GreyShuck

Regular sightings of otters on a river are a sign of a healthy local ecosystem, a charity has said.

The Wear Rivers Trust said evidence of the mammals living on the River Deerness in County Durham showed the area was home to a diverse range of wildlife.

A local resident spotted otters 38 times on his trail camera last year, while environmental groups regularly find otter droppings - known as spraints - in the area.

In a bold conservation first, WWT has turned to one of Britain’s most common birds, the Eurasian blue tit, in a new trial that could help save its rarest of cousins, the British willow tit – now Britain’s fastest declining resident bird species.

Under licence from Natural England, eggs from blue tit nest boxes have been artificially incubated and hatched, with the chicks' hand-reared at WWT Slimbridge’s Conservation Breeding Unit (CBU).

The chicks were closely monitored, fed between dawn and dusk and socialised before being released into the nature reserve at WWT Slimbridge at the end of June.

In a remarkable first for Cornish waters, two orcas from the Iberian population were spotted near the Isles of Scilly, confirming their northernmost sighting to date. The rare encounter was made by skipper Joe Pender during a seabird survey near St Agnes earlier this month.

The orcas, later identified as members of the elusive Iberian C pod, were seen near Pol Bank southwest of Bishop Rock. Pender, who operates Scilly Pelagics tours, initially noticed unusually large dorsal fins before realising he was looking at orcas - not common dolphins. "Everyone on board was ecstatic," he said. "I've only seen one before, about 25 years ago."

Rebecca Allen of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust confirmed it was the first recorded sighting of Iberian orcas in the region. These orcas typically inhabit the Straits of Gibraltar during winter, making their presence in Cornwall highly unusual.

THE Dee Estuary covers 14,000 hectares and is home to more than 120,000 waders and waterfowl, as well as a variety of coastal habitats and a dedicated community.

The area, which straddles England and Wales, has been at the centre of a three-year pioneering project, bringing together partners across borders to deliver lasting change through community-led conservation.

Our Dee Estuary has been funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, with contributions from local authorities, charities, statutory bodies and renewable energy companies, and 130 volunteers have given up more than 4,000 hours of their time to practical conservation works, surveying, events, research and writing.

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has revealed its first bittern breeding success at its North Cave Wetlands nature reserve, near Hull, where a juvenile bittern was spotted earlier this month.

Another breeding success at the reserve in recent weeks has included the emergence of a clutch of common pochard chicks – which are on the IUCN red list of threatened species.

It is thought are only around 80 pairs breeding in Yorkshire, the males of which have a bright reddish-brown head, a black breast and tail and a pale grey body.

An experiment to make woodland more resilient has seen hairy wood ant nests relocated across forests.

Forestry England moved six colonies with thousands of ants from Cropton Forest in North Yorkshire to Ennerdale in Cumbria, in a bid to bring back lost wildlife species and support ecosystems.

Rachel Gardner, from Forestry England said the project in the Lake District would help "rebuild complex forest communities" that can better deal with extreme weather, climate change and diseases.

The mysterious nightjar is among the species being tracked as part of the largest survey of heathland birds for more than 20 years.

The study, organised by the British Trust for Ornithology, will also focus on woodlarks and Dartford warblers.

The nightjar, which is surrounded by myth and folklore, journeys to the UK to breed, before flying back to the Democratic Republic of Congo at the end of the summer.

Beavers “are being employed” to help prevent flooding in the Forest of Dean. Civic chiefs considered a report last week which looked at the lessons learnt from the flooding caused during Storm Bert in Lydney during November 2024.

Around 50 homes were flooded after the River Lyd burst its banks as the Severnside town received a month’s worth of rain in two days. Forest of Dean District Council discussed the learning from the multi-agency emergency response to Storm Bert at the overview and scrutiny committee meeting on July 17.

Councillors were told of the efforts being made to naturally slow the water flow upstream from Lydney. And it was revealed the semiaquatic rodents are playing their part in the flood prevention plans.

Wet wipe producers should be charged to remove their pollution from England’s waterways, the author of a government review into reforming the sector has said.

Sewage has been a critical factor in the devastating pollution of our waterways, but other sources of pollution include microplastics, consumer products such as wet wipes, and the byproducts of modern manufacturing, such asPfas (“forever chemicals”), as well as fertiliser and pesticides from farming. Many of these have been linked to harmful effects on human health and the natural environment.

The fairest way to deal with this, Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former Bank of England deputy governor, said, could be to apply the “polluter pays” principle, whereby the company behind the pollution contributes towards its removal. “The alternative is for everyone to pay for it through their bills, and the question is, should we spread that among everybody, or should we go through a polluter pays route? So I think, really, we should look at those routes,” he said.

Tony Juniper, chair of Natural England, has voiced his support for reintroducing Eurasian Lynx to the British countryside.

Juniper said he would be "absolutely delighted" if a trial could proceed during his current term, but acknowledged that public opinion remains divided and called for more community engagement before any reintroduction goes ahead.

The Lynx UK Trust has submitted a draft application for a trial release of Eurasian Lynx in Kielder Forest, Northumberland, using animals rescued from culls in Sweden. The species, which has been extinct in Britain since the Middle Ages, has successfully been reintroduced in several European countries and now numbers around 18,000 individuals across the continent.

A herd of water buffalo introduced to a wetland two years ago is having a positive effect on wildlife, a charity has said.

Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust said the animals, based in Wivenhoe in Essex, had been returned to Thorley Wash Nature Reserve for a third year to graze ditches, waterlogged marshy areas and wet grassland.

Reserves officer Kathryn Dunnett said biodiversity had improved, with vegetation turning greener and more wildflowers appearing.

One of the world’s rarest sharks has been filmed off the Welsh coast, offering a fleeting glimpse into the life of a species teetering on the brink of extinction.

Underwater footage shows a critically endangered angel shark swimming through the waters of Cardigan Bay – the first time it has been recorded on film in the area since 2021.

The shark was captured by cameras deployed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales (WTSWW), designed to monitor biodiversity as part of a project investigating marine life in the region, many of which are under threat from human activities.