Limosa - Birdwatching and Wildlife Hoildays Worldwide

About Limosa

Responsible Tourism

We do our best to operate our tours in an environmentally responsible manner - not just by our behaviour and actions in the field, but by utilising conservation-minded local agents as well as local services such as guides, eco-lodges and restaurants  in the places we visit.

We absolutely forbid the collecting of specimens on any of our tours, including the picking of wildflowers. Please remember - take the book to the plant, not the plant to the book!

Our tours often take place in countries where the whole idea of conservation is in its infancy and we must take care to be seen to act responsibly, especially by local people. We do our utmost not to disturb the birds and other wildlife that we take groups to see in the field, and try to minimise the use of tapes.

We believe tourism has a vital role to play in supporting local peoples, as well as fostering a positive and enlightened attitude towards wildlife and the environment. Indeed, tourism can be a major factor in saving an area from harm or destruction by damaging forestry, industrial or agricultural practices.

In the same way, we believe that our tours to countries such as Iceland and Cyprus - where we are vehemently opposed to whaling and the slaughter of wild birds respectively - serve to promote the cause of conservation such that these practices may eventually be stopped.

Our Commitment to Conservation

• We actively support conservation through sponsorship and donation, as well as through our actions, our advertising and our support for important fund-raising events such as the annual British Birdwatching Fair - right down to recycling our household and office waste. Our restyled 2007-8 brochure is also significantly ‘greener’, representing a saving of well in excess of 500,000 pages per year, along with corresponding savings in energy, materials and drastically reducing waste, too.
• Many of our leaders have a background of working for conservation bodies such as RSPB, BirdLife International and English Nature, as well as various county wildlife trusts. By employing local guides and utilising eco-friendly lodges on many of our tours - in Hungary, Bulgaria, India, Sri Lanka, The Falklands, Gambia and Brazil to name but a few - we help both to support local economies and to demonstrate the importance and value of the natural world, as well as to encourage conservation in countries where it really matters most.
• The British Birdwatching Fair - the world's largest annual gathering of birdwatching enthusiasts - is a major fund-raiser for conservation, having so far contributed in excess of one million pounds to selected areas of worldwide ornithological importance identified by BirdLife International.  Over the years, our financial support for this event has included help for Moroccan wetlands, Halmahera (Indonesia), Ke Go Forest (Vietnam), Mindo Forest (Ecuador), Brazil's Atlantic forests, Sumatra's lowland rainforests, globally threatened seabirds, Eastern Cuba, Madagascar’s wetlands, Peru’s dry forests and saving Gurney’s Pitta.
• Additional donations and support we have given over the years include BirdLife International’s Threatened Birds Programme and Eastern Cuba project, the BTO, Oriental Bird Club (Green-billed Coucal project, Sri Lanka and Sociable Lapwing project in India), RSPB, SOVS (Spolocnost pre ochranu vtactva na Slovensku) in Slovakia, Sociedad Española de Ornitologia (SEO, Spanish Steppes project), and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. We are Corporate Sponsors of the Neotropical Bird Club and the Oriental Bird Club.

Over the past two years, Limosa has given more than £7500 to the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust Red-breasted Goose monitoring project in the Balkans. A big thank you to everyone who supported our special WWT tours!

At the August 2005 British Birdwatching Fair, £240 given by Limosa in support of India’s 2005/6 Sociable Plover survey.