UK Nature and Environment

RAF bases are hotspots of toxic “forever chemical” pollution in water, analysis of Ministry of Defence documents has revealed.

Moreover, some of the highest concentrations of these chemicals in British drinking water sources are near RAF bases, official sampling results obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations show.

PFAS, known as forever chemicals due to their indestructible nature, include PFOS and PFOA, which are toxic and linked to cancers, thyroid disease, and fertility problems. These two have been banned, but more than 10,000 PFAS are still in use, many of which are thought to have unknown toxic effects.

Downing Street has blocked plans to release wild beavers in England because officials view it as a “Tory legacy”, the Guardian can reveal.

Natural England, the government’s nature watchdog, has drawn up a plan for reintroductions of the rodent, which until about 20 years ago had been extinct in Britain for 400 years, having been hunted for their fur, meat and scent oil. Beavers create useful habitats for wildlife and reduce flooding by breaking up waterways, slowing water flow, and creating still pools.

The reintroduction plan was signed off in recent weeks by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, who passed it to No 10. But there it was blocked by senior Downing Street officials, who were not in favour of the policy as they view it as a “Tory legacy”, sources said.

Children in pyjamas and residents of urban tenement blocks joined a three-year project to help boost wildlife on their doorsteps in Scotland.

In total, more than 1,000 people took part in a host of wild activities as part of Perth and Stirling Wild Spaces.

The scheme, run by national charity Butterfly Conservation, created and maintained 20 Wild Spaces for butterflies, moths and other wildlife to live in, helping local people to connect with nature.

A new species of fungi and sightings of rare migrant birds were among the wildlife highlights for last year, naturalists have said.

The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) said changing weather patterns and extreme rain made 2024 a "difficult year for our native for wildlife", but its annual survey revealed encouraging success stories.

Dozens of members of the Women's Institute (WI) have begun testing a river's water as part of a long-term project to improve its biodiversity.

Three groups at Amble, Warkworth and Rothbury in Northumberland are part of the Coquet River Action Group (Crag), a new partnership of community groups which want to protect the river catchment.

They have begun testing at 30 sites along the river to produce a database of information about the river's health.

Ministers to appeal against river pollution ruling won by Yorkshire anglers

High court had ruled government was not meeting legal duty to clean up Costa Beck near Pickering Sandra Laville Tue 14 Jan 2025 06.00 GMT

The UK environment secretary, Steve Reed, is pursuing legal action against a group of anglers who are trying to restore the ecosystem of a river.

Lawyers for Reed will argue on Tuesday in the court of appeal that cleaning up individual rivers and streams devastated by pollution is administratively unworkable.

The appeal was begun by the previous Conservative administration, after Pickering Fishery Association, a fishing club in North Yorkshire, won a landmark legal case against the government and the Environment Agency.

A floating reedbed has been launched on Heronry Pond in Wanstead Park, on the East London-side of Epping Forest, to create additional habitat for wildlife and help improve water quality.

The launch of the 160-square-metre floating reedbed is part of a £100,000 project to improve overall water quality in the 44,500-square-metre pond.

Environmental charity Thames21 is working closely with The Rivers Trust and the City of London Corporation, which manages Epping Forest as a registered charity, on the project. The project is funded by soft drinks manufacturer Britvic.

The RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch returns for the 46th consecutive year next weekend [24-26 January], with hundreds of thousands of people expected to be watching and counting the UK's garden birds.

The world's largest garden wildlife survey, which has been taking place since 1979, has since become a much-loved annual event that helps give the RSPB a valuable snapshot of how our garden birds are doing in the UK.

Over that time, 172 million birds have been counted and nearly 11 million hours spent watching garden birds.

A water company is releasing sewage into a stream connected to Lake Windermere using a permit that has not been updated in more than 30 years.

The permit, which allows United Utilities to release waste into the national park site, is “unfit for purpose” and contributes to high levels of pollution and biodiversity decline in the area, according to campaigners.

The sewage being released has been treated, but campaigners say the “primitive” treatment methods at the site mean the wastewater is still harmful to the environment.

Urgent and collective action is needed now if Wales is to redress the balance between the degradation and protection of our natural resources given the nature, climate, and pollution emergencies we now face.

