Today we have some wonderful news to share with you.

For the last two years, many of us at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust have been working hard behind the scenes on an ambitious and groundbreaking project. It's called 'Dyfi 360° Landscape - For People and Wildlife'.  It's a £1.378 million initiative that will enhance the features and visitor attractions of Cors Dyfi Reserve, where the Dyfi Osprey Project is situated. At the heart of the project will be a new flagship wildlife-watching 360° Observatory, ten meters tall (33 feet), situated slap-bang in the middle of Cors Dyfi Reserve, and just 230m away from the osprey nest.

Today we can announce that our funding applications have been successful, and that work on the project will start immediately.

Dyfi 360° Observatory

The 'Dyfi 360° Landscape - For People and Wildlife' initiative has been designed from the ground up and driven by passion, desire, response, and recognition.

• Passion to defend the natural and intrinsically linked cultural heritage of the area
• Desire to create a sustainable 'Living Landscape' for people and wildlife to live and thrive, and a safe place where people can learn, build confidence and be inspired
• Response to a call from the local community and visitors to offer more than we currently do
• Recognition that Cors Dyfi has the potential to become a major education resource for local schools, Aberystwyth University, and real-life work placements

The funding for the 360° initiative will come from two main sources. The Heritage Lottery Fund will grant £928,000 and ERDF's Communities and Nature project will fund £228,500. The remainder will be made up of volunteering time as in-kind contributions (£195,000) and Countryside Council for Wales (£27,000).

Looking forward - to a bright future

Around half of the grant will be spent on the 360° Observatory and boardwalk to it from the visitor centre. The genesis of the new 360° Observatory was inspired, of course, by the Dyfi Osprey Project. Around 140,000 people have visited the project since we opened in 2009 and every year we have been asking those visitors, via a visitor survey form (thank you, if you're one of the thousands that filled one in), what more they would like to see from the project.

Additionally, over 150 people, organisations, and community bodies were consulted. So, based on the feedback we received from visitors, volunteers, and the local community, the 360° Observatory and wider Living Landscapes project was born.

Why call it a 360° Observatory? There are three main reasons:

1. The view. This will be no bird hide on stilts. We will be able to see all the way around, a 360° panoramic vista following Monty and Nora as they fly around the reserve, the Dyfi River, and Snowdonia National Park. We'll be able to see Monty fishing - how fabulous will that be! We'll be able to see other birds too - wildfowl, waders, marsh harriers, kites, owls, warblers, nightjars, migrating birds. And all with a 360° view with superb optical equipment and a person there to help you and explain what you are looking at and for. In Welsh and in English.

2. It's not just about the ospreys and other birds. 360° means all of nature - the plants and animals that thrive on Cors Dyfi and beyond. It's important to understand that animals and plants don't live in isolation, they are all interconnected together with varying degrees of dependency on each other. At a great height looking around, we'll be able to focus on the ecology of the whole ecosystem around the Observatory in fantastic detail, helping us to ultimately understand it better.

3. Just like plants and animals don't live in isolation from each other, neither does wildlife exist as a single entity. We will focus on the geography and geology of the Dyfi, the history of this once-vast shipbuilding river, the culture and the Welsh language, education, children, communities, socio-economic benefits to the area and tourism. We will have more and greater ways of engaging with people, with better interpretation and technology at the forefront. We'll use cameras, microphones, new network technology, the internet, better imagery and social media to connect people with the project the world over. Finally, no 360° project can be open for five months of the year only as we are now. We will be open for 12 months of the year.

Can you see me? Bank vole on Cors Dyfi

The 'Dyfi 360° Landscape - For People and Wildlife' project will also fund four new jobs, including a Learning Officer and a Conservation Officer for Cors Dyfi. These new posts will enable us to do much more than we can now and forge greater and better links with education and universities, communities, and the wildlife itself, of course. Cors Dyfi is also in the Dyfi Bioshphere, Wales' only UNESCO Biosphere Reserve designation of a "special place where conservation and sustainable development go hand in hand".

The Dyfi Biosphere

Volunteer, Heather, pointing out the osprey nest to Ffion, a young visitor. Interpretation means much more than just panels on a wall.

I think it's fair to say that we are all pretty excited here at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust. Two years of dreams, aspirations, and a lot of hard work is about to become a reality. Many observatories now in use to watch birds and other wildlife started out as something completely different - lighthouses, buildings, signal boxes. The 360° Observatory will be built with people and wildlife as its main focus, right from the off. An iconic place to come and watch, learn and engage with wildlife in the UK.

The work starts now, we have planning consent and we have one year to get everything done and built.  If you have any comments, do please leave them below. If you have any questions, please ask them on our Facebook page or via the contact email at the top of this page.

Finally, a big thank you to all the people that have made this possible, especially those guys at the Heritage Lottery Fund and Communities and Nature, who have worked so hard with us over the last two years. Diolch yn fawr.

Monty and Nora's nest is around 9m high. Standing in the 360° Observatory, your eye level will be around 9m high - we'll see straight across to the nest on the same elevation as the ospreys. Now that is cool!

How big is an osprey nest? Ask four year old Owain, he knows, but we all will from next year onwards