Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust have great pleasure in bringing to you a guest blog this week by Paul Wildlifewriter. Many thanks Paul.

Imagine if there were fewer than three hundred robin nests in the whole of the British Isles. Questions would be asked, letters would be written to the Times, and the price of Christmas cards would go through the roof.

Yet, although ospreys have been one of the conservation success stories here, that is the situation with them. There are still fewer breeding pairs of ospreys than there are of golden eagles, choughs, hen harriers, or many other species that are regarded as “rare”. Ospreys may be recovering as a population, but they have not by any means recovered yet – despite the over-complacent view put forward by major bird charities and certain well-known TV presenters. Across the whole of Europe, best estimates of osprey numbers are between nine and ten thousand – and that's a scary low figure for such a huge geographical area.

Why is this important?

Ecologists regard ospreys as a key “indicator species.” As with many specialist apex predators such as otters, seals, and pine martens, their whole lifestyle depends on a complex and diverse food web. If ospreys are to be present, it means that the area supporting them must be in good health and ecological balance – clean rivers, varied (and mature) tree cover, and productive seas. This does not mean that ospreys can only exist in virgin wilderness: in many places they live happily in association with people – provided that the people concerned haven't messed the whole place up beyond redemption.

The Dyfi valley is a good example....

Beautiful, isn't it? Yet almost everything we can see here is the result of man's handiwork, and even the river itself no longer runs in its former course.

There's an increasingly popular view that, if only we would leave Nature alone to “get on with it”, then wildlife would thrive and everything would be fine. Well, the inconvenient truth is that - here in the UK at any rate - that train left the station several hundred years ago and it ain't coming back any time soon.

Modern real-world conservation is difficult, complicated and, in many cases, expensive. It is no longer sufficient to just “cordon off” our few remaining wildlife strongholds and hope for the best. Instead, we have to find ways of managing our landscape so that people AND animals (and plants, and geology, and everything else) are able to co-exist without detriment to any.

Difficult, yes – but the thing IS possible, with sufficient will, knowledge and application. And the ospreys will tell us how well we are doing.

What is the future for ospreys in the British Isles?

This map does not show the position of osprey nests. Instead, it shows areas where there is more than one productive osprey nest within a radius of 50 km. I have chosen (rather arbitrarily) six other locations that would be ideal habitat for the birds as their expansion continues – but there are none breeding there at the time of writing. We humans can (and have) put up nesting platforms in such places, but the real challenge is to look after the habitats themselves. It has taken more than half a century for ospreys to recolonise our islands to the extent that they have, so it should be clear that short-term complacency is not appropriate if the progress is to be maintained.

Historical records and cultural references tell us that these fascinating and charismatic birds used to be widespread – not just in Scotland, but in England, Wales, and Ireland also. They can be again, if we keep up the good work - not just next season but in all the seasons to come.

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Are things looking up for Monty and ospreys generally in the UK?