This is the call from experts at Natural Resources Wales (NRW) following the publication of the interim State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR 2025), marking a crucial step towards understanding and protecting the vital components of nature that underpin our everyday lives.

As one of the requirements of the Environment Act, NRW publishes the SoNaRR report every five years, assessing the pressures Wales’s ecosystems face, their quality and their contributions to our well-being. It covers the quality of our waters, the air that we breathe, the value and benefits we gain from our land, seas, urban and green spaces, and the richness of our plants, animals and insects.

A decade-long conservation project to restore the fortunes of pine martens across Britain has hit a major milestone.

A collaboration between Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) and Forestry and Land Scotland has seen pine martens from the latter's forests boost populations in Wales, Gloucestershire and Devon - with more than 100 animals successfully translocated.

Dr Jenny MacPherson, principal scientist at VWT, said pine martens were once on the brink of extinction because of habitat loss and historical persecution.

Beavers have been filmed in the Avalon Marshes.

The animals have been living in the River Bue for some time, but staff at the marshes said it was the first time they had been seen on the Somerset Wetlands National Nature Reserve.

Natural England has asked people to not try to find the beavers as they were a protected species and should not be disturbed.

A couple from Cornwall have filmed a "rare" and "exciting" sighting of potential orcas off of Cornwall's coast. While unconfirmed, video footage shows a pod of animals sharing some distinct features swimming off the coast of Hayle.

Paul Ensell, from the area, said he and his wife spotted "around half a dozen" of what he believed to be orcas - sometimes referred to as killer whales - breaching during a dog walk.

The video footage, captured between Godrevy and St Ives, is quite grainy due to how zoomed in it is but shows a pod with seemingly black and white features - synonymous with the orca - breaching from the water. The last confirmed sighting of orcas in Cornwall was in 2021 which makes this a particularly exciting possibility for marine life.

An Oxfordshire wildlife group has started a campaign to raise awareness of red kites and encourage people to stop feeding them.

Mike Acreman, trustee of Wild About Wallingford, said there had been "a change in the behaviour" of some of the birds which were now associating people with food.

He said there had been reports of kites sweeping closer to people and even affecting pets.

Mr Acreman said the campaign aimed to promote "how wonderful kites are" but also to "manage interactions with wildlife".

Campaigners have protested to try and stop what they say are harmful sediments being dumped into a protected marine conservation zone.

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) and the Sussex Wildlife Trust oppose the renewal of a license allowing Brighton Marina to dispose of dredged sediment at a site in Rottingdean, sitting in the Beachy Head West Marine Conservation Zone.

SAS member Atlanta Cook told the BBC material from dredging fills nearby rock pools with a "black, thick, slimy, petrochemically smelling sludge", which she claimed harms the environment and people.

Scientists have identified a glyphosate-resistant weed on a farm in the UK for the first time, raising concerns about the controversial herbicide.

Scientists at the agricultural consultancy ADAS, said that, after reports from agronomists and screening of seed samples from a farm in Kent, they had confirmed glyphosate resistance in Italian ryegrass, an annual grass weed that particularly affects wheat fields in the UK. This is the first time glyphosate resistance in weeds has been detected in the UK.

Glyphosate is the world’s most intensively used herbicide. In the UK, it is used to prepare fields for sowing crops by clearing all vegetation from the land. It kills weeds by inhibiting EPSP synthase, an enzyme involved in plant growth, while not damaging crops that have been genetically modified to be glyphosate-tolerant.

National Trust to restore nature across area bigger than Greater London

Charity reveals plans to create 250,000 hectares of nature-rich landscape as it marks 130th anniversary Steven Morris Fri 10 Jan 2025 05.00 GMT

In past decades the focus has been on protecting beautiful landscapes such as the Lake District, trying to save the crumbling coast or breathing life into historic country houses.

Now the National Trust is marking its 130th anniversary by unveiling “moonshot” plans to address what it regards as the current national need – the climate and nature crises.

The conservation charity has launched proposals to create 250,000 hectares (617,500 acres) of nature-rich landscape – equivalent to one-and-a-half times the size of Greater London – on its own land and off it in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A new project to protect birds of prey in parts of Sheffield has been launched.

Owlthorpe Fields Conservation Group wants to monitor and help boost the population of various raptor species in the S20 area - including buzzards, kestrels, and owls.

