Destinations
2025
- Morocco
- Extremadura
- Crete
- Menorca (April)
- Lesvos
- South of Salamanca
- Picos de Europa
- Algarve & Alentejo
- The Gambia
2026
Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust
Linked to each Honeyguide wildlife holiday, we help to protect the wildlife we have enjoyed by contributing to a conservation project in the country visited.
This works by £40 of the price of your Honeyguide holiday being earmarked for a conservation body. £40 is the normal donation included since 2011, for both overseas holidays and the UK holidays & breaks run in more recent years, since the start of the pandemic. Sometimes these amounts are increased thanks to additional donations from group members. Overseas these go to a local conservation body, often the bird protection society of the host country, towards its current work. In the UK we also support local conservation work, such as the county wildlife trust where we stay.
Donations to conservation projects linked to our holidays in 2022 totalled £4,515 (£5,875 in 2022, £2,745 in 2021), with 2020 and 2021 affected by reduced activities during the pandemic). Our running total since 1991 is ££155,517, to Octoberl 2024. Through the Honeyguide Charity, the taxman tops up our contributions.
The societies and projects we support are described under each holiday. For example, to read about our link with SEO in Extremadura click here.
About us
The Honeyguide Wildlife Trust Limited was registered as a charity in June 2004, registered charity number 1104606. The object of the charity, in summary, is "To help conserve … the natural environment and wildlife”.
We set up the Charitable Trust to boost our efforts, in particular by claiming tax from HM Revenue & Customs against the contributions from Honeyguiders through 'gift aid'. This can raise an additional 25p in the pound, and we then make the usual donations with the holidays a bit bigger for LPO, SEO, GOB, HOS, ROS and so on. In a typical year, this raises an additional sum for conservation of more than £1,000. |
Lesser kestrels (Roger Tidman) - helped through our donations to SEO in Extremadura and LPO in France. |
Who's who
Trustees of the charitable trust are Helen Crowder, Malcolm Crowder (secretary) and Chris Durdin (chairman). Helen also helps to produce our colourful holiday reports. Look on the inside front cover of our holiday reports to read about holiday-by-holiday donations and running totals given to our partner bodies overseas. |
 |
How you can help
We welcome donations or legacies through the Honeyguide charity.
 |
Additional donations: if we know you, then a simple cheque is fine (or bank to bank transfer - please email for the Charitable Trust bank details). Or you can complete an additional donations form. |
About Gift Aid: Gift Aid increases the value of donations to charities and Community Amateur Sports Clubs by allowing them to reclaim basic rate tax on your gift. More information from HMRC here
Booking a holiday: we would be very grateful if everyone booking a holiday who is a UK taxpayer could complete the simple gift aid declaration on the booking form.
__________________
The most recent accountants' report (below) is for the financial year from October 2020 to September 2021. The accounts show £2,455 going towards the conservation projects we support in this financial year, for a second year much reduced from the levels before the Covid-19 pandemic (e.g. £8,888 in 2018-19).
Most of this was raised from £40 per holiday/UK break, and topped up by Gift Aid, plus additional donations especially through guided walks in Norfolk.
We are grateful for the help of the Charitable Trust's accountants in Norwich.
Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust accounts 2020-21
Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust accounts 2019-20
Older accounts of the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust:
The Honeyguide Wildlife Trust on the Charity Commission's website here.
The Honeyguide Charitable Trust online is www.honeyguide.org.uk which redirects to this page.
The Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust is a charity registered in England.
News
Conservation donations 2023
Three recent donations from Honeyguide - linked to Menorca, north Norfolk and Algarve & Alentejo - are described in this blog: Conservation donations from Honeyguide in 2023.
The blog gives details of all that we have done to support conservation projects in 2023, and gives our running total of £149,797 donated to nature conservation since Honeyguide started in 1991.
Spring 2020: support for conservation continues despite coronavirus pandemic.
We sent £550 to GOB Menorca, who said (in a tweet from @gobmenorca): "What a wonderful act of generosity. GOB Menorca is very grateful to all those Honeyguide clients who we were hoping to welcome again to this island but are now unable to travel. Thank you for your continued support in our important ongoing work defending the Island's nature." Thank you letter from GOB Menorca here.
News release from SPEA (BirdLife Portugal) and Honeyguide, 25 January 2018: "British wildlife group supports campaign against Algarve oil exploration." Full details here.
Honeyguide holidays in Valencia and La Mancha support the ringing group of local leader Pau Lucio called Grupo de Anillamiento Pit-Roig. The group was particularly busy in the autumn migration period of August and September and you can read highlights here, compiled by Pau. Similarly, blog here from March 2018 and photos from Valencia here, February 2016, of birds awaiting release after ringing by Grupo de Anillamiento Pit-Roig, to which we gave £550.
During our Algarve & Alentejo holiday in November 2015 we gave €1000 to SPEA / BirdLife Portugal for SPEA’s campaign against the illegal trapping of birds: more information about the campaign here.
Our Italy/Slovenia holiday in September 2015 raised €400 for DOPPS, the BirdLife International partner in Slovenia. This adds to the €350 raised from our holiday in Istria in May. DOPPS will use the donation to buy scientific literature needed for its conservation work.
Honeyguide conservation donations reach £100,000.
Recent donations in 2015 - €1000 for HOS in Crete, €350 for DOPPS in Slovenia, €1000 for LPO in the Camargue and £600 for the
Latvian Owl Research Society have taken our running total of conservation contributions of £100,974.
Autumn 2014: there were two donations this autumn.
| The first was £660/€785 to La Ligue pour Protection des Oiseaux (LPO) in the French Pyrenees, towards |  |
protecting lammergeiers, a project we've supported for many years.
There's information about how lammergeier numbers have grown, thanks to LPO and its partners, on our French Pyrenees web page.
 |
The second, for £700, on our La Mancha holiday, was to the bird ringing group in Valencia called Grupo de Anillamiento Pit-Roig. Recent highlights in the groups work are in |
December 2011 – Wildlife Outreach Network. The late Roger Jordan and his friends from the Wildlife Outreach Network in Essex added additional support to our projects for several years. They had contributed £4,700 through the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust by 2010.
Jill Jordan (read an anecdote involving Jill, Chris Durdin and Humphrey Lyttelton here) kindly arranged that the remaining money they raised also comes to us, with the result that £1,643 arrived during December 2011, concluding their donations at the grand total of £6,343.
The trustees' plan is to use this linked to our own projects much as before, in Roger's words "... to give a little help and encouragement to conservationists, especially young people, working on small projects in their own localities overseas." Some recently went to Bulgaria: more here.
June 2011 – LPO. Our biggest single donation ever: £2390 / €2630 to La Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux in France. This is the sum raised and combined from four holidays in France this year, namely the Dordogne, Camargue, Cévennes and French Pyrenees.
February 2011 – Freira Conservation Project in Madeira. Following the fire on the Zino's petrel breeding area in the summer of 2010, we accepted donations through the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust. Topped-up with Gift Aid, we raised £288 for Dr Frank Zino and his team, working at the sharp end for Zino's petrel conservation in Madeira. More here.
