BirdLife International has asked the British Birdwatching Fair (www.birdfair. org.uk) to support arguably the most contentious project in the fair's 17-year history: funding the establishment of a national park in Myanmar (Burma). N&c understands that there was disquiet among staff at both the RSPB and BirdLife that Birdfair 2005 will be raising funds for a country whose military regime is one of the most repressive on earth, but the Birdfair organisers and BirdLife directors have all backed the project. The flagship species for this year's Birdfair will be the spectacular Gurney's Pitta Pitta gurneyi and the project message will be `Saving Gurney's Pitta and its rainforest home'. That rainforest home is the proposed Lenya National Park, in southern Tennaserim. It was here that a BirdLife team found a substantial undiscovered population of this Critically Endangered `jewel thrush' in April 2004 (Brit. Birds 97: 488), following initial sightings the previous year. As the then known world population was barely 12 pairs in neighbouring southern Thailand, this was a major breakthrough. The Government of Myanmar has now provisionally agreed to a proposal to extend the boundaries of the 2,000 km2 Lenya National Park to encompass the areas where the pitta was found; these two further forest blocks will nearly double the park's size to 3,800 km2. The additional 50,000 ha is virtually the only lowland Sundaic forest that remains in the world, as on the Thai side of the border the lowland forest has been cleared for oil-palm and rubber plantations. If