Five highlights from a year of saving nature

We’ve packed a lot into our latest Annual Report, but if you don’t have time to read it from cover to cover, don’t worry – we’ve picked out five of the top stories from the past year to give you a snapshot of what we’ve achieved for nature.

From protecting and restoring landscapes to saving species from extinction, none of this would have been possible without the ongoing support of our members, volunteers, supporters, funders and partners – thank you! 

In June 2024, thousands of RSPB members, supporters, staff and volunteers flocked to the streets of London ahead of the upcoming general election to deliver a clear and powerful message: we must Restore Nature Now.

In total, more than 60,000 people and over 350 organisations including the RSPB, The National Trust and WWF came together to share five joint asks, outlining essential actions needed to protect our environment. As well as being the largest ever march for nature, it was also the biggest demonstration on a single issue in the run-up to the election, showing the strength of public support for action on climate change and nature loss.

With the soon-to-be-elected government responsible for ensuring that we meet legally binding nature recovery targets by 2030, it was a crucial time to speak up for nature, and we delivered our message loud and clear. Every placard, every chant and every cheer showed that protecting and restoring our natural world must be a priority for those in power. Thank you so much to everyone who came along and helped get our voices heard.

Once the soundtrack of summer, the gentle purring of Turtle Doves is now missing from much of our countryside following a catastrophic 99% decline in their numbers between 1967 and 2022. Turtle Doves migrate through south-west Europe to reach our shores and each year one million of them were legally shot across Spain, Portugal and France. This unsustainable hunting was a key factor in their decline, alongside a loss of breeding habitat here in the UK.

With urgent action needed, we led the creation of an international conservation action plan, which the European Commission adopted, and as a result, hunting was halted across Spain, Portugal and France between 2021 and 2024. In that time, the western European breeding population has soared by 40%. That’s 615,000 more breeding pairs!

In anticipation of more Turtle Doves reaching the UK, we’ve been accelerating our efforts to make sure the landscape is ‘Turtle Dove ready’. Through the RSPB-led Operation Turtle Dove partnership, we’re working with farmers, landowners, communities, volunteers and businesses to make sure there’s suitable food and habitat ready for the birds when they arrive in spring to breed. Funding from our new partnership with Tesco, as well as the money raised through our Big Give campaign in December 2024 has given this work a big boost – thank you to everyone who donated!  

In November 2024 we were thrilled when the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative was named the winner of the Protect and Restore Nature category of His Royal Highness Prince William’s Earthshot Prize 2024.

The RSPB co-founded the initiative back in 2005, alongside the Government of Kazakhstan, the Association for the Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, and other partners, with the aim of preventing the extinction of the Saiga Antelope. These ancient antelope would once have roamed alongside Sabre-toothed Tigers and Woolly Mammoths, but by the early 2000s their population was on the brink of collapse, because of habitat loss, poaching and disease.

As a result of research, anti-poaching and smuggling efforts, public education and the creation of protected areas, Saiga numbers have rocketed from fewer than 40,000 to 2.8 million 2024. This is one of the most dramatic population recoveries of a mammal ever recorded!

Thanks to the £1 million prize money, we’ll be able to scale up our work to help species that live alongside the Saiga, including Steppe Eagles, Sociable Lapwings and Przewalski’s Horses, across a 75-million-hectare area – that’s roughly the size of Turkey!

Thanks to the generosity of donors, supporters and partners, we purchased the final piece of formerly leased land at Geltsdale in Cumbria, making it the largest RSPB nature reserve in England. This is one of the most significant land purchases in our history and it will allow us to fully restore and protect the area’s moorlands, wetlands and woodlands.  

We’ve already restored areas of peat bog, created meadows and planted 110,000 native trees at Geltsdale, but now we can do so much more, as RSPB Geltsdale’s Reserve Manager Ian Ryding explains:

Scientists have shown that neonicotinoid pesticides are incredibly toxic to bees, with a single teaspoon of the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam capable of killing a staggering 1 billion bees. As a result, the use of these pesticides was banned across the UK and Europe in 2018, yet the Government has repeatedly granted permission for farmers to apply the pesticide to sugar beet as an emergency measure.

Alongside other environmental organisations, we have been calling for a total ban to be enforced, so we were delighted that in January 2025 the Government rejected the application for the pesticide’s use in England this year.

It’s a vital step in efforts to protect UK wildlife, as RSPB Director of Policy and Advocacy, Kevin Austin explains: “The science is clear that this bee-killing pesticide has no place in our countryside if we are to reverse nature’s decline and secure our food security. It is now absolutely vital that farmers are properly supported to access nature-friendly alternatives; our ability to produce food depends on nature, including pollinators, and we cannot leave our precious wildlife in freefall any longer.”