UK Nature and Environment

White-tailed eagles (also known as sea eagles), disappeared from England’s skies more than 200 years ago but have slowly been making a return to the south of the country since 2019. A pair of the birds successfully bred for the first time last year and now there are plans to reintroduce even more.

The breed has an enormous wingspan of 2.5 metres (8.2ft), making it the UK’s largest bird of prey. A reintroduction project by Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England has been going from strength to strength and now there are plans to release up to 20 young eagles in Exmoor National Park.

White-tails used to breed in Exmoor before going extinct in from England in 1780. Experts say that Exmoor has proved to be particular hotspot for the birds and over the past few years they have been spotted visiting the area once again.

Plans to require Welsh farmers to have trees on 10% of their land in order to qualify for government funding have been dropped after widespread protests.

The requirement was part of planned changes to Welsh farming subsidies through the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), which is to be introduced in 2026.

Now it is set to be replaced by "a tree planting and hedgerow creation plan", which farmers would need to start to make progress on with a view to delivering this by 2030.

The bumblebee population has made an impressive comeback in a developed area by increasing to 116 times what it was two years ago thanks to a nature restoration group.

Rewilding Denmarkfield, a 90-acre project based just north of Perth, has been working to restore nature to green spaces in an increasingly built up area for the past two years.

Statistics from the charity show in 2021, when some of the fields managed by the project were still barley monoculture, only 35 bumblebees were counted.

But by 2023, after just two years of nature restoration work in the same fields, the population increased to 4,056. The diversity of bumblebee also doubled, according to the charity, from five to ten different species.

A Natural Resources Wales (NRW) project on the Western Cleddau river in Pembrokeshire is harnessing the power of trees to reduce nutrient pollution and improve water quality.

Approximately 6,500 trees have been planted along the banks of the river near it’s confluence with the Eastern Cleddau, to soak up excess nutrients from agricultural land run off.

The corridors of trees, averaging 14metres in width, act as buffer strips between farmland and the river and have been planted on non-productive land. They have been introduced with the full support of the landowner, who was eager to introduce positive environmental change.

As well as providing benefits to the Special Area of Conservation river, the new trees will provide connection with existing natural woodland on the land, benefiting a range of plant and wildlife species.

An Oxfordshire wildlife trust has joined a group of charities in calling for action to protect the UK’s chalk streams.

The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust has joined the group of nature charities in urging the government to safeguard these rare habitats in planning reforms.

Chalk streams are characterised by their clear waters and diverse wildlife, with 85 per cent of the world's chalk streams found in England, including Letcombe Brook and Chalgrove Brook in Oxfordshire.

Cheshire’s ancient woodlands are a cherished part of the county’s natural heritage, offering not just a haven for wildlife but also a repository of memories for generations of local people.

These woodlands, some of which have existed since medieval times, provide an enchanting escape into nature and a living connection to the past.

As we look to the future, there is enormous potential to increase our native tree cover, benefiting wildlife, farming and the wider environment.

Volunteers have answered a conservation charity's call to help repair areas around walking routes, but icy conditions forced the cancellation of a summit climb.

Friends of the Lake District’s Fell Care Day had been due to include a trip to the top of the Old Man of Coniston on Friday to restore footpaths.

Other activities were able to go ahead though, including dry stone walling, renewing a bridleway and cutting back invasive plants.

A large area of chalk grassland in east Kent is to be restored to create habitats for key species.

The project will cover 20 acres (8 hectares) of land around Dover Castle and the Western Heights aiming to provide suitable homes for choughs, Adonis blue butterflies, early spider orchids and other flora and fauna.

A mixed-breed livestock herd will be introduced for long-term management through conservation grazing.

Invasive plants are to be removed from sand dunes to protect the coastline.

The ecological work by Natural England is to be carried out using large machinery on the dunes at Bamburgh, Northumberland, as part of the Life Wader project.