The project will run for three years, after which a report will be provided to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and Sheffield City Council's Ecology Unit.

For a brief moment this week, lynx have been roaming the Scottish Highlands once again. But this was not the way conservationists had hoped to end their 1,000-year absence.

On Wednesday, Police Scotland received reports of two lynx in a forest in the Cairngorms national park, sparking a frantic search. That episode ended in less than a day. Both animals were quickly captured by experts from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and taken to quarantine facilities at Highland wildlife park.

Yet their delight at a successful operation was short-lived. Early on Friday morning, the RZSS’s network of wildlife cameras caught two more lynx in the same stretch of forest, near Kingussie. The baited traps were redeployed and its specialists went hunting again, before the additional lynx were safely captured at about 6.30pm.

‘Get on my land’: the farmers who want strangers wandering their fields

A growing number of landholders are joining forces with right-to-roam campaigners to boost public access to the countryside Patrick Barkham Patrick Barkham Wed 8 Jan 2025 07.00 GMT

When Debra and Tom Willoughby first arrived at their tenant farm in Nottinghamshire, they tried to reroute a bridleway that runs through their farmyard. Now the organic farmers are relieved they were refused permission because of the benefits they have found from the connections they make with people who walk through their farm. They have since opened new permissive footpaths on their land.

Farmers are often cast as vociferous opponents of wider access to the countryside. But a growing band of access-friendly farmers has joined forces with the Right to Roam campaign and will discuss how to open up more land for public enjoyment at this week’s Oxford real farming conference.

“It’s really nice when we get people through the yard – the positives far outweigh the negatives,” said Debra Willoughby, who farms 157 hectares (387 acres) with organic beef cattle, cereals and new agroforestry apple orchards at Normanton-on-Soar near Loughborough. “Farms are very isolated places. It used to be tens of people working on this farm and now it’s just me and my husband.”

Plans to clean up rivers across England have been put on hold due to delays in funding from millions of pounds of sewage fines.

Labour is being pressured to commit to the future of an £11m fund launched by the last government, that would see fines levied against water firms used to improve England’s rivers, lakes and streams.

Charities, including the Rivers Trust and the Wildlife Trusts, say they are increasingly concerned Labour is going to discontinue the scheme and said such a move would put the Government’s manifesto commitments on rivers in doubt.

Labour’s proposal to loosen planning regulations for farmers will deluge rivers with chicken faeces, environmental campaigners have warned.

The environment secretary, Steve Reed, promised farmers on Thursday they would be able to build larger chicken sheds, but experts have said this would create “megafarms” and contribute to river pollution.

Speaking at the annual Oxford Farming Conference, Reed was attempting to rebuild confidence with farmers after widespread anger over changes to inheritance tax and cuts to subsidies. A small protest formed outside the Examination Schools in Oxford where he was speaking and tractor horns partially drowned out his speech.

Wildlife experts believe a rare species of whale has been spotted near Cornwall.

The Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust said it had received reports of 17 whale sightings, external in the waters around the islands between 29 December and 8 January, with minke and humpback whales among those spotted.

The charity added one of the whales seen in the water between St Mary's and St Agnes was potentially a rare breed they were trying to identify.

Jay Cowen, from the trust, told BBC Radio Cornwall it was believed the whale was either a Cuvier's beaked whale or a northern bottlenose.

From the outside, the Tunny Club looks like any other seaside fish and chip shop. A short walk from Scarborough harbour, only the photos of John Wayne and Errol Flynn on the wall betray the shop’s fleeting history as a global centre for big-game fishing.

In the 1930s, film stars and the ultra-wealthy flocked to the Yorkshire seaside resort for their chance to catch the enormous bluefin tuna – known as “tunny” – lurking off the North Sea coast. In 1933, aristocrat Lorenzo Mitchell-Henry reeled in what remains the largest fish ever caught in British waters: a 386kg bluefin tuna.

Steam-powered yachts filled the bay on the hunt for even larger fish. “The bluefin tuna were coming into the North Sea to feast on the enormous shoals of herring and mackerel that were there. They would be followed by whales and dolphins,” says Tony Juniper, chair of Natural England. By the 1950s, however, the warm-blooded aquatic torpedoes had mostly disappeared, exposing a greater decline in the health of the North Sea ecosystem.