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Sustainable Travel: 10 Tips to Make Your Travel Count
Naturetrek is a wildlife travel company founded by, and run by, naturalists, for naturalists! Every one of us here has a passion for the natural world – dating back to childhood in many cases – and we are all avid conservationists too, deeply concerned by the continuing decline of our planet’s biodiversity. Although we are enthusiastic advocates for the many benefits of naturebased tourism, and the positive impacts it can have worldwide (especially in less affluent nations), we are also aware of its negative impacts, particularly the role that air travel plays in global carbon emissions. Sustainability has always been a key part of Naturetrek’s ethos since the company was first founded in 1986. Today, being a ‘responsible traveller’ is more important than ever and all of us – whether we are working in the ecotourism sector or a participant on an overseas holiday – have a duty to the natural world to ensure that we strive to maximise the positive impacts of our time abroad.
Below we offer 10 suggestions to consider when formulating your travel plans for the rest of the year ahead and beyond.
On pages 38 and 39 of our current 2023/24 brochure, and on our No Fly Tours page, you will find a selection of European tours that do not involve any flying whatsoever and instead travel to the venue by train or ferry (or both). Examples include:
Picos & Plains – The Best of Northern Spain
France – Cranes & Champagne
The Netherlands in Winter
France – La Brenne (Butterflies) & (Dragonflies)
Many of our other European Tours that usually start and end with a flight – can also be reached by ferry and/or train for those who would prefer not to fly.
3. Go Long, not Short!
Since the most carbon-heavy part of your holiday is the flight, it makes sense to spend as long as you can in your chosen country and thus maximise the positive aspects of your visit. This can be achieved in various ways, such as:
Extensions – Extend your holiday to visit another reserve or region of the country or perhaps an interesting city. All of our tours can be extended at the start or end (or both!). Some have ready-made extensions that can be booked direct from our website, on others we’d be delighted to design a bespoke extension for you. You might also like to stay on to volunteer on a local conservation or community project. We would be delighted to offer ideas.
Linking Tours – Ever since Naturetrek was first founded, we have planned our tour dates very carefully to ensure that a wide variety of our holidays in Europe and further afield – especially the shorter tours of 10 days or less – can be linked together and booked back-toback. As well as creating a longer, more worthwhile, holiday, there can also be a saving to be enjoyed by linking trips together, in that since you’ve paid for your flights in the cost of the first tour, the second one can be booked on a land-only (no-flight) basis! A few examples follow. The dates and prices shown are inclusive of both tours:
Dates: 26th Feb – 14th Mar ’24
Cost: from £7,290
Colombia - Santa Marta Endemics & Colombia - Multicoloured Tanager Tour
Dates:Sun 3rd Mar – Fri 22nd Mar ‘24 & Tue 19th Nov – Sun 8th Dec ‘24
Cost: from £7,590
The Island of Cyprus & Spring in North Cyprus
Dates: 20th Mar – 3rd Apr ’24
Cost: from £3,140
Go Slow in Mallorca & Menorca
Dates: 13th Apr – 27th Apr '24
Cost: from £3,890
Undiscovered Iceland & Iceland in Spring
Dates: 16th May – 1st Jun ’24
Cost: from £6,490
Botswana’s Highlights & Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park – Nkonzi Camp
Dates: 11th Sep – 3rd Oct '24
Cost: please call 01962 733051 for prices
4. Go Vegetarian or Vegan
It requires significantly more land and fresh water to rear cattle, pigs and other animals – both for grazing livestock and growing their feed – than is required to grow vegetables. Reducing your meat consumption, and opting to eat more plant-based food, is one of the best ways you can reduce your carbon footprint (both at home and on holiday). For more information, visit Greenpeace's dedicated webpage. We can cater for a vegetarian or vegan diet on the majority of our tours these days and are delighted to launch a new range of exclusively vegetarian and vegan holidays.
5. ‘Tours on Foot’
You might like to consider one of our holidays where, once you reach the destination, all excursions are taken on foot or by public transport. These holidays inevitably have a lower carbon footprint than those where a minibus is used to travel around. Examples include:
Wengen – Alpine Flowers of the Swiss Alps
Switzerland – Alpine Flowers of the Upper Engadine
Sark in Summer
Go Slow in Sark
It may come as a surprise to learn that Naturetrek offers more holidays in and around the British Isles than to any other country on our planet! From the Isles of Scilly to Shetland and from Pembrokeshire to Norfolk, we operate an unmatched variety and number of wildlife tours on our home turf, most of which can be reached by public transport. Indeed, UK-based tours will make up nearly 30% of all the holidays we sell in 2023, ranging from day trips to 10-day multi-night breaks. Explore our range of British Breaks to consider for the autumn and winter.
7. Travel in Winter
If you travel to somewhere warm during our winter months, you not only escape the UK’s cold and wet winter weather, but you can ‘offset’ some of your holiday’s carbon footprint by turning off your central heating and hot water etc. It’s a small saving, but every little helps!
8. Speak to Naturetrek Tailormade
Our team at Naturetrek Tailormade would be delighted to design a holiday for you with as minimal a carbon footprint as possible. You could travel by train and ferry, eat vegetarian or vegan cuisine, or perhaps stay at properties powered by renewables. For more information please contact Georgie Dodds on 01962 733051 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
9. Join a Butterfly Conservation Holiday
We offer a range of tours in conjunction with conservation charity, Butterfly Conservation, whereby 10% of the cost of the holiday is donated to the organisation. To date these tours have raised £228,000.
We pledge to plant a tree for every booking we take on our holidays. To date we have planted around 5,000 trees and shrubs here at the Naturetrek office in Chawton, Hampshire, with the aim of rewilding the reserve that we have created on land originally grazed by livestock. We are also looking closely at purchasing, and rewilding, additional land in the UK and overseas and more details on these new, and exciting, rewilding projects will be available soon! Since 2000 we have also been busy reforesting and expanding the Naturetrek cloudforest reserve in Ecuador. Currently, our protected land covers 1,389 acres which is twice the size of the City of London! Funds come from a £15 donation we make for every return long-haul flight we book for our customers and £5 for every return short-haul flight. We also ask all those booking a holiday with us to match our donation. Although, naturally, this is optional and there is no pressure whatsoever to donate, we find that most people do, and some very generously give more! To date we have raised over £445,000 in this way. Any additional donations to this fund are, of course, greatly appreciated! On pages 6 and 7 of our Spring 2022 Newsletter we outlined in detail ‘The Case for Ecotourism & Responsible Wildlife Travel’ (copies available on request) and provide more information on our full ‘Sustainable Tourism’ policy. Further inquiries can be made by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..