I am Director of Conservation at the Wildwood Trust in Kent.

In 2004 I was lucky to be awarded the Churchill Fellowship so I could undertake fieldwork in China. My project was to work with colleagues in China to search for the critically endangered blue-crowned laughing thrush which was rediscovered in the wild in 2000. I spent over a month visiting breeding sites of the bird and conducted a census of the birds and mapped their locations. The species is now formally protected in China and I still co-ordinate the International Studbook for the species.

My Fellowship led to a robust and long-term conservation action plan for the species which is still ongoing. Research into the distribution and ecology of the species is also being conducted. Without support from the Fellowship, none of this fieldwork would have been possible.