The invasive species are destroying the dunes by interrupting their natural cycle of movement and crowding out native plants and animals.

Britain is facing a future of increasingly catastrophic marine heatwaves that could destroy shellfish colonies and fisheries and have devastating impacts on communities around the coast of the UK.

That is the stark conclusion of a new report by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), based in Southampton, which is pressing for the launch of a targeted research programme as a matter of urgency to investigate how sudden temperature rises in coastal seawater could affect marine habitats and seafood production in the UK.

Across the planet, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as rising fossil fuel emissions force up atmospheric temperatures around the globe, causing the sea to warm.

National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports has welcomed the ban on snares which comes into force in Scotland on Monday 25 November. It called on the UK government to deliver on its manifesto commitment and ban these barbaric traps in England as well.

The League has campaigned successfully with partners in recent years to get snares banned in both Scotland and Wales, leaving England and Northern Ireland as the only countries in the UK where they remain legal.

Water voles are returning to rivers and streams in the West Country after a 20-year absence.

The small mammals, often described as 'nature's engineers', are making a comeback to parts of the region including Lawrence Weston moor.

Made famous by 'Ratty' - who is actually a water vole - in The Wind in the Willows, the species was once commonly seem on Britain's rivers and streams.

Pine Martens have been released at two sites in the Lake District in an effort to grow populations of the mustelid.

Eight females and five males were released into Grizedale Forest and the Rusland Valley in a project led by the University of Cumbria and the University of Leeds.

It is the first of two releases by the Pine Marten Recovery Project in a bid to boost numbers in their ancestral woodlands. The martens were moved under licence from populations in the Scottish Highlands.

National Tree Week, brought to you by The Tree Council and partners, brings together the conservation sector, volunteers and tree-lovers to mark the start of the annual tree planting season.

There are now over 100 National Tree Week events submitted to our interactive map! Make sure to scroll through all pages to find activities near you.

When British conservationists flew to Slovenia this summer hoping to catch enough singing cicadas to reintroduce the species to the New Forest, the grasshopper-sized insects proved impossible to locate, flying elusively at great height between trees.

Now a 12-year-old girl has offered to save the Species Recovery Trust’s reintroduction project. Kristina Kenda, the daughter of the Airbnb hosts who accommodated the trust’s director, Dom Price, and conservation officer Holly Stanworth in the summer summer, will put out special nets to hopefully catch enough cicadas to re-establish a British population.

“I’m very pleased to be able to help the project,” Kristina said. “I like nature and wildlife and it was fun helping Dom and Holly look for cicadas when they were here. Cicadas are a part of the summer in Slovenia so it would be nice to help make them a part of the summer in England as well.”

A new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.

A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications.

According to green space metrics created by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the nature charity Wildlife and Countryside Link, half of local authorities in the worst 10% for access to nature are in eastern England. Almost nine-tenths of local authorities in the east have below-average access to green space.

A pioneering south of Scotland conservation project is setting its sights on re-introducing golden eagles into England and Wales.

For the past six years young birds have been taken from the Highlands and released into rural parts of the Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.

The population of the birds in the area has soared from a threatened handful in 2018 to currently standing at about 50.

Dr Cat Barlow, project manager with the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project (SSGEP), said: "We hope our next phase will be to give the eagles a hand to establish themselves in the English uplands."

A charity is trying to raise more than £3m to buy an ancient Lincolnshire woodland.

The Woodland Trust said it had until December to purchase Harrison Woodlands near Louth.

The trust said the 483 acre (195 hectare) forest was recorded in the Domesday Book and was home to a variety of wildlife, including goshawks and the rare, white admiral butterfly.

More than 300 harvest mice have been released at a site in the North York Moors National Park in the hope of re-establishing a local breeding population of this once-common species.

The initiative, led by Hawsker residents Steve Mills and Hilary Koll, has been supported by a grant of £4,200 from the Defra-funded Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme.

