uncertainty, the announcement from the Tre…

On the day our new Prime Minister took over, the then Defra Secretary of State Liz Truss announced that she would not accept the advice given by the expert Lead Ammunition Group (LAG), set up by Defra, that she should phase out the use of toxic lead ammunition for sport shooting and replace it with readily available non-toxic alternatives.  The RSPB thinks that this decision is regrettable because many birds die in the…

This is a guest blog by Jeff Knott, Head of Nature Policy marking the enormous achievement  by the campaign to ban grouse shooting.

Over 100,000 people have now signed this petition to ban driven grouse shooting. This is a huge achievement from everyone involved, including of course the petitions creator, my former boss, Mark Avery.

What makes it all the more impressive is that this is a genuine grassroots movement.…

I am wrapping a few things up before heading off on holiday tomorrow to our family hut on the Northumberland coast (via RSPB Saltholme to help celebrate Hen Harrier Day).

Before I go, I wanted to reflect on the great intervention by National Trust on the future of agriculture and the environment this week.  This received good media coverage including the Today Programme, and Channel 4 News.   

The biggest membership organisation…

A colleague shared their copy of Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald's 1946 New Naturalist book on British Game.  It is a fascinating book, written by "a countryman of wide experience, a wild-fowler, Vice-President of the Gamekeepers Association, a friend of gipsies [sic] and we suspect of poachers".  

In it, there is a chapter called "Enemies of Game".  Here he describes a range predators from eagles to crows…

Many of the readers of this blog will remember ‘buzzardgate’, the subsequent u-turn and the licences granted to control buzzards in 2013.  

The thorny issue of licenses for buzzard control reappeared today when Natural England issued a licence permitting the control of up to 10 buzzards to “prevent serious damage to young pheasants”.

The killing of a recovering British bird of prey to protect…

I want to start a new tradition of celebrating successful conservation projects on Fridays to end the working week on a high.

So, here's my first Friday success story.

Our team in the South-West of England have reported that puffin numbers on Lundy Island (an island in the Bristol channel) have rocketed, ten years after the island was declared rat-free.  More than 300 individual puffins have this year been counted…

The voluntary approach of the Hen Harrier Action Plan has failed, leaving licensing as the only viable option.

I’m generally very patient.  My natural preference is to build partnerships and work to make positive change from the inside with those who want to abide by the law and deliver progress.

However, sometimes that approach simply doesn’t work and there can be no clearer example of that right now than hen…

On the day that A Focus on Nature - the UK’s youth nature network. - launch their Vision for Nature, I am delighted to host a guest blog from Matt Williams, their Associate Director.  You can follow Matt on twitter  @mattadamw and find out more about him on mattadamwilliams.co.uk.

In 2013 the RSPB was part of a partnership of organisations that launched the State of Nature report. This unprecedented piece of partnership…

In the white noise of the past couple of weeks you may have missed the publication of the latest Breeding Bird Survey results which showed turtle dove numbers have hit a new low, declining by 93% since 1994. This trend is mirrored across Europe, with a decline of 78% between 1980 and 2013.

As many of you will know, this is a species that is facing threats on migration and on its wintering grounds, but it has, like many…

Dear Secretary of State,

Welcome to the best job in Whitehall. 

People love the landscapes and wildlife of this country but nature is in trouble: one in ten UK species are at risk of extinction and the pressures are growing. 

You have the opportunity and responsibility to do something about it by fulfilling the Conservative Party manifesto commitment “to restore UK biodiversity within 25 years”. 

We appreciate…

Yesterday, the Scottish Raptor Study Group successfully lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament calling for the introduction of a licensing system for gamebird hunting in Scotland. This is a good initiative and one the RSPB fully supports as it offers the potential for meaningful action to reform shooting.

The petitioning process in Scotland is very different to the one operating south of the border.  In order…

We’d spent the morning scrambling up a hill to look for holly fern (see below) at one of its few locations in England.  En route, we’d encountered some upland specialities like bog asphodel, wood cranesbill, yellow saxifrage and alpine lady’s mantle flourishing in the microclimate that the steep, rocky slope had provided away from the reach of grazing sheep.

This was only my second visit to our Ha…

As we emphasised throughout the EU referendum campaign, neither wildlife nor the climate respect borders. Their protection requires every country to play its part, regardless of politics. That’s why I was delighted to see that, despite all the turmoil of last week, the UK Government committed to adopt the UK’s fifth carbon budget, setting a target to ensure that carbon emissions are reduced by 57% by 2028…

I spent a cathartic weekend at the fascinating Knepp Estate exploring its re-wilding project.  Following the referendum, time spent looking for turtle doves, purple emperor chrysalis’ and amphibious bistort was a great way to clear the head.

As politicians across the UK decide their next steps, the news has been dominated by when and what sort of Brexit deal will be struck and what it might mean for all of us.  At…