UK Nature and Environment

The government’s leading environmental adviser has said ministers are wrong to suggest nature is blocking development.

Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, is to oversee a national nature restoration fund, paid into by developers, which will enable builders to sidestep environmental obligations at a particular site – even if it is a landscape protected for its wildlife.

Central to Labour’s growth plan, the controversial planning and infrastructure bill cuts environmental regulations to fast-track the construction of 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament, according to three legal opinions.

Labour is using post-Brexit freedoms to override EU nature laws and allow chalk streams and nightingale habitats to be destroyed, MPs have said.

The planning and infrastructure bill going through parliament will allow developers to circumvent EU-derived environmental protections and instead pay into a nature restoration fund.

This would override the habitats directive, which protects animals including otters, salmon and dormice. Under the new bill it will be possible to pay into the fund and build over their habitats.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has today launched Wilder Derbyshire 2030, a bold and hopeful strategy to reverse the decline in the county’s wildlife — powered by people and rooted in local action, equity, and green skills.

The launch comes alongside a stark new State of Nature in Derbyshire report, revealing that at least five much-loved bird species — the willow tit, marsh tit, hawfinch, spotted flycatcher, and lesser spotted woodpecker — have suffered steep declines in the county. The lesser spotted woodpecker is now on the brink of disappearing locally.

These declines are being driven by habitat loss, unsustainable land use, species persecution, and climate change. But Derbyshire Wildlife Trust says this crisis can still be turned around if people are empowered and supported to act.

Nightingales don’t sing much during the daytime. So when their clear, pure voices rang out from some brambles in Kent on a late spring morning, it felt as if they were campaigning for their home.

Their music has charmed writers from Keats to Oscar Wilde. But over the decades, the little brown bird has had its habitat gradually hacked away because the thick brambles it likes to nest in have little use for humans.

And now one of its most important strongholds is under threat from the Labour government’s planning and infrastructure bill. For the best part of a decade, developers have been eying up Lodge Hill in Kent, where more than 100 singing birds are known to live. The derelict army training camp, which is mostly off-limits to the public though there is a footpath through some of the woodland, is prime brownfield, a 10-minute drive from Strood, which is on the high-speed line to London.

Every night, while most of us sleep, the world comes alive for millions of animals: moths, glow-worms, bats, badgers, owls, toads, and more. Yet this vibrant nocturnal world is vanishing fast, threatened by our actions and our neglect – light pollution, habitat loss, and our failure to see what is happening in the dark.

That is why Buglife has launched the “Don’t Neglect the Night” campaign, calling on governments, planners, and the public to take urgent action and protect the half of nature that we are ignoring.

Night isn’t just a time of rest, it is half of Earth’s daily life cycle, and provides vital conditions for the two-thirds of all animal species that have evolved to thrive after the sun sets. From moths and other nocturnal pollinators that work the night shift, to bats that flit through our night skies in search of prey, to amphibians that migrate to breeding grounds in moonlit wetlands, countless species rely on the dark to feed, migrate, communicate, and thrive.

Rare wetland birds such as cranes and great egrets have appeared within hours of the completion of a peatland restoration project, according to the National Trust.

The charity began restoring 590 acres (238 hectares) of lowland peat, a vital carbon store, at its oldest nature reserve, Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, a year ago.

Peatland restoration project manager Ellis Selway said: "Seeing nature respond so quickly gives us real hope for the future of this landscape."

Ministers must ban bottom trawling for fish in marine protected areas, an influential group of MPs has said, because the destructive practice is devastating the seabed and marine life.

The UK parliament’s environmental audit committee called for a ban to encompass dredging and mining as well as the bottom trawling of fish in the 900,000 sq km covered by nearly 180 marine protected areas.

Despite the name, these areas are open for many sorts of fishing, including bottom trawling – the practice of dragging immense and heavy nets across the seabed to scoop up all in their path, most of which is discarded while prized fish such as sole, cod and haddock are kept.

More than 5,000 of England’s most sensitive, rare and protected natural habitats are at high risk of being destroyed by development under Labour’s new planning bill, according to legal analysis of the legislation.

The Guardian has examined the threat the bill poses to 5,251 areas known as nature’s “jewels in the crown”, as some of the country’s most respected wildlife charities call for a key part of the bill to be scrapped.

The areas at risk from Labour’s planning changes include cherished landscapes such as the New Forest, the Surrey heaths, the Peak District moors, and the Forest of Bowland.

A new Environment Agency research project has seen 22,914 rare and protected glass eels swap the River Severn for a new home in the Berkshire this month.

The eels were transferred in late April to nine locations on the Kennet chalk stream by Environment Agency fisheries specialists, initiating a research project that will monitor their development.

One of the largest river restoration projects ever seen in the UK is now under way in Northumberland. The River Breamish, in the north of the county, has seen its path straightened over "many centuries" to make way for intensive farming.

This has meant the river has "disconnected" from its floodplain, reducing freshwater species and increasing flood risk. The new project aims to reinstate the "meandering" river system to the lower Breamish Valley.

The project is being led by the LIFE WADER nature-recovery project in partnership with the Environment Agency, Tweed Forum, Natural England and local landowner, Harehope Estate. Organisers say the work will bring "huge benefits for wildlife, ecology and man".

The UK's oldest wild White-tailed Eagle has died aged 32, RSPB Scotland has announced.

The eagle, a female named Frisa, hatched in Mull in 1992, where she spent almost three decades raising chicks, becoming a regular on TV nature programmes.

She was the daughter of Blondie, who successfully raised the first White-tailed Eagle chick to fledge in Scotland following the reintroduction of the species in 1975.

