VIRTUAL NATURE STORE - 10 reasons to shop with our amazing UK Wildlife Organisations!!

Wildlife gifts make ideal presents because they have so many great and unique qualities:

1. For children who are already mad about nature, wildlife gifts will add to their passion and help them explore new areas of nature in exciting and fun ways. 

2. Wildlife gifts can ignite a child's imagination and lead them towards nature for the first time. Something that will looks slightly different will raise inquisitiveness and be a welcome break from the norm! If you look through our links on the right, you will see just how engaging wildlife can be.

3. As many parents will tell you, connecting our children with wildlife will help develop thoughtful, kind, considerate and caring qualities. A respect for our wildlife and the environment is great to nurture, producing great role models and guardians in the future.

4. Wildlife gifts offer a great way to bond with your child. Reading and learning about the beautiful natural world or carrying out wild activities together draws on our instinctive attraction to nature (the energy of Biophilia), in a powerful and positive way.

5. Attachment to nature helps our children remain healthy and active, and exploring the UK's amazing countryside (using gifts as learning and exploring tools), with our children is proven to help our minds too in this fast and stressful modern way of life!!

6. The gifts found in the first two Aisles of our virtual store below come from our great national wildlife organisations. By purchasing gifts through these bodies, you will also be helping them carry out their important work that protects the vast array of flora, fauna and habitats that exist across the UK.

7. Wildlife gifts also help children to explore wildlife in our gardens. Not only will this persuade them to abandon the computer mouse and games consoles, but it will offer a great way for them to learn, whilst remaining under your watchful eye - especially useful for our younger children. It's also a great excuse to enjoy your own space and to connect with your children after school or on days where you are unable to go far from home. Gardens are "living class-rooms", with so much to explore and see in them and the sky above them.

8. By purchasing membership gift packages from our UK wildlife charity organisations, you open up a whole new world that will keep your children stimulated throughout the year, and will provide loads of new and exciting ways to get out and explore our amazing gardens, reserves, parks and other green spaces in 2014. Membership packages from our wildlife charities also fall under the "Gift-aid" scheme and so give even more to the preservation of our amazing world.

9. Wildlife cards for special occasions are a great way to get children, families and friends talking about wildlife. Cards stand out, the cost goes towards wildlife causes, and they use sustainable and environmentally-friendly alternatives to your usual "box of 40"!!

10. By buying gifts for yourselves from wildlife charities or green businesses, you lead by example and it presents a great and simple learning tool for children, whilst sharing. These green gifts for grown ups will also be included in our "virtual store"

So go on then.....get surfing through our links and pick gifts this year that not only stand out, but also do so much for our children's development and the protection of their beautiful world.

Welcome to our  virtual nature store!!!

Whilst this "store" was specifically designed for Christmas 2013, please remember that wildlife gifts and memberships can be obtained via these organisations and links all year round for birthdays, or simply to reward or encourage your children;

On Aisle 1  you will find great gifts from the 2013 STATE OF NATURE partners.

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation - Support Us - Shop

British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) - Gift Membership  - Shop and Support the BTO

Bat Conservation Trust - Gifts  - Join

Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland - Membership

British Briological Society - Membership & Subscriptions - Books

Buglife - Make a Difference to Wildlife - "Have You Got the Shopping Bug?"

Bumblebee Conservation Trust - Become a Member - Merchandise - Christmas Zone

Butterfly Conservation - Join-Why Become a Member - Shop

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens - Support Kew - Shop

Marine Conservation Society - Join, Donate, Adopt

Peoples Trust For Endangered Species - Shop - "Kids Gone Wild" Join the Club - Become a Supporter

Pond Conservation - "Give & Let Live"

Plantlife - Five Ways to "Save it with Flowers" this Christmas

RSPB - Become a Member - Shops on Reserves - Shop

The Association of British Fungus Groups (ABFG) - Membership

The British Lichen Society - Join the Society - Resources, Publications, Items for Sale

The Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland - Membership - Books

The Mammal Society - Shop Online - Membership

The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) - Join - Shop

The Wildlife Trusts - Become a Member - Shop - 

The 47 Wildlife Trusts - 
I have seen within my local "patch", the incredible work of our local Wildlife Trusts. Each is a separate charity, but all are members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

I have witnessed these Wildlife Trusts ensuring that Management Plans are created AND used, rather than being filed away, and they have also placed pressure on developers to consider wildlife and embrace it, wherever possible. They do so much for green spaces which don't enjoy the protection and resources of  member/fee entrance-only reserves, and their work is critical to the ecological network which links the amazing reserves that exist across the UK. This is but a taster of the wonderful work they do. 

