A huge thank you to everyone who has campaigned with us this year. RSPB Campaigner Isobel Bruning reviews the year.
If you’ve been to one of our RSPB nature reserves you’ll know they’re brimming with brilliant birds and wildlife, but nature isn’t confined to nature reserves, and neither is our work. Our Campaigns and Mobilisation Team have had a busy year speaking up, holding the powerful to account and keeping nature at the heart of government – with your help. Here are some of the highlights.
Our Community Campaigns team has been helping RSPB supporters, volunteers and local groups across England to speak up. We’ve been supporting people around the country as they meet their MPs to discuss the nature issues that matter most to them. MPs have heard about the need to reverse the decline of Swifts, avoid the risk of weakening nature protections from the reform of the planning system in England, and ensure that farmers receive sufficient investment to create homes for wildlife. The RSPB Bristol local group have been particularly busy, meeting three MPs over the summer!
The UK Government introduced its Planning and Infrastructure Bill in March. It passed through Parliament against a backdrop of anti-nature rhetoric, much of it from those in the highest government offices. Our analysis of the Bill as originally drafted raised serious concerns about what it would mean for nature. While we hit back at absurd claims that newts, snails and bats are to blame for the housing crisis, RSPB supporters wrote to their MPs in their thousands, asking for amendments that would have resulted in a planning system that didn’t weaken nature’s existing legal protections. They were supported by our Youth Council, who warned of the risk to nature in their open letter to decision-makers.
We’ve fought hard throughout this year, and in summer this yielded results when the UK Government amended the Bill to address some of our most pressing concerns. But significant risks remained and unfortunately, despite some welcome verbal assurances, the final Bill did not include many of the changes nature desperately needed.
Now, we need to let politicians know that the British public care about nature and wildlife, and that they want it to stay protected.
Around 70% of the UK is farmed and many of our threatened birds rely on farmland habitats, so farming is one of the most important areas we campaign on. It’s been a busy year for our farming campaigns: an incredible 100,000 of you signed our petition asking the Westminster Government to preserve vital funding for nature-friendly farming. We’re also campaigning for nature-friendly farming in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Hundreds of farmers and nature-lovers around the UK have written in to their representatives with calls to prioritise funding.
Since we handed in the petition in Downing Street in June, the UK Government has preserved England’s nature-friendly farming budget, the Welsh Government is developing more support to help farmers manage their land sustainably and in Northern Ireland the Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister has pledged to prioritise and upscale nature-friendly farming. These successes are evidence that campaigning really works. When it counts, we can win for nature and wildlife.
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In July we teamed up with The Climate Coalition and many other organisations and headed to Westminster to meet with over 500 RSPB supporters and thousands of dedicated nature lovers from all over the country at the Act Now, Change Forever Mass Lobby. Thousands of people made the journey to London to advocate for nature face-to-face and bring nature to the heart of Government. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill was at the top of many attendees' minds, and we supported them with information and talking points, to make sure the message came through loud and clear.
In September we headed to Edinburgh and Cardiff for even more mass lobbies. With elections looming in Scotland and Wales, hundreds of supporters met with their representatives to prove that nature is at the top of the agenda for voters. We had so many wonderful conversations with passionate people at all three Mass Lobbies – if you were one of them, thank you for coming!
Our Youth Council has grown this year and is now the biggest it’s ever been, with 16 amazing young people leading the way to a greener future. This year they joined us to hand in our 100,000-signature strong nature-friendly farming petition at Downing Street, supported our work at the Oxford Real Farming Conference and spoke at Scottland’s Nature Friendly Farming Summit.
The Youth Council have warned of damage to nature threatened by the proposed Planning and Infrastructure bill, encouraged people to take action by contacting their MPs, and taken the lead in designing our new Farming Toolkit.
A downloadable resource which makes the case for a nature-friendly food system that is also fair to farmers.