A new law which is intended to protect nature and reverse the loss of wildlife has been introduced by the Welsh government.

If passed in the Senedd, it will allow members of the public to challenge organisations in Wales, including councils, on environmental issues such as water pollution.

Public bodies in Wales will also be forced to publish nature recovery action plans, with targets set by the Welsh government.

More than 14,000 hectares of degraded peatlands have been restored across Scotland in the last year, helping to reduce carbon emissions and restore biodiversity.

Peatlands are areas of wet land that support habitats and species that are important for biodiversity, they also protect the wider ecosystem by improving water quality and reducing the severity of flooding.

Covering nearly two million hectares, Scotland is home to two-thirds of the UK’s peatlands. However, nearly three-quarters of Scotland’s peatlands is currently degraded.

Conservationists are celebrating the resurgence of the lady’s-slipper orchid, one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers, with the discovery of the first new plant in the wild in almost a century.

The striking flower, which once teetered on the brink of extinction in the English countryside, may one day be restored across its former range, experts have said.

Driven to near-extinction by Victorian plant hunters and habitat loss, the lady’s-slipper orchid was believed to have disappeared from the UK by the early 20th century.

Scotland's seabird populations are continuing to decline, according to new figures released by NatureScot.

Since regular monitoring began in 1986, overall seabird numbers have dropped sharply, with current populations around Scotland's coasts now estimated at roughly half of 1986 levels. However, short-term trends suggest that certain species may be beginning to stabilise, although still at considerably reduced numbers.

The findings are detailed in the latest Scottish Biodiversity Indicator for Seabirds, compiled by NatureScot using data from the UK Seabird Monitoring Programme. Scotland is home to 24 breeding seabird species, with the indicator tracking breeding numbers for 11 species and breeding success for 12.

A project aimed at helping to boost the number of rare corncrake birds on Rathlin Island is among those receiving 40 million euro (£33.7 million) of funding.

The Peaceplus funding has been awarded to projects designed to assist biodiversity and nature recovery in Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland.

It is anticipated the funding will benefit a wide range of habitats and species, address carbon storage and water regulation.

Kielder Forest's first osprey chicks of the year have hatched as wildlife experts aim to equal the site's record year.

Five chicks have hatched at nests in the Northumberland forest earlier this week, despite "less than ideal" weather conditions of wind and rain. Three of the chicks have hatched in Nest 7, and two more are in nest 1A.

Visit Kielder said that there have already been some "excellent" parenting skills on show from the birds of prey, and that they will grow steadily thanks to the reservoir's steady supply of rainbow trout.

Almost 900 miles of coastline in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are now protected for the nation thanks to the generosity of the UK public, the National Trust has announced.

As a result of new detailed mapping, the charity can reveal that it looks after 896 miles of coast, over 10% of the total coastline of the three countries, on behalf of the nation.

The news comes on the 60th anniversary of the Trust's major coast campaign, Enterprise Neptune, which is one of the longest-running environmental campaigns in Europe, and regarded as among the most successful endeavours in the charity's 130-year history.

A wildlife conservation charity has celebrated an “explosion” in numbers of one of Scotland’s fastest-declining butterflies, with surprisingly high counts in various Highland locations.

More than 500 small blues were counted in just an hour and a half by a volunteer for national charity Butterfly Conservation at the Balnagown Estate near Invergordon, while other volunteers have discovered two new colonies of the species — one south of Wick and one at Nairn Railway Station.

Another volunteer recorded a small blue on 30 April — only the second time Small Blue has been recorded in April in Scotland.

Dozens of new species including bees, wasps and butterflies have been discovered in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, 13 years after the site's regeneration for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The discoveries were made during a bioblitz—an intensive one-day biological survey—and detailed in the park’s new Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP), published on May 28.

Tom Bellamy, biodiversity manager for the site, said: “The park itself is a bit of a model really because we can use it to show that people and nature can co-exist.

When it comes to protecting the future of one of Northern Ireland's only native woodlands, a surprising amount of demolition work has to happen before you can really see the wood for the trees.

That's why a huge project - that could span decades into the future - has been digging, scything and excavating to keep invasive alien species at bay along a crucial woodland corridor stretching from Belfast to Bangor.

Museums NI and the Woodland Trust have teamed up to remove 1,200 tonnes - the equivalent of 700 cars - of aggressive invasive species like rhododendron and cherry laurel, a thick shrub with poisonous cyanide-laced leaves, from a site near the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

The UK's saltmarshes are vital "sinks" that lock away climate-warming greenhouse gases in layers of mud, according to a new report from WWF.

Much of the UK's saltmarshes have been lost to agriculture but the charity says they are unsung heroes in nature's fight against climate change.

It is now calling for these muddy, tidal habitats to be added to the official UK inventory, external of how much carbon is emitted and how much is removed from our atmosphere every year.

The BTO is asking birders to log European Nightjar sightings this summer as part of a national survey of the nocturnal species.

For many, nightjar is easier to see than ever, following a promising recovery in both population and distribution in recent years. In 2021, numbers across RSPB reserves hit a record high and, last year, chicks hatched in Aberdeenshire for the first time in 100 years.

A survey was conducted in Ireland last year, where the continued presence of the country's small population was confirmed.

The head of the Government’s official environment advisors said he is “concerned” over the budget for nature restoration ahead of the upcoming spending review.

Tony Juniper, chairman of Natural England, said the “very tight” spending settlement expected in light of current economic stresses will pose “big challenges” for those working to reverse the country’s decline in nature.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed is understood to have settled the department’s budget for the next three years with the Treasury on Thursday.