UK Nature and Environment

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/19859084

A £250m bypass planned to go through a Merseyside country park has been scrapped in the budget.

The proposal for a dual carriageway through Rimrose Valley Country Park in south Sefton was first announced in 2017 to improve access to the Port of Liverpool.

In budget documents released today, the Transport Secretary said the A5036 Princess Way scheme would not progress as it was “unfunded and unaffordable”.

Bootle’s Labour MP Peter Dowd, whose constituency includes the port, said: "Rimrose Valley is a green lung for my constituents and the last thing we wanted was a road to be built through it."

He added: "We now have to ensure that the work to develop a long term, environmentally sustainable alternative continues."

Great British nature is in trouble. From polluted waterways to the threat of invasive species, Britain is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. And yet native species are receiving help from heroic conservation projects restoring habitats, educating communities and even reintroducing species.

23 native species conservation projects, undertaken by British zoos and aquariums, have been shortlisted for a prestigious national award in recognition of their heroic efforts. The Great British Wildlife Restoration seeks to shine a light on conservation going on all around us, with a winner depending on the votes of Members of Parliament and the House of Lords.

The competition shows a huge diversity in the types of conservation going on in Britain. They include preventing the extinction of Wales’ rarest tree, reintroducing harvest mice in Northumberland, the creation of nesting sites for swifts in Hertfordshire and even the breeding of medicinal leeches in Scotland.

The call to action – led by Groundwork, The King’s (formerly Prince’s) Trust, Mission Diverse, Disability Rights UK and Youth Environmental Service – sets out the need to ensure equity in the transition to a greener economy, through the creation of entry level green jobs that help tackle the climate and nature crises.

The call is made in ‘Force of Nature – Reversing Nature’s Decline and Promoting Equity in the Green Transition’, a publication written by the five charities and endorsed by a wide range of key nature-sector organisations including RSPB, the National Trust, Wildlife & Countryside Link, WWF-UK and Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

A key ask for central and local government is the prioritisation of waged work placements within national employment support programmes and regional plans for skills and growth. The document also recommends that the creation of a ‘National Nature Service’ should be a priority for the Labour government, through paid environmental work placements for all young people, similar to the scheme being progressed by a coalition of organisations across Wales*.

Humber Forest has planted its first trees of the new tree planting season, last week, with over 1,000 saplings planted at sites across the region.

The trees were planted in a range of projects across the county, including at a primary school in Skidby, and farmland in Goole and Holderness.

The volunteers educated the children at Skibdy Primary School on the essential role trees play in preserving our local environment, and in helping to prevent soil erosion, and providing habitats for wildlife.

Bathing waters in England and Wales could be tested all year round in a government shake-up to water pollution rules.

At the moment, designated bathing sites are only tested for dangerous pollution that could make swimmers sick during the “bathing season”, which runs from May to September.

Campaigners have long argued that people use waterways for recreation such as swimming, fishing and boating throughout the year, so the testing should be consistent. Additionally, the May-September period is often the driest of the year, so it is likely for there to be fewer spills from sewers during that time.

New research reveals ten butterfly species have increased significantly in Scotland in the past 40 years, and it is thought climate change could be pushing them northwards.

The latest Scottish Biodiversity Indicator, published by NatureScot today, examines the long-term trend for butterflies since 1979. The scientific report finds that, from 1979 to 2023, there has been an overall 35 percent increase across the 20 species analysed.

Generalist butterfly species, which use a range of habitats, have increased by half, while populations of specialist species, which are limited to specific habitats like heathland, remain stable.

Thousands of oysters released into the Firth of Forth appear to be thriving again after a century-long absence from the Scottish estuary since they were lost to overfishing.

Marine experts from Heriot-Watt University who have helped reintroduce about 30,000 European flat oysters to the estuary said divers and underwater cameras showed they were doing well.

The Firth of Forth was once home to one of the largest native European oyster reefs in the north-east Atlantic, yielding up to 30 million oysters a year during the 1800s, but by the beginning of the 1900s they had been fished to local extinction.

