UK Nature and Environment

Firefighters are dealing with a wild blaze that has spread over a large area of forest in Scotland with police urging people to stay away from the area.

Emergency services were called to Glentrool in Galloway, southern Scotland, at about 11.50pm on Friday with fire crews still on the scene on Saturday afternoon.

Police Scotland said the wildfire was expected to reach the Loch Doon area of East Ayrshire at about midnight

The gluing of rare ‘scrambled egg’ lichen to the ground is my kind of conservation, says Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserves officer Robert Morgan

Lichen is a topic that’s not usually covered in the news. So, for those unversed in the subject, lichen are those weird crusty growths on churchyard headstones, old trees, roof tiles or, in the case of mine, the bodywork of a dilapidated car.

Lichens have fascinating biology and are important indicators of environmental health, particularly airborne pollution, so much so, the vulnerability of some species has driven them to national extinction.

England’s non-woodland trees have been mapped for the first time, using cutting-edge methods of laser detection and satellite imagery.

Tree scientists at the UK’s Forest Research agency have built a comprehensive picture of trees in urban and rural areas in a “groundbreaking” map that goes live on Saturday.

The tool will allow conservation groups and local authorities to target tree-planting efforts more accurately by pinpointing lone trees that could be connected to nearby wooded areas, bolstering habitats for wildlife, they said.

"When birds see a dog, they see a predator."

Naturalist Chris Packham is pleading with dog owners to keep their pets on a lead during bird breeding season.

The BBC Springwatch presenter told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast that when a dog disturbs a bird on the nest it an abandon its eggs.

Launched in 2021, the five-year £4.5m the LIFE Raft project, which runs until the autumn, has been working to eradicate rats and ferrets from the island off the north coast.

Now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who run the project, have said they are "optimistic" the ferret population on Rathlin has been eradicated.

"To date, there has been 98 ferrets caught, and from November 2023 there have been no confirmed ferret sightings," the project's fieldwork manager Michael Rafferty told Causeway Coast and Glens council earlier this week.

Loch Ard Forest is set to become home to an additional pair of beavers.

Working with the Beaver Trust, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) released the pair into a small lochan with good areas of wet woodland around the edge of the water and where there are currently no beavers present.

The FLS managed site – sitting within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park – was assessed and surveyed by both the Beaver Trust and FLS and identified as providing ideal habitat for beavers. It follows on from several successful beaver releases at additional locations in Loch Ard Forest over the last year.

Urgent action must be taken to better protect and restore Northern Ireland’s most precious places for nature, a report released today [Thursday, April 3] has found.

In its latest report, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) examines how well laws designed to protect key areas for nature, such as the Antrim Hills, Upper Lough Erne, Lough Neagh and Rathlin Island, are working.

These areas and others represent the most important of Northern Ireland’s natural landscapes and biodiversity. They support rare or threatened plants, animals and habitats.

WILDLIFE has been suffocated and burned, with habitats destroyed, after two large heath fires broke out.

Around 80 firefighters were called to Upton Heath shortly before midnight on April 2, before being dispatched to Canford Heath at around 5.30am the following morning.

Following the two huge fires, around 51 hectares of heathland was damaged in Upton with an area of 500m x 50m affected in Canford Heath.

Chief executive of Dorset Wildlife Trust, Brian Bleese, said the “big issue” with these fires are the already fragmented heathlands.

The National Trust has planted a staggering 375,000 trees across North Devon over the past five years, in a sweeping drive to combat climate change and boost biodiversity.

The project is part of the charity’s wider ambition to establish 20 million trees across the UK by 2030, aiming to create habitats for wildlife, lock up carbon, and offer green spaces for people to enjoy.

During the 2023/24 season alone, the North Devon team more than tripled their target, planting 101,000 trees and bringing their running total to 210,000 since 2020. Sites at Arlington Court, Woolacombe, West Exmoor and Hartland saw tens of thousands of trees planted, with species including oak, hazel, hawthorn, birch, rowan and crab apple carefully chosen to suit each location.

Sand lizard, smooth snake and adder are particularly vulnerable to threats such as climate change, recreational pressures and fires, which can severely damage their habitats.

The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC) is creating and restoring heathlands in the Forest to enable the recovery of these species and improve the resilience of their habitats.

To date, much of the focus has been on creating a more open heathland by clearing overgrown gorse, creating ideal spaces for reptiles to forage, breed, and bask.

Groundwork has begun to create a new area of wetland at the Great Fen nature reserve, in Cambridgeshire, as part of The Great Fen project.

Work at New Decoy Farm, near Ramsey, will create channels that will eventually fill with water and help turn former arable fields into reedbeds, grassland and ponds.

Lorna Parker, Great Fen project manager, said: "A lot of planning and preparation work has led up to this moment, so it is fantastic to see the diggers breaking ground at New Decoy for the first time."

The migratory birds bred at Washington Wetland Centre for the first time in its history last summer after an artificial nesting bank was introduced in October 2023.

The centre said it was difficult to get an accurate number of successfully fledged sand martins due to their agility and speed, but it thought at least 60 to 100 young birds managed to leave the nests.

The team is now hoping for a second successful breeding season.

