About us

Iceland Naturalist, Náttúruferðir in Icelandic, is a small travel company that specialises in natural history holidays in Iceland. We arrange holidays for many leading European and North American wildlife watching tour companies. In addition to providing them with all the logistics needed for a successful trip they also trust us to provide them with knowledgeable and reliable guides.

We've more than 20 years' experience of planning, organising and running trips like these and we're very proud of the reputation we have gained.

Guðrún Andrésdóttir's long experience of organising and running natural history holidays in Iceland has left her with a clear understanding of just what makes a good our great. A former teacher she currently serves on the advisory panel of Tún (an Icelandic organisation encouraging organic farming) and is involved with other Icelandic conservation groups.

Andy Jones began his career in conservation and wildlife in the UK. He was a warden on Skomer Island, a ranger with the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, the RSPB's senior investigations officer and a Wildlife Trust director. He studied geology and is an enthusiastic bird and whale-watcher. He has been leading wildlife holidays for more than 20 years.

Travel and the Environment

Travel has a measurable impact on our environment. As a responsible company we do our utmost to ensure that this impact is as low as possible. Some things, for example, disturbing breeding birds, damaging wild flowers or driving off roads are easy to prohibit and we have a strong policy against these and similar activities.

Other things are less tangible and require more thoughtful responses. We are all aware of the problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions and in common with many other organisations we seek to reduce our emissions as much as we can. In Iceland we are fortunate to have widespread access to renewable geothermal and hydro-electric energy. This means you can stay warm and shower freely with a clean conscience. Also, much of the food we eat is produced within the country and, of course, wherever possible we specify that tasty local produce is served in the hotels and guesthouses we use. Our vehicle emissions are offset through a global carbon offset scheme which we pay for ourselves. Many of our international tour operator customers have their own carbon offset schemes which try and neutralise emissions produced when their clients fly to Iceland.

We ask independent travellers to consider donating to the World Land Trust. This organisation seeks to conserve important habitats, particularly rainforest, by buying land and securing it for the future. This has two benefits: firstly, the ecological conservation of the forests themselves and secondly, the importance of forests as a carbon ‘sink’ when combating global warming in the future.