WILDGuides - ethical publishing, supporting conservation

WHO ARE WILDGuides?

WILDGuides was created in 2000 as a not-for-profit publishing organisation with a commitment to supporting wildlife conservation. In 2003, WILDGuides teamed up with English Nature (now Natural England), the Government agency that champions the conservation of wildlife throughout England. Together, we have produced a series of simple-to-use yet definitive photographic guides on Butterflies, Dragonflies, Orchids and Arable Plants, the profits from which support a range of conservation charities.

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP AND SUPPORTING CONSERVATION

WILDGuides' first title, Birds, Mammals & Reptiles of the Galápagos Islands was published in August 2000 and won the Technical Innovation Book Award in the USA. This book has become a best-seller and WILDGuides has been pleased to support the Galápagos Conservation Trust through donations from sales income. Our second title, Whales and Dolphins of the European Atlantic was published in June 2001 with the generous support of P&O Portsmouth and WILDGuides has been able to make donations from the sales income to both the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) and Organisation Cetacea (ORCA). Our third title, Britain's Butterflies was published in July 2002, supported by Leica Camera Ltd., with Butterfly Conservation as the beneficiary.

In 2003, WILDGuides began to work in partnership with English Nature (now Natural England), producing the first title in a series of joint publications. Arable Plants - a field guide, was launched at Kew Botanical Gardens in July 2003 and has since received widespread acclaim as the only guide available on the group of plants within the British flora which has shown the steepest decline over the last 25 years. To ensure that the information contained within the book is made as widely available as possible, a free web version was also created and can be viewed at www.arableplants.fieldguide.co.uk

WILDGuides continued to expand in 2004, assisted greatly by the support of English Nature and motivated by the feedback that we have received from the conservation charities we support, and from the readers of our books. In summer 2004 we published a further two titles in partnership with English Nature: Britain's Dragonflies, which supports the work of the British Dragonfly Society; and Britain's Orchids, which supports The Wildlife Trusts. Finally, in the autumn we published Red Kite Country - a celebration of the wildlife and landscape of Mid Wales, and the first book in our WILDeARTh series.

During 2005 and 2006, WILDGuides continued to publish books on overseas locations, with A Visitor's Guide to South Georgia being the first of its kind for that region. We also produced a second edition of A Visitor's Guide to the Falkland Islands on behalf of Falklands Conservation, a book which had already proved to be a valuable aid to travellers to this remote outpost. Continuing our support for Falkland Island conservation, WILDGuides also published Birds and Mammals of the Falkland Islands, a field guide to the wildlife found there. More recently, we published Wildlife of Seychelles, which has quickly become an essential companion for visitors to these islands - the beneficiaries being the Island Conservation Society and Nature Protection Trust. Yet another 'first' for the book world, produced by WILDGuides, was Below Freezing, the first dive guide to the seventh continent - Antarctica - which proved to be unexpectedly popular!

But WILDGuides has not been ignoring the UK and produced a beautiful guide book to the top butterfly sites in UK, Discover Butterflies. Published in the autumn of 2006, this book quickly became a best seller having featured in a list of the 'Top 10 Must-have Books for Christmas'. Hot on its heels was a book which examines the changes that have occurred in Britain's rural settings over the last one hundred years: Birds in a Village - A Century On.

During 2007 and 2008, WILDGuides published four more books: the highly acclaimed Whales and Dolphins of the North American Pacific, the stunningly illustrated Endemic Plants of the Altai Mountain Country, a completely revised second edition of our best-seller Whales and Dolphins of the European Atlantic and a remarkable book on Arable Bryophytes. We have been delighted that these books have all proved to be very popular and received excellent reviews. Also during this period, WILDGuides designed and produced Plants of the Falkland Islands on behalf of Falklands Conservation.

It was also during this period - in 2008 in fact - that WILDGuides entered into another exciting phase of development when we entered into partnership with the Dutch-based Crossbill Guides Foundation. This resulted in the production of new series of Crossbill's renowned nature guides - The Nature Guide to the Hortobágy and Tisza River Floodplain - Hungary. The latest in the series, covering the Cévennes and Grands Causses - France was published in April this year and is already proving to be extremely popular.

The first part of 2009 has seen considerable progress made in the preparation of our next raft of titles - and we have many in preparation which are due for publication over the next 18 months! The first of these, Britain's Reptiles and Amphibians, was published on 20 July and we have been delighted at the responses we have already received. The second, Flowers of the Forest - People and plants in the New Forest National Park, was published in November and is already proving to be very popular...

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

During 2010, WILDGuides will be maintaining the momentum and putting the finishing touches to Nightjars of the World and a revised second edition of our best-selling title Britain's Dragonflies. Good progress is being made with the much-awaited Britain's Bees and and a number of other exciting titles, including a series of botanical guides with Natural England, details of which will be available shortly. We are also excited about the prospects of further titles in the European Nature Guides series, which are being produced by our close associates the Crossbill Guides Foundation - the next in the series being Finnish Lapland and the Kuusamo area.

At WILDGuides we are proud of our dual achievements of producing field guides which appeal to the widest possible section of the general public, while also providing financial supporting to worthy causes linked to the species or habitats described in our publications. To date, we have contributed almost £25,000 to conservation charities in Britain and around the world. In the coming years we intend to better our achievements by producing many more field guides to wildlife in Britain and abroad, raising awareness and supporting conservation initiatives in the process. We would like to thank all of our partners, sponsors and, most importantly, the people who buy our books, for helping us to achieve these objectives.

WILDGuides SERVICES

We are always pleased to hear from prospective authors with ideas for new titles. Whilst WILDGuides is principally a publishing house, we do offer both in-house and, through our associates, a graphic and website design service. We also hold an extensive photographic library of wildlife images which are available for publication. Examples of our work, and further details of our services can be provided on request.

GETTING IN TOUCH

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