There is hope puffins have built some immunity to bird flu as one of the Farne islands reopens to tourists, the National Trust has said.

The trust, which cares for the islands off the coast of Northumberland, said all seabirds remained free of bird flu in 2024.

In recent weeks there have been cases of the virus in Burnopfield, forcing the Animal and Plant Health Agency to set up surveillance zones in Tyne and Wear.

Floating islands have been installed in a dock to provide new habitats for wildlife.

The three artificial islands have been created in Middlehaven Dock in Middlesbrough, where few natural habitats exist.

The platforms have been pre-seeded with native plants and it is hoped they will provide a haven for insects, birds, molluscs and fish.

Peat is formed over thousands of years from partially decayed plants in waterlogged conditions. Its ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide means peatlands are key to the UK's ambition of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

However, our peatlands are under a two-pronged attack - from the past and from the future.

Historic damage caused by human activities like farming, forestry and peat cutting has left 87% of England's peatlands degraded and dried out, emitting tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, external (Defra).

A group of anglers trying to restore the ecosystem of a river have seen off a challenge by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, who claimed that cleaning up the waterway was administratively unworkable.

Reed pursued an appeal against a group of anglers from North Yorkshire, who had won a legal case arguing that the government and the Environment Agency’s plans to clean up the Upper Costa Beck, a former trout stream devastated by sewage pollution and runoff, were so vague they were ineffectual.

The environment secretary decided, after Labour won the election last year, to continue the challenge, which had begun under the previous Conservative government.

The Riverwoods Blueprint Project, led by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, is excited to announce the launch of a £200,000 grant to kickstart a pipeline of new river woodland creation and restoration activities across Scotland.

The Riverwoods Development Grant will fund 10-20 environmental NGOs, charitable trusts, community groups, local public bodies, and others in Scotland to produce river woodland development plans – the essential first step in enhancing local river health, creating new homes for wildlife and improving access to nature.

Scotland has over 125,000km of rivers and streams. River woodlands – the trees and woods in, next to and near rivers, burns and lochs – are vital for creating and maintaining healthy rivers. These biologically rich areas provide a link between land and water and are the green arteries of an ecosystem, supporting many of our most iconic native species including ospreys, white-tailed eagles, otters, red squirrels and Atlantic salmon.

A shift away from the familiar sight of bare winter fields can help improve soils and boost wildlife, a study suggests.

An assessment of “regenerative agriculture” – which focuses on improving soils, producing food and increasing farmland wildlife – found good evidence that minimising bare soils, for example by growing cover crops on land over winter, had benefits for soil health and nature.

But there was less evidence from the UK-focused study around benefits from “no-till” or “minimum-till” practices which limit the disturbance of the soil from ploughing, despite their prominence in regenerative agriculture.

More than half of the butterfly species in the UK are in long-term decline for the first time and experts say human actions are to blame.

The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, run by a coalition of conservation organisations, revealed that 2024 was the fifth worst year since records began for butterflies, with 51 of the UK’s 59 butterfly species declining last year compared with 2023, while just six increased.

Species including the small tortoiseshell, the chalk hill blue and small copper suffered their worst year ever.

Wildlife groups have expressed alarm after ministers promised a radically “streamlined” approach to UK environmental regulation intended to drive economic growth and speed up new housing, as well as major projects such as airports.

While officials said the plans should boost nature conservation overall, the removal of what one called “bat by bat” decisions, a reference to the £100m bat shelter constructed for part of HS2, could water down individual protections.

The new regime is based on a report commissioned in the autumn by Steve Reed, the environment secretary. Led by Dan Corry, a No 10 adviser under Gordon Brown, it sets out 29 recommendations, nine of which are being immediately adopted.

This week the Environment Agency released the annual summary of storm overflow (CSO) spill data, also known as EDM data, from water companies in England for 2024. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s far from good news for rivers.

With raw sewage spilled in England's rivers for an all-time high of over 3.6 billion hours, it’s clear that significant progress to address this form of pollution was not made in 2024.

If you're concerned about spills in your local area, you can check the Near real-time alerts tab of our Sewage Map to identify your nearby CSOs, and see whether a spill is currently occurring or when it most recently discharged and for how long.

Thirteen projects will restore and strengthen natural heritage across Wales thanks to Nature Networks Fund grants.

From building bat towers to providing training in countryside management, the funding will help people develop the skills needed to support nature’s recovery.

By connecting communities and habitats, the successful projects will improve the condition and resilience of Wales’ protected areas of land and sea, helping nature to thrive.

Ospreys have returned to one of their most important sites in England on the earliest ever recorded date after a "dismal" breeding season.

The first to arrive back from sub-Saharan Africa to Kielder Forest in Northumberland was spotted on the 21 March, three days ahead of the previous first arrivals to the area.

This has prompted hopes of a better breeding season in 2025 after 12 chicks failed to fledge last year.

Work to create a "mirror image" of one of Britain's last remaining ancient temperate rainforests has started in Devon.

Last week, volunteers from Moor Trees planted 450 saplings grown from acorns specially collected from Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor.

This work, which took place near the collection site, aims to support an expansion and regeneration plan by the Duchy of Cornwall to double the size of the woodland by the early 2040s.