Bats will be getting a boost if a wildlife trust can raise £60,000 for Habitat for Bats appeal.

After the success of a smaller appeal to help a specific group of bats, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has created a more ambitious plan to help the animals at six of its reserves.

The cost to improve habitats and monitoring is estimated to be £100,000, so this fundraising push is to "kick start this critical work".

Saltmarshes could be restored to protect natural habitats on the banks of two rivers and help tackle climate change by storing carbon.

Environmental charity Groundwork North East & Cumbria has applied to Newcastle and Sunderland councils for permission for work at two sites on the rivers Wear and Tyne.

This would "compensate for centuries of heavy industrialisation" during which riverbanks were built on, the charity said.

A report published today reveals the striking results of a National Lottery Heritage Fund £5 million Nextdoor Nature programme which enabled The Wildlife Trusts to work with communities across the UK for two years. The programme originally intended to reach 200 communities – but instead exceeded that 8 times over, reaching more than 1,600.

At a time when a recent UK Government evaluation of green prescribing showed that connections to nature can bring about big reductions in symptoms of anxiety and depression, and impressive improvements in well-being*, the benefits of the Nextdoor Nature programme for people are significant. Extraordinary transformations have taken place across the country over the last two years in communities that have been traditionally or historically excluded from making decisions about nature and the environment in their local areas. The benefits of nature connectedness have never been better appreciated.

Nextdoor Nature has given people the skills, tools and opportunity to take action for nature. The projects have included working with Roma communities in East Belfast to support wildlife gardening, linking local schools with rare bird reintroduction schemes in Kent, rewilding Derby town centre and a nature-friendly faith space in Slough. Nextdoor Nature’s legacy will live on beyond the end of the funding so that local communities can continue the work using their new skills and contacts.

Pensioner Archie Hyslop fears for the future of Langholm, a former mill town at the heart of Scotland’s legacy textile industry.

Dense forests are encircling his hometown near the border with England as investors snap up land to plant fast-growing trees for timber and carbon credits.

In response, residents have formed an action group to challenge the latest afforestation scheme that would, in their eyes, diminish the landscape’s natural beauty and biodiversity.

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Calls to make it easier to control Edinburgh’s “menacing” seagull population have been rejected after the RSPB raised concerns over “serious recent declines” in some gull species.

Conservative city councillor Max Mitchell argued there should be “more flexibility” to allow removal of nest and eggs where the birds are disturbing residents.

“Lord Provost, seagulls are a menace,” he said while tabling a motion calling for changes to the current system. “They foul over the property which is not only unpleasant but a health hazard.

A nature reserve is celebrating its 30th anniversary and the success of bringing back a rare bird species.

Ham Wall near Glastonbury in Somerset was bought by the RSPB in 1994 who turned the former peat extraction site into a nature reserve.

The site is credited with helping the recovery of the bittern, which had been on the verge of extinction in the 1990s.

Tony Whitehead from the RSPB said: "It's probably one of the best places in the UK to see a bittern now. I don't think they would have turned up if we hadn't done the work."

Plans to create a new Welsh national park stretching from the dunes of north-east Wales to the wild Berwyn mountains and the peaceful, wooded slopes of Lake Vyrnwy further south have captured the imagination of many ramblers, cyclists and other outdoor lovers.

But the Welsh government’s proposals to improve access to nature have been dismissed by an opposition group as creating “a play area for townies”, sparking a furious debate about who the countryside is for.

Elwyn Vaughan, leader of the Plaid Cymru group on Powys county council, who has become a figurehead for the campaign against the park, claims the plan would lead to more “honey pot” beauty spots, which are easily accessible from large cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. “There would be huge pressures from the number of ­visitors … it would lead to the proliferation of holiday homes and Airbnbs. It would lead to litter pollution and parking problems, which we see in places like Snowdonia,” said Vaughan.

Millions of critically endangered eels have indeed been exported from Britain to Russia this year, but this is not “bonkers”, as Andrew Kerr of the Sustainable Eel Group claims, as it is a project to conserve the species that was in development before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (UK export of millions of endangered eels to Russia attacked as ‘bonkers’, 22 October).