The Wildlife Trusts are, like so many volunteer organisations, often "unsung heroes". You can spend a whole day on free-entry reserves like Doxey Marshes in Staffordshire, and there will be no one there to showcase exactly what the Trusts do for wildlife. You simply enjoy what they have helped to create and protect. Marvelous!!

For this reason it is only fair that I provide a link to the Map of Wildlife Trusts. Click on your local Wildlife Trust and you will be guided towards your local "Shop" and "membership" areas where you can support them, join them and see the amazing work that they do.


Aisle 1 of our virtual wildlife store, was always going to be reserved for the State of Nature partners who helped to send out such a strong message that we all need to do more to halt the alarming losses in UK wildlife.

Incidentally, you are probably aware that it was Sir David Attenborough's Introduction to that report, which moved me in such a way, that I set out to create the Moving Mountains Nature Network. Incidentally MMNN will also serve as a tribute to my son who gave me strength, before I gained another, and my Nan, who used imagination and the power of what is now known as "Biophilia" to first bathe me in the beauty of nature. She led me out to the River Cole in Birmingham at the age of 6, where a Kingfisher bonded me to wildlife permanently.

Sir David's words are powerful, as always in this report, especially when he was focussing on the silver linings:

"...it is heartening to see so many organisations 
coming together to provide a single 

voice,..."

We have therefore also built Aisle 2 in our virtual store. This will serve to showcase gifts and membership for other National Charitable Organisations that care for wildlife as part of their mission statement and certainly deserve space on our modest shelves!! They all contribute so much to the state of nature:

British Arachnological Society (BAS) - Membership - Sales

British Dragonfly Society (BDS) - Membership - Shop

Marine Life - Support - Wildlife Trips

Natural History Museum - Kids only (join) - Support us - Buy Online

Royal Entomological Society - Membership - Publications

Soil Association - Shop - Christmas Directory "the very best in organic food and drink" - Support us

The National Trust - Membership - Shop - Virtual Gifts - Farm Shops

The Tree Council - Shop/Donate

The Woodland Trust - Shop - Donate

World Wildlife Fund (UK) - Join WWF


Also: We have set up Aisle 3 and will create space here for any local or national retailers that can demonstrate support for our amazing wildlife organisations:

I have just started to fill this aisle by respectfully placing Enchanted Plants (producers of hand-made organic soaps) there. My reasons for this first selection are five-fold:

Firstly this beautiful Dorset-based business has formed a partnership with Plantlife UK

Secondly it doesn't use Palm Oil and considers sustainability, fair trade and locality carefully, whilst sourcing their ingredients

My third reason for placing this item first on aisle 3 was because whilst I interacted with Enchanted Plants, I was not subjected to "hard-sell" (Toys'R'Us should take a lesson from this after their latest disgusting campaign which is so damaging to our children's world). In fact Enchanted Plants are not even aware that I had selected them for this showcasing. If you have something good, you offer it, not force it, and you will be blessed for it. I hope that this comes as a pleasant surprise after all their hard work!!

My fourth reason is that if you look at Enchanted Plants' online gifts, they have a beautiful range of romantic gifts for mum and dad to enjoy after coming back from a fantastic day out connecting their kids with nature...and before they jump online to organise some wildlife treats for the Christmas stockings that will help protect our beautiful world for the children 
(Do you get the little hint everyone? ;-))

For any organisations that would like to be added to one of our Aisles, please contact us via smestowsightings@gmail.com

Also - our 2014 MMNN - Local Nature Networks will feature permanent "virtual shops" that promote local wildlife-friendly businesses, as well as great wildlife gifts and ideas for getting children connected with nature. Food and Farming is a major UK sector that affects the State of Nature across 75% of our landscape. We will have aisles in our Local Nature Network virtual shops to showcase the farmers that work with, rather than against nature.

MMNN is a non-funded volunteer organisation. We were three months old yesterday, so please bare with us as we grow.Our presentation may not score highly, but looks aren't everything.

However, to add character and depth, the pages on our sites will soon be adorned with children's wildlife artwork to emphasise our ethos and promote the connection of children to nature. 

Over the coming weeks we will be asking bloggers, wildlife groups, and green businesses to include a link to our virtual store in order to maximise the impact of this campaign. As a result our wildlife organisations will have more support and resources to carry out more wildlife projects in 2014.

We all have the power to create change. Let us see what we can do to help now. Passion creates hope. Your support really will make a difference. Anyone with a voice, please add this virtual store to your links.


Thank you.