The UK countryside is empty of birds.

Where once there were lots of different birds of lots of different species to be seen, now they're gone, driven out by our increasingly intensified management of the countryside.

Where once it was possible to see flocks of hundreds of thousands of starlings during their beautiful murmurations, now it's only a few thousand birds in many locations.

Once familiar species like yellowhammers, linnets and even house sparrows have now disappeared, to the extent that it's exciting when even one is seen.

Larger birds such as black grouse, which were once common enough in North Wales that I could go to a specific valley and be pretty certain of seeing some, are now largely absent.

Birds we still think of as common, such as the herring gull, mistle thrush and song thrush are on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern.

We've completely lost some species that were hanging on, such as red-backed shrikes and corncrakes (though corncrakes hang on in Ireland and the Hebrides), and they're likely to be followed by favourites such as the nightingale and turtle dove, which are only increasing in places like the Knepp rewilding project.

A walk in the countryside here in North Wales will provide some nice birds, such as ravens, buzzards and perhaps a red kite, but the small birds have largely gone. We'll see plenty of non-native pheasants and maybe the odd non-native red-legged partridge, but our native grey partridge is long gone.

We may see a peregrine or sparrowhawk, if we're lucky, but the kestrel is now rarely seen because it has few areas of rough grassland to hunt its prey of small mammals.

Larger predators, such as the goshawk, remain rare and are still persecuted, along with hen harriers, short-eared owls, golden eagles and even buzzards and red kites.

If you ask many 'country folk' what's caused the massive declines in our small birds, they'll point to the crows and foxes, that do pretty well in our denuded countryside. These species can certainly be a problem when the ecosystem is so degraded that birds find it hard to find safe nesting sites. Fewer birds nesting and a higher percentage being predated is a recipe for extinction, but the long-term solution is not to kill the crows and foxes.

We need to realise that in a balanced ecosystem, the crows and foxes would be controlled by species like the goshawk, eagle and wolf. While I'm not suggesting we should reintroduce the wolf, it would make sense to try to encourage other species that can restore a balance to the ecosystem.

With more safe nesting sites, we'll have more small birds. With more large predators, we'll have fewer smaller ones and their impact will be less as there'll be lots of their prey species in lots of suitable habitat.

Instead of reintroducing wolves, lynx or even storks, we should be recreating natural habitats where their prey can thrive. Perhaps later we can think about the more contentious species, but there's one we need back now - the beaver.

Beavers are, as you probably know, a 'keystone' species; creating habitats for a multitude of species, from plants and insects, through fish, amphibians and reptiles, to birds and other mammals. Simply reintroducing beavers would massively increase our biodiversity, as well as slow down the flow of our rivers, reduce downstream flooding and clean the water.

Add to this the extensive revegetation of our uplands, not necessarily with trees, but with scrub and rough grassland, and the flow of water off the hills will be slowed even further.

One of the problems we have is even the oldest among us doesn't remember when we had a thriving biodiverse ecosystem in the UK, so how are we supposed to recreate this when few of us have seen what it looks like?

Recreating a thriving ecosystem in the UK is currently like trying to do a really complicated jigsaw puzzle, with most of the pieces missing and no picture!

Before we have a chance to do what we need to do to get our wildlife back, we need to see what it might look like, in a landscape similar to ours.

That's why I take ecologists, naturalists, countryside managers and anyone else who wants to see a thriving ecosystem comparable to what we once had in the UK to my 'secret corner' of south-east Poland, where wolves, lynx, wildcats, pine martens, wild boar, beavers and pretty much all the familiar species of birds, insects, amphibians and reptiles still thrive.

Check out what we've seen on previous trips, then book your place and see more wildlife in one day than you could see in a year, or more, in the UK.