UK Nature and Environment

The number of four species of butterfly in Devon were at their lowest for at least a decade in 2024, new figures show.

Butterfly Conservation said the number of silver-washed fritillary, dark green fritillary, wood white and small heath were lower than at any time in the past 10 years.

The numbers come from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) and Butterflies for the New Millennium (BNM).

Once the largest man-made wetland in any capital city of the world and described by Sir David Attenborough as an "extra lung for Londoners", the London Wetland Centre is now celebrating 25 years.

With its shallow pools home to birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and insects, the area remains a radical, transformative, oasis in the suburbs of Barnes in south-west London.

But it could have been very different.

Hidden cameras and peanut butter are helping conservationists track pine martens that have recently been introduced to a woodland.

Thirteen of the rare animals were brought from Scotland last autumn and released near Grizedale Forest in Cumbria, but they are already on the move across the county.

Despite once being common in the area, hunting drove pine martens to the brink of extinction.

The Howgill Fells are a smooth, treeless cluster of hills in the Yorkshire Dales national park, so bald and lumpy that they are sometimes described as a herd of sleeping elephants. Their bare appearance – stark even by UK standards – has been shaped by centuries of sheep grazing. Yet beneath the soil lie ancient tree roots: the silent traces of long-lost “ghost woodlands”.

Now, these woodlands are being encouraged to grow again. Over the past 12 years, 300,000 native trees have been planted across these hills in sheep-free enclosures. The results are beginning to be seen: birds and flowers are returning.

Birdsong ripples through the valley as first light spills over a ridge line and on to 26 hectares (64 acres) of fenced-off land near Tebay village. Meadow pipits, reed buntings and stonechats are among the choristers. A flush of cotton grass bobs in the morning breeze and a stonechat fledgling clings to a spindly branch, shrieking for a parent.

The UK is host to internationally important numbers of wintering waterbirds, and the long-standing WeBS and Goose and Swan Monitoring Programme (GSMP) provide essential data that inform decision makers when considering conservation measures for these birds.

With data provided by over 3,800 dedicated volunteers across the UK, the surveys deliver an annual assessment of ducks, geese, swans, waders, and other waterbirds residing on, or passing through, our coasts, estuaries, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.

The 2023/24 WeBS report reveals yet more changes in the fortunes of many of our wildfowl and waders.

A road safety campaign has been launched to warn drivers to look out for roe deer on the roads.

Collisions between deer and vehicles typically increase at this time of year as young roe deer spread out to look for their own territories, with dusk the period of highest risk.

NatureScot’s spring road safety campaign gets underway today (Friday, May 23) with Transport Scotland and Traffic Scotland.

Cardiff City Council has announced they will not be mowing grassland in 144 sites across the city all summer, as an extension of their "No Mow May" campaign. The continuation of this initiative aims to help wildlife thrive, after it was discovered that approximately 97% of flower-rich meadows have been lost since the 1930s, and with them, vital food and habitat needed by wildlife.

Cardiff Council joined the campaign for the month of May this year, and has now announced it will be extending this practice until the end of the summer.

A spokesperson for Cardiff Council said: "To help support nature there will be no mow until September again this year at 144 different sites across the whole city, covering an area of grass the size of 272 football pitches."

A major new 100-page report provides the most detailed analysis yet of what a lynx reintroduction project in Scotland would need to do to ensure lynx and people could coexist.

It outlines conclusions and recommendations agreed by a nine-month national discussion involving a diverse, cross-sector range of 53 stakeholders including farmer and landowner organisations, gamekeepers, foresters, tourism operators and conservationists.

The National Lynx Discussion, held between May and November last year and organised by the Lynx to Scotland partnership, was independently facilitated by an expert from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Conservation Planning Specialist Group.

The nest of the only breeding pair of ospreys on England's south coast has a second new arrival.

The chick emerged from its egg shortly before 19:00 BST on Thursday. The first hatched earlier the same day shortly before 06:00.

The ospreys, female CJ7 and male 022, laid a clutch of four eggs in their nest near Poole Harbour in Dorset for the second year in a row in April.

