UK Nature and Environment

A new “national forest” is to be created across a swathe of the west of England from the Cotswolds to the Mendips, the Government has said.

The new “Western Forest” project will create 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) of woodland by 2030 across five priority areas in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol, with plans to plant 20 million trees by 2050.

The Government said the announcement was a first step in meeting its manifesto commitment to create three new national forests, and would bring trees and woodlands closer to people in urban centres such as Bristol, Gloucester and Swindon.

A "rare and precious" landscape on the Isle of Wight will be preserved for future generations after it was acquired by a wildlife charity.

King's Quay - formally known as Palmers Farm - has been described as the island's "last unspoilt inlet on the Solent".

It has been bought by the James Tuttiett Charitable Trust (JTCT), which has partnered with Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to protect it.

JTCT said the purchase would provide "a sanctuary for wildlife and a legacy of conservation".

People in Skegness have described being "moved to tears" after debris was found on a large stretch of the beach following a crash involving two ships.

The impact between an oil tanker and cargo vessel Solong in the North Sea, off East Yorkshire, on 10 March, triggered an explosion and fires, which have been extinguished.

One crew member of the Solong, a Filipino national, is missing and presumed dead. The Russian captain of the cargo vessel has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

The owners of the cargo ship admitted tiny plastic pellets, held in containers on board, had been released. The coastguard said they were being removed from the beaches in Lincolnshire and Norfolk.

A herd of hardy Exmoor ponies has been released on moorland to help drive the restoration of natural habitats and boost bird numbers.

The endangered small horses have been let loose on 126 acres (51 hectares) of farmland in Horwich, Bolton, which is being restored to its natural state.

The scheme is being run by Environment Bank, a company which sells parcels of land to developers to offset the environmental impact of their construction projects.

Villagers are set to endure a “necessary evil” stench for the next 18 months as the removal of 35,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste finally begins.

Some 20 lorry loads a day are expected to begin clearing the Hoads Wood site in Ashford which has been described as a “desolate wasteland” plagued by 12ft high mounds of rotting rubbish.

The Stone-curlew, a shy and peculiar looking sandy-brown bird, was once a common sight in England during the spring and summer months. However, by 1985, its population had plummeted, with only 150 breeding pairs remaining.

The decline of this species was primarily driven by habitat loss. Stone-curlews typically nest in dry, well-drained soils, such as chalk grasslands, sandy heaths, and most importantly, farmland, where they find an abundant supply of insects to eat.

As traditional grasslands and heathland disappeared, Stone-curlews were forced to nest on cultivated land, where their eggs and chicks faced significant threats from intensified farming practices and pesticides.

Conservationists are celebrating a record year for bitterns after a monitoring project revealed numbers had increased by a fifth since last year.

Bitterns were declared extinct in the UK in the late 1800s as a result of persecution and habitat loss, before returning to Norfolk in 1900.

Results from the RSPB and Natural England's annual project found 283 "booming" males counted in 2024, a rise of 20% in 12 months.

Volunteers across the UK are being asked to become ‘wildlife detectives’ this spring by searching their gardens, parks and other urban green spaces for wild mammals and recording their findings online.

Conservationists at leading wildife charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) are calling for nature lovers, families and individuals to participate in their annual Living with Mammals survey, which runs throughout the year. The survey helps conservationists track changes in wild mammal populations, from bats and badgers to wood mice and weasels, and crucially, identify those that need the most urgent support.

Taking part is simple: just spend a little time in a local green space – it might be a garden or park, an allotment or churchyard – looking for wild mammals or the signs they leave behind such as footprints or droppings, and record it online. And whether you spot a ubiquitous grey squirrel or a rare red one, a molehill or muntjac tracks, every record submitted to the survey’s website (ptes.org/lwm) is important. The survey is open to everyone, with guides and information on recognising the different species you might see, so anyone can become an expert!

River Action is a campaigning body committed to addressing the severe problem of river pollution across the UK.

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After more than a year of careful rearing, thousands of juvenile native oysters have now been returned to the Milford Haven Waterway, marking a major milestone in an ambitious restoration project involving the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority.

