Nature Needs You The Fight to Save Our Swifts

– Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2025 for Conservation Writing

"A voice for nature"
– Emma Marsh, RSPB

''An inspirational book that screams with urgency, bravery, heartache and hope. By the end you'll be flocking to take swift action of your own to protect a world that needs us as much as we need it."
– Matt Gaw, author of In All Weathers

"A compelling and powerful story of magnificent determination and love for the natural world. We need more people like Hannah."
– Lev Parikian

"We save what we love. Reading Hannah's story, compellingly told, you will fall in love with these increasingly endangered birds, true masters of the sky, and realise we must work together to save them."
– Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace

"A true mark of courage is the willingness to be vulnerable. Putting yourself on the line, nakedly so in Hannah's case, is the mark of a young woman who faces the challenge of making nature count. Courage is not fatalistic, nor does it follow the crowd to bland acceptance, it is stepping up and standing out. I applaud Hannah's book; her inner steel and her sassy take on conservation are inspiring. I am so heartened that there are courage-driven young women holding nature in the light so that it WILL be seen by the powerful."
– Mary Colwell, author of Curlew Moon

"This book might make you scream. It is the story of a fight that started with a promise to a small bird. It is about bird spirit and the spirit of a very singular human. Hannah Bourne-Taylor has a searing eye for both truth and charlatans. It is candid, courageous, powerful and profound. It is also riveting and nothing short of revelatory. Hannah is a hero of our times who pitted herself against giants and the dark business of vested interests. In the process, she is shamed, humiliated, trolled, disappointed, and let down. She becomes 'a pest' buzzing in their ears, and hopefully their conscience, and thank god, she will continue to be one."
– Keggie Carew, author of Beastly

"Hannah Bourne-Taylor is doing for swifts what Mary Colwell is doing for curlews. In a country where growth of consumption is the only game in town, we desperately need people like Hannah to call the governments and vested interests to account. A wonderful book that will make you furious, hopeful and inspired by turns. Buy it, read it and then become an activist yourself."
– Roger Morgan-Grenville, author of Shearwater

"A powerful inspiration for anyone concerned about the fate of our beautiful natural world."
– Tony Juniper CBE, environmentalist

"A passionate, eloquent polemic from a conservationist so attuned to the natural world that is singing and dying all around us"
– Saga

"A fierce and inspiring ride. I loved its passion, seriousness and courage. Hannah is Nature's suffragette and in time will be seen as one of the heroes of this struggle."
– Adam Nicolson, author of Bird School and The Seabird's Cry

"Nature Needs You is the story of [Hannah Bourne-Taylor's] impressive campaigning, but you may find yourself seething in frustration at the indifference of parliamentary representatives [...] This passionate book could be a primer for other would-be campaigners about the blockers they will face."
– Country Life

"[Hannah] is an engaging and impassioned communicator, and her rallying cry highlights the struggle of liaising with campaigners, lobbyists and politicians in a bid to effect meaningful change."
– The Observer

"[...] You may be aware of Hannah’s campaign: the one that saw her naked, delivering a speech on a soap box at Speakers Corner, before walking to parliament. But how much do you know about the work it took to  get there, or the toll that fighting on the frontlines for nature takes? So often we forget that there is a person behind these campaigns. Someone fuelled by a heady combination of passion, frustration, love, hope and despair, who has worked tirelessly for hours to find just the right words to say to just the right person to make them care just enough to listen. While Nature Needs You is most definitely a love-letter to swifts, it is also a how-to-guide to campaigning (there is even a checklist at the end of it, should you feel moved to step up). You could almost see this book as a field guide to politics [...] If, ‘passion is a superpower’ then this book is super charged. Nature Needs You is a bold, and desperate plea for us to care about the lives that swoop and scream around us. Share it, gift it, and speak about it because a summer without swifts just does not bear thinking about, does it? "
– Jeni Bell, British Wildlife 36(7), June 2025