Supporting the RSPB in 2024 and beyond

Sponsorship, Educational, Nature

Posted by Ed Roberts on 14th February 2023

A verdant woodland with the words 'Restoring Woodland Together' overlaid. The holidaycottages.co.uk and RSPB logos are present also.

During 2024, holidaycottages.co.uk supported the RSPB in its woodland restoration projects at several key UK conservation sites. By fulfilling a role in protecting our natural landscapes and wildlife in the UK, we have been able to devote ourselves to important environmental issues that are close to our hearts. This is why many of our customers choose to holiday with us every year. 

We feel it’s important to help preserve these habitats for future generations. To realise this task, over the course of 2024, for every booking made with us, we have made a donation to the RSPB to help restore 1 square metre of British woodland. At the time of writing, we are on the cusp of achieving 1 million square metres of restored woodland since this initiative began in 2021.

A compture-generated map, made to look 3D. It shows the three RSPB sites referred to in this blog.

In 2024, donations helped fund projects based at three sites in the UK: RSPB Franchises Lodge in the New Forest, Gwenffrwd Dinas in Wales, and RSPB Glenborrodale in Scotland. At this trio of sites, we have been able to restore a combined 226,195 square metres of woodland. We will be continuing our support for all of these reserves in 2025.

As the RSPB continues its work to restore woodland and protect existing areas such as planted wildflower meadows and open spaces for birdlife, wildlife and plantlife, our support has helped to keep carbon locked in and support a wide range of biodiversity benefits. Catch up on the news from across all three sites below.


A green woodland with lots of ferns and a path through the middle.

News from Franchises Lodge in the New Forest

Franchises Lodge in the New Forest in Wiltshire covers 386 hectares of woodland, featuring both deciduous and coniferous trees. The New Forest boasts a remarkable variety of plants and animals. The reserve is home to curlew, redshank, snipe and lapwing. Wood crickets can be heard and seen in the summer and early autumn and the reserve plays host to an array of butterflies, adders, common lizards and grass snakes. 

In 2024, staff and volunteers have continued the important work of removing invasive plants and thinning forestry plantations to make space for native species. Despite Rhododendron ponticum covering an area equivalent to around 90 football pitches when RSPB first took on the site, the team are managing to clear a good amount each winter to improve biodiversity and restore habitats. 

News from Franchises Lodge in the New Forest

The team have also continued their annual wildlife survey programmes at the reserve as well as carried out more targeted survey projects, which have helped to discover the presence of many new species on site. This work helps to gather important knowledge which will inform the ongoing management of the woodlands. One of these projects has revealed that Franchises Lodge is an important breeding site for Bechstein's bats. These are one of the rarest bat species in the UK, found only in parts of Wales and Southern England.

Thanks to holidaycottage.co.uk’s support, the reserve has been able to continue long-term, landscape-scale restoration work, and has provided specialist volunteers with the equipment they need to help restore and protect this important landscape, ensuring Franchises Lodge becomes a vital, wildlife-rich link between the open heathland to the south and the ancient woodland to the north. 

Visit RSPB Franchises Lodge


A drone view of Glenborrodale on a blue-sky day.

News from RSPB Glenborrodale in Scotland

RSPB Glenborrodale lies within Scotland’s rainforest, an internationally rare and important habitat found along our west coast. The rainforest is characterised by a ‘hyper-oceanic’ climate, meaning we get high levels of rainfall and relatively mild year-round temperatures, providing just the right conditions for some of the world’s rarest bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and lichens.

Unfortunately, the rainforest faces many significant threats, placing these fragile ecosystems under stress. One of the main threats is the colonisation of invasive non-native species such as Rhododendron ponticum, which thrives in the wet and mild climate of the rainforest. Rhododendron ponticum is not native to the UK and can dominate woodlands, suppressing native tree regeneration and shading out light-sensitive lichens and bryophytes which are not adapted to its presence. It is a highly successful and persistent plant, which can rapidly colonise new ground as well as being able to regrow from small sections of root. Therefore, complete eradication from an area usually involves many years of follow-up work.

News from RSPB Glenborrodale in Scotland

At Glenborrodale, rhododendron removal is a key priority in securing the future of this precious habitat on the reserve. Support from holidaycottages.co.uk has enabled the RSPB team to continue rhododendron clearance at Glenborrodale. In 2024, this involved the removal of bushes in areas requiring rope access, including crags, cliffs and gullies, as well as reserve-wide follow-up work across areas where funding had previously been cut. The support has been vital for us to continue our rainforest restoration work and make progress towards the full eradication of rhododendrons on the reserve.

Visit RSPB Glenborrodale


An aerial photo over Gwenffrwd Dinas showing plenty of green woodland.

News from RSPB Gwenffrwd Dinas in Wales

Located amidst the breathtaking landscapes of Mid-Wales, Gwenffrwd-Dinas is part of the Celtic rainforest and supports important populations of plants that thrive on the forest floor, including lichens and bryophytes, as well as being home to red kites, pied flycatchers, redstarts, common sandpipers, dippers and grey wagtails.

At the reserve, the team are carrying out vital work to improve and restore the quality of the woodland habitat. Ensuring the woodlands are well connected is important to ensuring populations of species stay connected, which in turn makes them more resilient to threats, such as the impact of climate change.

Last year the site teams carried out an assessment of the hedgerow habitats across the reserve. Hedgerows are a key element of the woodland landscape as they act as highways for species such as bats and birds to move between isolated pockets of woodland. They also provide nesting habitats for birds and small mammals and are an important source of food for a whole variety of wildlife. This initial assessment of the hedgerows has helped the reserve to understand the opportunities for improving the diversity of the hedgerow habitat by introducing more flowering shrubs, which will provide nectar, fruits and berries for a wide range of birds, mammals and insects as well as create new hedgerows which will link together woodland blocks. 

News from RSPB Gwenffrwd Dinas in Wales

Support from holidaycottages.co.uk has allowed the reserve to plant sustainably grown, locally sourced shrubs such as hazel, hawthorn, small-leaved lime and guelder rose which will improve the biodiversity of the site. The reserve teams have also been able to continue the work which began in the winter of 2023, restoring the woodlands by removing old fencing, plastic tree guards and other waste from the woods. This reduces the likelihood of small mammals and birds getting caught on old fencing materials, removes sources of plastic, which would eventually break down and end up in the soil or washed into rivers, and it also makes the woodlands safer for grazing animals. 

The reserve is already seeing evidence of the success of the work taking place, with a rare species returning to the woodland to breed in 2024:

The benefits of the efforts supported by holidaycottages.co.uk have been clear this year as the return of pine martens to the woodlands is a sign that they are healthy and able to support populations of these elusive mammals. We hope they will spread further across the reserve, and we look forward to watching them thrive.” – Jonathan Cryer, Site Manager

Visit RSPB Gwenffrwd Dinas


The future

At holidaycottages.co.uk, we have pledged to continue our supportive partnership with the RSPB, offering continued donations in order to help the charity preserve important habitats and keep carbon locked away. For more information on the RSPB’s national initiatives to improve our open spaces, please visit its website. 

Visit the RSPB

Disclaimer: Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information at the time of writing, please ensure you check carefully before making any decisions based on the contents within this article.