Since the project began in late 2023, Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences has been nurturing native oyster broodstock collected from Angle Bay and Burton Ferry. These oysters spawned multiple times in controlled conditions, producing hundreds of thousands of larvae. The tiny larvae were then reared until they were ready to settle on to shells, where they mostly remain fixed as they grow. Some scallop shells held as many as 160 individual oyster spat, ranging from 4mm to 10mm in size.

In February, an estimated 200,000 baby oysters were released into the Waterway by students from Paddle West. The team (assisted by Sky the dog, and with rescue cover support from Rudders Boatyard) successfully transported the oysters to their deployment site in shallow water where they were laid by hand.

Once abundant in UK waters, native oyster populations have dramatically declined due to habitat loss, pollution, over-harvesting and disease.

An ambitious drone tree-seeding trial in the South West – one of the largest ever using native tree seeds – could revolutionise the expansion of rainforests.

In a project led by the Woodland Trust, high-tech drones weighing 110kg and carrying up to 58kg of seeds have scattered 75,000 seeds across the rolling hills around Bodmin.

The drones, which hover just a few metres above the ground, can reach areas inaccessible for human planting by hand. Working with the South West Rainforest Alliance, the Woodland Trust hopes the new seeding technique will help triple the area of temperate rainforest in Devon and Cornwall from 8% to 24% of land area by 2050.

The Saxons knew the West Sussex village of Storrington as Estorchestone, the “abode of the storks”.

But the graceful white birds disappeared from its skies more than 600 years ago, when they became extinct in Britain.

Now, after the white stork’s successful return, Storrington and the nearby Knepp estate have been designated a “European stork village”.

An operation is under way to retrieve thousands of plastic pellets from the North Sea that were spilt in a collision between two ships last week, in which one man died.

The coastguard said the pellets, made of plastic resin and known as nurdles, were spotted by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and have begun to wash up in melted clumps on beaches in Norfolk and the surrounding coast.

Although they are not toxic, they do pose a danger to wildlife, the coastguard said.

A record 50% more raw sewage was discharged into rivers in England by Thames Water last year compared with the previous 12 months, data seen by the Guardian reveals.

Thames, the largest of the privatised water companies, which is teetering on the verge of collapse with debts of £19bn, was responsible for almost 300,000 hours of raw sewage pouring into waterways in 2024 from its ageing sewage works, according to the data. This compares with 196,414 hours of raw effluent dumped in 2023.

The data, obtained by the analyst Peter Hammond in answer to an environmental information request to the company, comes after Thames Water won approval from the court of appeal for a £3bn emergency debt bailout to avoid collapse.

Train operator TransPennine Express (TPE) has installed dozens of bird and bat boxes at nine of its stations, aiming to provide additional habitats for native wildlife.

Fifty boxes have been installed on buildings, walls and trees at Yarm, Northallerton, Thirsk, Hull, Cleethorpes, Grimsby Town, Barnetby, Scunthorpe and Stalybridge stations.

The operator has used different types of boxes, which it hopes will encourage a variety of different species. It wants its stations to become home to a variety of bat species, and to species of birds including robins, blackbirds, wrens, wagtails, swallows, and swifts.

An area the size of 16 football pitches will be planted with 15,000 trees.

The National Trust's Dunstable Downs, in Bedfordshire, is set to welcome the trees over the next two years.

A spokesperson for the trust said a variety of native species, including oak, hornbeam, wild cherry, silver birch, small-leaved lime, hawthorn, hazel, willow, and crab apple, would be planted.

The project has been supported by the Forestry Commission through an England Woodland Creation grant.

Nature enthusiasts and bird watchers were treated to a rare sighting of a Eurasian spoonbill on the Lancashire coastline.

The elusive bird was sighted on Saturday afternoon, and suggests that they have moved to the North West after initial conservation efforts began on the East Coast.

Having been placed on the European conservation concern list, they are considered a very rare breeding bird in the UK.