Providing every new home with at least one “swift brick” to help endangered cavity-nesting birds has been rejected by Labour at the committee stage of its increasingly controversial planning bill.

The amendment to the bill to ask every developer to provide a £35 hollow brick for swifts, house martins, sparrows and starlings, which was tabled by Labour MP Barry Gardiner, has been rejected by the Labour-dominated committee.

Despite the Labour party having supported the swift brick amendment when it was tabled on Conservative government legislation in 2023, housing minister, Matthew Pennycook, told the House of Commons committee: “We are not convinced that legislating to mandate the use of specific wildlife features is the right approach, whether that is done through building regulations or a freestanding legal requirement.”

Labour backbenchers are pressing the government to revive a right to roam policy in England after a supreme court ruling enshrined the right to wild camp on Dartmoor.

The court ruled this week that camping on the national park was legal after a multimillionaire hedge fund manager tried to remove the right to camp on his Devon estate, and by extension from the rest of the park.

There is a legal right to roam over only 8% of England, with the rest subject to landowner permission. Dartmoor is the only place in the country where there is a right to wild camp. Scotland has had a right to roam since 2003.

t is a tactic worthy of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt: wait until a beeping pedestrian crossing indicates a traffic queue has formed then use the line of cars as cover to reach your target. But this isn’t a scene from Mission: Impossible – it’s the behaviour of a young hawk.

The discovery is not the first time birds have been found to make use of an urban environment. Crows, for example, are known to drop foods such as walnuts on to roads for cars to crush them open.

However, the researcher behind a new study says it is the most advanced case so far of raptors making use of traffic patterns.

Osprey watchers are being treated to a rarely seen - and possibly never before captured on film – polygamy saga playing out at a nest in the Tweed Valley.

Forestry and land Scotland (FLS) cameras are capturing in real time the fascinating behaviour of two female ospreys and one male who have set up a home as a trio – a form of polygamy known as polygyny with a male breeding with multiple females.

The cameras set up as part of The Tweed Valley Osprey Project are providing a fascinating insight into the natural behaviour between the adult birds – Mrs O, a female who has previously nested at the site and a new female and young male – as the partnership and nesting behaviour develops during the season.

Leading wildlife charities are calling on Labour to scrap a significant section of the planning bill that they say is a “licence to kill nature”, as new data reveals bats and newts are not the main reason planning is delayed in England.

The RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts, whose membership is more than 2 million, said Labour had broken its promises on nature. They called for part three of the bill, which allows developers to avoid environmental laws at a site by paying into a national nature recovery fund to pay for environmental improvements elsewhere, to be ditched.

Beccy Speight, CEO of the RSPB, said: “It’s now clear that the bill in its current form will rip the heart out of environmental protections and risks sending nature further into freefall.

The sea off the coast of the UK and Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented marine heatwave with temperatures increasing by as much as 4C above average for the spring in some areas.

Marine biologists say the intensity and unprecedented nature of the rise in water temperatures off the coasts of Devon, Cornwall and the west coast of Ireland are very concerning. As human-induced climate breakdown continues to raise global temperatures, the frequency of marine heatwaves is increasing.

“This is unprecedented because it is happening so early in the year,” said Dr Manuela Truebano, from the school of biological and marine sciences at the University of Plymouth. “To see these temperature rises around UK waters at this time of year is quite sobering. Each time it happens we use the word ‘unprecedented’, and I am very concerned at the increase in prevalence and intensity of these marine heatwave events.”

Mussels are one of nature’s yardsticks for coastal water quality, and they even help filter it. But with mussel numbers declining from Western Europe to the Arctic due to climate change, Environment Agency scientists are exploring new ways to sample water.

Each spring, Environment Agency officers collect samples of Atlantic Blue Mussels (Mytilus edulis) from the Camel estuary in Cornwall as part of their routine water quality monitoring. The Camel is one of around twenty sites in a national network.

The mussel flesh is removed from the mussels and then sent to the Environment Agency laboratories at Starcross and Leeds where it is analysed for a range of chemical contaminants found in the shellfish.

