Jim Densham, Senior Land Use Policy Officer with RSPB Scotland, has this new blog on what's coming up in the For The Love Of...campaign.

For the love of wildlife and cycling

If you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember my post about Showing the Love to Nicola Sturgeon on Valentines Day. On February 14, and ever since, we have been holding events asking people what wildlife or nature they love which will be affected by climate change.

Hundreds of children and adults have drawn their favourite animals on hearts or written something they love in nature onto our ‘For The Love Of...’ campaign postcards. At our recent Scotland’s Big Nature Festival visitors to our stand showed the love again as we created a giant ‘Love Wall’ made of children’s pictures. It was fantastic.

On Wednesday our campaign postcards and all those collected by other organisations were handed to Environment and Climate Change Minister Aileen McLeod, on behalf of the First Minister, at a Climate Rally outside Holyrood.

MSPs from all five parties spoke about the challenges ahead to meet our world leading climate targets but there was a real buzz when all the postcards were wheeled out on a trolley and handed over. A lot of love has been shown over the past months and thousands of reasons why we need strong action on climate change in Scotland and at the UN convention in Paris at the end of the year.

And the campaign is not over yet. The next big event is a lobby of MPs in Westminster on June 17. Our MPs, many of them new (especially from Scotland), need to know that we all love and care about things which will be affected by climate change.

To get to this Speak Up climate lobby three RSPB Scotland colleagues and I will be cycling from Edinburgh on a 520mile cycle ride challenge to London. We will set off from the Scottish Parliament on June 11 and arrive six and a half days later at the event.  

We will also be raising awareness of the impact of climate change on wildlife as we stop off at an RSPB reserve each day along the route. Climate change is having an impact on our precious wildlife now and is affecting the UK’s special wildlife sites. We will highlight a different aspect of the challenge that nature and our reserves face from the climate each day. Follow our daily progress on our blog or on our Facebook page.

As a team we are raising money for the RSPB’s climate work. Please give a donation if you can - it will help the pedals go round! This cycle challenge certainly won’t be easy but it will be rewarding when we arrive in London to prove just how much we want to see urgent strong action on climate change.