In Scotland, we’ve helped more than 5,000 people to have their say on the Scottish Seabird Action Plan, setting up key measures to help save Scotland's internationally important seabirds, from Puffins to Gannets. We demonstrated outside Scottish Parliament with our Scotland Youth Network for Nature to ask for strong protections for nature in the Natural Environment Bill. And, thanks to thousands of you raising your voice, MSPs voted to remove Part 2 of the Bill. This section threatened environmental protections and had no place in a nature bill – we’ll keep fighting to make sure it stays out. We’ve also mobilised more than 18,000 (so far!) people from around the UK to stand up for the irreplaceable habitat at Coul Links, an extraordinary coastal dune system in East Sutherland, currently under threat from plans for an 18 hole golf course.
We were proud to join Scotland's Nature Friendly Farming Summit, the first meeting of its kind, where farmers and crofters came together to share their inspirational journeys to nature-friendly farming and highlight the need for greater support from Scotland’s £650 million annual farming budget.
Meanwhile in Wales, 10,000 joined with us to support calls for Swift bricks to be installed in all new building projects, and nearly 800 people called for the Welsh Government to increase and secure the budget for climate and nature-friendly farming in Wales, enabling farmers to produce food sustainably while restoring nature and tackling climate change. With Wales' new Environment Bill due to be finalised in early 2026, 2,400 have taken our e-action calling for parts of it to be made stronger and clearer, by securing nature targets, applying core environmental principles to all policy making and introducing an independent environmental watchdog.
We also came together with environmental organisations from across Wales for Senedd Biodiversity Day, where we had the opportunity to discuss our latest campaigns and actions with MSs, and celebrate the launch of 'Force for Nature' with a virtual lobby, a first for Wales which involved around 50 supporters engaging with MSs on nature and climate issues.
In Northern Ireland, campaigners came together at the Balmoral Show (Northern Ireland’s largest agricultural event) to build on the success of the UK-wide nature-friendly farming petition. Over 350 supporters contacted Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister Andrew Muir directly, and over 400 letters were sent to MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) and the Minister by farmers. Meanwhile a social media campaign, public polling, media interviews and a stall at the Show itself helped spread the message: nature-friendly farming must be prioritised in Northern Ireland.
We’ve also championed a Private Member’s Bill that would bring binding targets for nature’s recovery into law in Northern Ireland. If passed, this bill would add teeth to the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP), published last September. Without it, targets written in plans and strategies risk being little more than words on a page.
Our members and supporters are what makes our voice for nature so loud. Because of you, we’re able to make the people in power pay attention. If you'd like to take action on the issues that matter to nature, you can stay informed and find out how to help by signing up as a campaigner. Or do something amazing for nature by meeting your MP.
Drop us an email at community.campaigns@rspb.org.uk and we’ll be there to help you every step of the way! It's been a busy year, but we have lots more work to do.
2026, we’re ready for you. Bring it on!
Scotland’s seabirds are once again facing disaster thanks to the planned construction of the deadliest windfarm we are aware of anywhere in the world: Berwick Bank. If it goes ahead, the windfarm will cover a huge area over vital feeding grounds, blocking birds from globally important colonies of Gannets, Puffins and Kittiwakes from finding food for their chicks. Together with the Scottish Seabird Centre, we are calling for Berwick Bank to be scrapped and replaced with less damaging offshore wind projects, but we need your support.
Tell the UK Government they must do better for nature! The Planning and Infrastructure Bill has been passed without the key protections for nature we’ve been calling for. We know nature matters to British people – poll after poll has proven it. Now we just need to make politicians believe it too.
This festive season, we’re supporting Turtle Doves. With numbers plummeting by 99% since the 1960s, it looked as though ‘two Turtle Doves’ might become the reality. England’s farmers need more support from the UK Government through ambitious, well-funded agri-environment schemes that will deliver for farmland birds. This Christmas, we’re asking supporters to send a message of hope for Turtle Doves to the UK Government’s Environment and Farming Ministers, and help Turtle Doves sing again.
There are lots of ways to get involved and give nature a future with the RSPB. We have big dreams and you're part of them.