A Senedd Committee says that it is ‘gravely concerned’ at Natural Resources Wales’ (NRW) plan to reduce the number of low category pollution incidents it responds to.

The Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee’s annual scrutiny of the environmental watchdog highlights several concerning aspects of how it plans to keep an eye on things like fly-tipping, illegal chemical dumping and water pollution.

NRW’s new plan is to focus on larger incidents and to adopt a “higher tolerance of risk” in how they manage reports of pollution in Wales.

You would be fooled for thinking it is a frosty winter's morning or a Halloween scene, but a once-in-a-year phenomenon that puts a covering of white across trees, bushes and hedgerows is actually down to thousands of caterpillars.

The white webbing has been seen across the East of England this May, and is created on host plants by the larvae who protect themselves from predators before they turn into moths or butterflies.

East Anglian-based entomologist, Dr Ian Bedford, said: "Inside that net blanket is thousands and thousands of little caterpillars all munching on the leaves.

Wild camping will be allowed on Dartmoor after the supreme court ruled that a multimillionaire landowner was wrong to ban it on his land.

Dartmoor was – until the legal action – the only place in England where wild camping without the permission of the landowner was enshrined in law. In Scotland, people have enjoyed this right since 2003.

For two years, Alexander Darwall, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager, has been pursuing the matter through the courts against the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA), as he does not want people camping on his land without his permission.

A new initiative aimed at tackling the deepening environmental crisis in Wales is gaining momentum, as conservationists rally public support to launch a pioneering Nature Investigations Unit.

The project, developed by the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC), seeks to hold environmental decision-makers to account and reverse the alarming decline of wildlife and habitats across the country.

The proposed unit will bring together a team of experienced journalists, campaigners, and researchers tasked with investigating the root causes of nature’s decline in Wales. Their work will focus on exposing harmful policies, challenging inaction, and proposing evidence-based solutions to restore biodiversity and protect the natural environment.

Sand dunes badly damaged in a fire could take years to recover, experts have said.

Naomi Kay, manager of Solway Coast National Landscape, said the damage caused to an area of Silloth Dunes at the weekend - roughly the size of two football pitches - was "horrifying" and had destroyed wildlife habitats.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service said it was still investigating the cause of the blaze but warned people of the risk of barbecues and camping stoves in the countryside.

A Devon charity has been awarded a large grant to help protect and restore an ecologically important area of marshy grassland.

The Shallowford Farm Trust on Dartmoor provides children from inner-city areas with the chance to experience life on East Shallowford Farm.

The trust has secured a grant of £227,166 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to safeguard and restore its rare rhos pasture habitat - a wet grassland ecosystem characterised by purple moor grass and rushes.

A rare sighting of a white stork has caught people's attention in various parts of Northern Ireland.

The Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA) posted on Facebook that it had received "numerous calls from concerned members of the public regarding an "injured stork over the past two days".

It seems the bird was spotted in Botanic Gardens, Belfast, parts of Downpatrick in County Down and even in Donegal.

Our wildlife vets have given nine rare hazel dormice the all-clear, ahead of the tiny rodent’s release into the wild next month.

The dormice – including three born at Whipsnade Zoo - each received a health screening from our Disease Risk Analysis and Health Surveillance Team (DRAHS), as part of ongoing national conservation efforts to recover populations of this vulnerable mammal, which was once widespread across England and Wales.

During the 10-minute-long health checks, the fluffy-tailed dormice were placed under general anaesthetic so that the team of vets could gently check the heart and lungs of each dormouse, before carefully looking over their eyes, ears, nose, teeth and fur, to ensure the animals are ready for release. Each mouse was fitted with a microchip to help conservationists accurately identify individuals during follow-up monitoring, when they check how the dormice are doing in their new woodland home.

A farmer is nurturing a brood of white stork chicks as part of a charity's aim to reintroduce them in the county.

Yan Swiderski has welcomed eight stork chicks from the adults he keeps in a woodland near Wadebridge as part of work by the Cornwall Stork Project.

Wildlife expert Chris Packham said the project was "exciting" as it would "hopefully recolonise Cornwall" with the birds.