Jim Wardill

Jim grew up in the birding hotspot that is the East Yorkshire coast, where his early fascination with birds flourished. Whilst studying at university he organised and led an ornithological expedition to a remote national park in Sulawesi, then spent the following five years doing the same in other parts of eastern Indonesia. Leading the expedition that rediscovered the long presumed-extinct Cerulean Paradise-flycatcher (the world’s rarest bird for the following decade) on the island of Sangihe will remain a career highlight!

Upon his return to the UK in 2001, Jim started working for the RSPB and had been with Europe’s largest nature conservation charity ever since, where he is now Operations Director for Northern England. An all-round naturalist with special interest in birds, Jim leads teams who work on and around RSPB reserves on coasts, estuaries and in wetlands and uplands across the North. A qualified primary school teacher with experience in environmental education, Jim has always loved enthusing and inspiring people about nature.

Following on from travels in his twenties to see some of the forest birds he’d always dreamed of seeing, as well as expeditions and rainforest conservation work, Jim has maintained his involvement in international conservation with sabbaticals to the Gola Forest in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and with the tropics through leading wildlife tours to Borneo and the Caribbean amongst other places.