Birdwatching as a political act – Guest Blog by Matt Adam Williams

Matt Williams is a conservationist and photographer. He is spending 2013-14 working in Indonesian Borneo for the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project. Matt is also an ambassador for the A Focus on Nature project, and a freelance writer for the Good Men Project and The Ecologist online. Starting his conservation career early, he has been a member of the RSPBsince the…

Guest Blog – The Age of Can Do by Miles King

Miles King has been causing trouble in nature conservation for over 25 years and is currently Senior Ecologist at Footprint Ecology. He has been variously, head of conservation at Plantlife, The Grasslands Trust and Buglife. At other times Miles has worked for English Nature, Natural England, Dorset AONB and as a freelance conservationist. Miles lives…

Minox Challenge – Buglife by Matt Shardlow

Make Buglife part of Yourlife Assumption – you think wildlife is worth conserving.  If not, don’t carry on reading this blog.  If you think that bumblebees, grasshoppers, beetles, snails or other little animals are amazing and fantastic, or if you understand that they are essential to ecosystems and us (e.g. pollination = £510 million worth…

Minox Challenge – the RSPB by Mike Clarke

Bins are central to the way a birder views the world – literally and metaphorically. I remember the thrill when I first acquired my pair of ‘Dialyts’ (on joining RSPB staff).  But the symbolism of binoculars risks becoming a deterrent to those who think enjoying birds and other wildlife is the exclusive pursuit of a…

Minox Challenge – Plantlife by Joanna Bromley

Iris Murdoch once wrote ‘people from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.’  I couldn’t put it better myself but I have a feeling that Mark is looking for a few more words so I’ll soldier on.  This is a discerning…

Minox Challenge – the BTO by Andy Clements

Small is beautiful. I’ve now stopped introducing the BTO as a ‘small’ organisation. With 120 staff, an annual turnover of £5m, 17500 members and around 40,000 wonderful volunteers whose birdwatching creates our data, the numbers speak for themselves. Of course we are small when you compare us to the mighty RSPB, the ubiquitous Wildlife Trusts…

Minox challenge – MARINElife by Andrew McLeish

Why MARINElife deserves the public’s support If you were a traveller, holiday-maker or whale watching enthusiast in the mid 90’s you may have been among the hundreds of thousands of people who travelled across the Bay of Biscay on board P&O’s flagship ferry service ‘The Pride of Bilbao’. The ‘Billy’ as she was fondly known…

Minox Challenge – Butterfly Conservation by Martin Warren

Who could resist a butterfly? Butterflies are among nature’s most colourful and spectacular creatures, which are used across the world as symbols of beauty and spirituality. Sadly, they are also one our most seriously threatened groups of wildlife. This is the case for why Butterfly Conservation, the NGO that works to conserve butterflies and moths,…

Minox Challenge – seven Guest Blogs

At 10-minute intervals after this blog appears so will the Guest Blogs of seven organisations that have taken up the Minox Challenge.  They are published in the order in which they were received. I am grateful to all seven organisations, and their Chief Executives (or deputies in the cases of Plantlife and MARINElife which don’t…