The release follows several years of habitat restoration by Steve and Hilary, who have been working with Derek Gow Consultancy – experts in UK small mammals – to ensure the right environment for the mice. The couple purchased the ‘wild and windy’ pasture field around five years ago, and have since planted trees, built ponds and watched as a habitat full of birds, butterflies and bees has slowly developed. It was a chance bit of research, however, which led Hilary down the path of harvest mice reintroduction.

Woodland Trust Scotland has launched a campaign to raise the next generation of lone trees and micro woods on farms and crofts.

Woodland Trust Scotland director Alastair Seaman said:

"As in so many cases where our woods and trees are concerned, some of the big old ones are still going strong, but there are not enough young small ones coming up to replace them.

"It's three fields and lots of wet bits in between".

That is a wildlife trust's description of Betchcott Hill, a bit of land in the Shropshire Hills it has just purchased.

It now needs to raise more than £130,000 by the end of the year to help restore the habitat, home to many species of wildlife. The hope is that it can help boost the numbers of some declining species.

"It’s a wonderful place, it’s a wonderful bit of landscape with some fantastic views, but it’s also got some amazing habitats and some really interesting species," said Tom Freeland, Shropshire Wildlife Trust's head of nature reserves.

A wildlife expert has issued an appeal to Londoners amid a “sharp increase” in seal sightings in the Thames - which she says is likely to become a “new normal” in the capital.

Mary Tester, founding director of Thames Seal Watch, said there has been a sudden surge in seal sightings in the capital as more of the mammals appear to be making their way up the river and “exploring areas of London”.

She said she is anxious to avoid a repeat of the 2021 incident in which a beloved seal pup that had been named Freddie by locals had to be put down after being mauled by a dog on the shore near Hammersmith Bridge.

She has urged Londoners to keep their distance from seals if they them on shore, and to keep their dogs on leads.

Britain’s youngest national park is edging closer towards planting 100,000 trees by its 15th anniversary next year as it begins its “major nature recovery drive” this winter.

Some 20,294 trees will be planted alongside a woodland the size of five football pitches at the South Downs National Park across Sussex and Hampshire over the coming months.

Among the efforts it is hoped to restore “majestic” English elms to the land destroyed by disease by planting 400 new disease-resistant elm trees, which are key to supporting insect and butterfly species, the park said.

As well as being an important habitat for wildlife, the sites are able to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, much in the way that forests or peat bogs do. But the UK’s salt marshes are at risk. As sea levels rise due to global warming, saltmarshes can become inundated by seawater, effectively drowning the sites. Saltmarshes have also been lost as land is claimed for agriculture. Researchers in Yorkshire, therefore, are now warning of the major impact that future losses of salt marshes could have for both carbon emissions and biodiversity. “Salt marshes provide a whole range of different benefits to the natural world and to human populations,” says Ed Garrett, assistant professor in Physical Geography in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York. “This ranges from being an effective flood-defence mechanism – storing water during flooding – to reducing the energy of incoming waves, thereby reducing coastal erosion. They provide a biodiversity hotspot as well, and are much more biologically productive than some other coastal environments. “But salt marshes are much more rare than they used to be. We now have about 450 sq km, but if we go back to the mid 1800s we had about 3,000 sq km of salt marsh. “The Humber is really depleted in its salt marsh area. Only two per cent of the Humber estuarine area is currently salt marsh, and that's against a national average of six per cent of estuarine areas, so the Humber is much lower, there are only a few small fragments left.” Garrett was one of several researchers to work on a paper published late last year on the role of saltmarshes in storing and sequestering carbon. The research found that the UK’s salt marshes currently store around 5.2 million tonnes of carbon. Should these habitats be lost, however, that carbon is at risk of being released. “When we’re talking about protection of saltmarshes, the biggest thing that could be done is to act on the climate crisis and address the causes of current sea level rise,” says Garrett.