Wow! What a year its been! Not only has it been our best ever year in terms of conservation successes with two south coast Osprey nests establishing producing six young, plus another of our males seemingly setting up territory in Poole Harbour this summer, plus our first ever Osprey chick to fledge from Poole now nesting up in the East Midlands, and……the continued growth of our School Bird Boat project, our Young Birders Club and our Swift City Project.
Well, last night thanks to the tireless hard work from our team and support from our volunteers and the kindness of the general public, we won the GOLD AWARD at the Dorset Tourism Award in the new Activity and Learning Experience of the year category for our ‘Safari Cruise’ series of trips that we host during the course of the year. We couldn’t do any of this without Greenslade Pleasure Boats Limited who provide the boats for all of our Safari Cruises, so a huge thank you to them and the incredible skills of all of their skippers.
A massive thanks too to the Dorset Tourism Awards for our award and recognising that Eco-tourism is a growing and important part of Dorsets future and economy.
Our focus of these trips isn’t just to show people birds….we’re not a bird tour operator. Rather we seek to showcase and inspire the public on the many examples of species recovery that we’re lucky enough to experience here in Poole Harbour…..from returning White-tailed Eagles and Ospreys, recovering populations of Avocet, Marsh Harrier and wetland birds to highlighting the landscape scale land recovery being carried out by local conservation NGO’s and landowners.
This award goes out to everyone in the Poole Harbour, Purbeck and South Dorset area who are all working incredibly hard to transform this phenomenal part of Dorset into a thriving, nature rich landscape. There’s still a huge amount of work left to do, and the multiple partnerships that are now established should be able to grow and strengthen, enabling our county to see a continued recovery of many species, and hopefully inspiring other areas of the country to follow suit.
Bring on 2026…..we can’t wait!!
