As the name of this blog suggests, we here at 10,000 Birds are very into our birds and our birdwatching. Regular readers will have noticed that we are increasingly looking at ‘bugs’ too - butterflies, bees, beetles etc (we haven’t really gotten started on lions and lizards or fish and flowers, but give us time and we’ll undoubtedly be posting regularly on them as well). Hopefully anyone who’s stopped by here more than a few times will have also realised that we’re very pro-conservation. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that we 10,000 Birds bloggers are just passionate about wildlife and passionate about the environment that supports it.

All of which got us thinking - is there a way that we could help promote conservation and conservation organisations through the blog? After all, if there was no habitat left there’d be no bugs, if there were no bugs there’d be far fewer birds, and what habitat, bugs and birds we have left is mostly down to the incredible efforts of a whole crowd of underfunded, dedicated people who run clubs and organisations ranging from neighbourhood projects all the way up to international NGOs. Well, we’ve thought about it, and we’ve decided that one thing we could do is to import a feature from my old blog that I called ‘The 60 Second Sell’…

In a nutshell ‘The 60 Second Sell’ is all about 10,000 Birds providing a free, permanent ‘60 seconds long’ platform for any conservation/environment group/organisation who wants to take advantage of it. In a post that would ideally take about a minute to read we’ll give you a chance to reach a potentially new audience and to persuade as many of our readers as possible to join you, fund you, sponsor you, or at the very least agree with you. We know that this may not be quite as good an opportunity as, say, a free full-page ad on the New York Times or the Daily Telegraph - but we’re giving what we can, and our intentions are entirely honourable (and hopefully will assuage the lingering personal guilt we have about not being able to afford to join every worthy organisation out there).

So, if you/your organisation/your group etc - small or large - would like to have a free and absolutely no-strings-attached space on what is one of the most-visited bird blogs on the internet, email Charlie (charlie10000birds - AT - gmail.com) - and, please, no commercial organisations trying to sell your stuff on the cheap: if you want to advertise something on 10,000 Birds, please ask us…

So what would a ‘60 Second Sell’ look like? To give people an idea what we’re talking about - and the format we’d like to stick with - here’s a ‘60 Second Sell’ I prepared earlier for the conservation group I co-founded with my tirelessly enthusiastic and remarkably dedicated brother Nial, who is now Director of the absolutely splendid and totally worthy Birds Korea.

Organisation: Birds Korea What do we do?: Birds Korea is the national and international network dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats in South Korea and the broader Yellow Sea Eco-region. An NGO, we work in a variety of ways - all determined by our mandate and a clear vision of what needs to be done, with research and awareness-raising at the core. In summary, we work to make the connection between conservation of birds and the wise use of natural resources (from fisheries to agriculture to water management), and between the conservation of birds and the quality of life. Recent Work: Recent campaigns include internationalising the struggle to halt the reclamation of Saemangeum, initiating the internationally acclaimed Saemangeum Shorebird Monitoring Programme, and amongst many educational efforts we have been providers of accurate information on the H5N1 avian flu virus. We are also engaged in educational projects inside Korea, hold symposia on wetland conservation, and are regularly featured on Korean television and in the Korean media. Membership: Our role, our voice in Korea and throughout the region, depends on the strength our membership brings. Membership is free to anyone living outside South Korea, and just 20 000 won per annum for anyone living in South Korea. Website/s: We have both a Korean-language website (at http://www.birdskorea.or.kr) and an english-language website (at http://www.birdskorea.org). Both are frequently updated and contain hundreds of pages, including numerous articles related to conservation, to bird identification, and also the most up-to-date checklist of Korean birds available. Contact: Contact us from the links on our websites. In April 2007 we also opened new offices in Busan: Birds Korea, 1009 Ho, 3 Dong, Samik Tower Apt., Namcheon 2-Dong, Su Young-Gu, Busan, 613762, Republic of Korea. Office Tel: 051 627 3163 ; Fax: 051 627 3164. And finally…: We are establishing a solid international reputation for our work and we’d welcome your help in consolidating and spreading that reputation ever further.

How’s that? Simple really, and to make it even simpler for what we fully understand are some remarkably hard-working activists, if you’d like us to format the ‘60 second Sell’ on your behalf either send Charlie a few mailshots or give us permission to take the information from your website. We won’t post anything until you’ve seen an offline version and approved it, and the post will then go online on the next available Saturday and archived within our ‘conservation’ category making it very easy to find in the future. We will of course be happy to make any changes you’d like at any time or to take down your post if you ever want it removed.

10,000 Birds - supporting conservation? That’s the plan…