Young people will play a key role in converting a brownfield site into a community nature reserve over the next three years.

The 2-ha 'Grow Wilder' site on the edge of Bristol is part of Avon Wildlife Trust's Intergenerational Action for Climate and Nature programme. The initiative recently secured £870,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund, with organisers aiming to use the funding to transform the area for nature.

Connor Meadows, a youth officer involved in the project, said the group of 13-18 year olds leading the transformation is "really engaged with nature."

He said: "They're also going to be working with the local community to learn the history of the land and what it meant to people and wildlife in the past and use that information to decide what its future looks like."

Ever wondered what to do with all that brash left over from pruning or clearing work undertaken this winter? Rather than sending it off to be chipped or burned, why not turn it into a dead hedge – a wildlife-friendly fortress of twigs, branches, and general woody odds and ends?

That’s exactly what a fantastic group of volunteers and I have been doing at Castle Heather, Inverness, and let me tell you, the local wildlife is already taking notice!

A dead hedge is exactly what it sounds like: a row of sturdy stakes knocked into the ground with heaps of cut branches and twigs wedged in between. It’s a no-fuss, all-natural barrier that doubles as a five-star refuge for birds, insects, and small mammals.

A project to restore a large section of a River Tyne tributary has been completed.

Tipalt Burn, near Haltwhistle, Northumberland, has been reconnected to its floodplain after the watercourse had been historically straightened and dredged to increase productivity of the surrounding land.

That resulted in worsening water quality, loss of a wildlife habitat and increased the risk of flooding to communities living downstream, the Tyne Rivers Trust charity said.

Now, the burn has been reconnected to its floodplain, meaning water will flow more slowly, reducing flood risk and improving water quality.

Conservation charity Buglife asked for the public's help last year to find evidence of the Strandline Beetle (Eurynebria complanata), which was last spotted in England 23 years ago in Braunton Burrows, north Devon.

The charity said it had five public responses to a survey, with two sightings in Swansea Bay, Wales, but no sightings were recorded in England.

Buglife spokesperson Paul Hetherington said it was looking unlikely the beetle was still in England but "further work" was needed before it could say conclusively.

Labour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.

Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been.

In recent weeks, Labour has given the green light to airport expansion and vowed to change planning rules to deprioritise nature, while ministers have repeatedly disparaged bats and newts and ridiculed measures to protect fish. The chancellor Rachel Reeves has suggested economic growth trumps the government’s legally binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and there are suggestions the national wealth fund, meant for green projects, will be coopted for defence.

A corner of south Manchester with ‘immense’ wildlife has been declared a nature reserve.

Manchester council formally earmarked a section of Southern Cemetery, the largest municipal graveyard in the UK, as a local nature reserve on Friday (March 14). It’s the tenth council reserve to be announced, with the last designation taking place in March 2023.

However, councillors have designated an area which is ‘away from active burial sites’. The 28-hectare plot in Chorlton is already home to bats, owls, birds, bees, and butterflies.

Deputy council leader Joanna Midgeley, who represents the Chorlton Park ward for Labour, said the ‘wildlife is immense’.

The Isle of Man will feature in a major beach cleaning drive this weekend for the first time.

The Big Channel Islands Beach Clean - which takes place in Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark - is being extended in its seventh year to include the Isle of Man.

Volunteers across the British Crown Dependencies are being encouraged to do their bit to tackle pollution.

Bill Dale, founder of Beach Buddies on the Isle of Man, said: "Islands understand the problem of beach pollution more than anyone else because they have to live with it every day."

A lichen success story is being celebrated in an area of ancient rainforest in Cwm Gwaun thanks to the conservation efforts of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority.

Cwm Gwaun is one of the treasures of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, renowned not only for its deep-rooted Welsh language and culture but also for its ancient Celtic rainforest. This unique landscape is home to five Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), each nationally significant for its lichen-rich woodlands.

Lichens thrive in well-lit, humid environments with exceptionally clean air. However, in recent decades, these delicate ecosystems have declined due to changes in traditional woodland grazing practices and the impact of agriculture and industry on air quality.