Destinations
2024
- Extremadura
- Valencia
- Crete
- Lesvos
- South of Salamanca, Spain's Wild West
- Danube Delta
- Picos de Europa
- Bulgaria's Western Rhodopes
- Falsterbo
- Spanish Pyrenees, autumn
- The Gambia
2025
Algarve & Alentejo autumn holidays
Conservation projects
2017: the donation went to SPEA's Marine Conservation Department, to a campaign against oil drilling off-shore by the Algarve coast. A news release was issued in January 2018: "British wildlife group supports campaign against Algarve oil exploration." Full details here.
Honeyguide group at Castro Marim, November 2017 (Domingos Leitao).
2015: Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves (SPEA, BirdLife in Portugal) is campaigning against the illegal capture and sale of wild birds.
In SPEA's words: "This campaign aims primarily to draw attention to a problem which we have spoken informally, but very little has been done to solve it. We are aware that there is a long way to go to change mind sets and the law. The goal is to draw attention to this subject, let people know that this is a serious problem of nature conservation, find ways to combat misinformation and make sure the law is applied in a more effective way."
More about this SPEA campaign here.
In 2013, SPEA was preparing a Winter Bird Atlas for Portugal. A little spare money held by Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust meant we could round up our Algarve & Alentejo donation to SPEA to €1000, to support the book's publication. Our Central Portugal holiday in spring 2012 had previously contributed €560 towards Atlas survey work. A copy of the atlas (36MB PDF), which is in Portuguese, is available from the Honeyguide office, or we can send a link to download it.
Previous donations in Portugal have supported the a network of Important Bird Areas (IBAs) with local volunteers monitoring these and acting as ‘caretakers’. In particular, with our help, SPEA has improved the annual bird monitoring on the protected west coast IBA.
Part of the West Coast Important Bird Area
SUPPORTING
News release dated 25 January 2018 here as a PDF and here in Portuguese.
Honeyguide group on pelagic trip, November 2017.
News release dated 24 November 2015 here as a PDF, also here as a separate web page.
News coverage from Honeyguide's donation in 2009 in the Algarve Resident here (in English). This is a pdf (which chops off some of the photo) and the story is still online now as Portugal Resident. A similar story from 2006 was in the Algarve newspaper Barlavento.
Cape St Vincent, within the West Coast IBA