Juvenile eels are transported from the Severn estuary to the Vistula and Curonian lagoons, which Russia shares with Poland and Lithuania. Unlike the River Severn, the lagoons are pristine habitats for eels, with unrestricted migratory pathways to the Baltic and thence to their breeding grounds in the Sargasso Sea.

In contrast, the wetland eel habitat of the Severn has been destroyed by modern agriculture, industry, housing estates and pollution. What little remains is inaccessible to the eels because of the human-made barriers to migration, including locks and weirs used by pleasure boats, and flood defences. Therefore, most of the eels that swim into the Severn estuary perish.

A city council has awarded £50,000 to a group planning to buy 35 acres of natural habitat to create a nature reserve.

The popular area in Salisbury, known locally as Broken Bridges, is part of a former farm and is in the River Avon Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

Now designated as an asset of community value, a not-for-profit group has agreed a price with the owner and is trying to raise £250,000 to buy the land.

The latest funding means the group has reached more than £200,000, with Jeremy Nettle, chair of the Broken Bridges Community Interest Company, calling it "a tremendous step forward".

An initiative to save one of Scotland's most endangered species of tree has been launched in the Cairngorms National Park.

Aspen provides a vital habitat for rare wildlife, plants and fungi and is one of Scotland's most important native trees.

The tree was once common but deforestation and overgrazing has caused it to largely disappear from the Scottish landscape.

A new partnership between the rewilding charity, Trees for Life, and the Cairngorms National Park Authority will map the location and health of the existing aspen population and use the information to guide the planting of new trees.

Campaigners have called for an “ecological Domesday survey” requiring large landowners to report on how they are looking after their land for nature.

They say the assessment, so-called for its echoes of the Domesday survey nearly a thousand years ago in 1086 that asked landowners to report on the land they owned, would help deliver a much-needed boost for nature.

Landowners with 1,000 acres or more should be required to submit wildlife surveys and plans for how they will restore habitats, species and carbon stores every five years, which should be made available online to the public, the leading conservationists say.

Butterfly experts are celebrating the completion of an £8,000 project to help Chalk Hill Blues, Brown Hairstreaks and Grizzled Skippers in Somerset.

National charity Butterfly Conservation has erected the new 850-metre boundary around its Stoke Camp nature reserve in the Mendip Hills.

The fence is not to keep butterflies on site, but the all-important cows and sheep that graze the vegetation and create perfect habitat for a host of rare and vulnerable species.

Public encouraged to ‘have your voice heard’ in third National Park consultation, following community conversations, surveys and fieldwork.

NatureScot has opened the formal (statutory) consultation on whether a new National Park should be established in Galloway and parts of South and East Ayrshire. The consultation will include looking at what a potential new Park might consist of - from its boundary to its board makeup, and even what the Park could be called. It will also seek to gauge opinion on the proposal and alternatives to it.

The formal consultation will run from today (7 November) until 14 February 2025 and is accessible on the NatureScot website and in print, audio and Gaelic versions. During the second half of November, a consultation leaflet will be distributed to 52,000 households and businesses within the proposed area.

Rising above the rich woodlands of the Duddon Valley lies Mart Crag, one of several Cumbrian landmarks that are reminders of the historical presence of the pine marten, an elusive forest dweller that was once widespread in Cumbria and across the UK.

Now a project led by the University of Cumbria has thrown a lifeline to the few remaining pine martens in the south of the county. It has released 13 healthy adults (eight females and five males) in Forestry England’s Grizedale Forest and the Rusland Valley. The animals were moved recently under licence from strong populations in the Scottish Highlands*.

In Cumbria, a growing movement of landowners and conservation groups share a vision to restore nature by returning native species as the building blocks of healthy ecosystems. Twenty years ago, many species were endangered or completely absent in south Cumbria.

Connecting the Coast, an ambitious three-year Nature Recovery project backed by Welsh Government funding, is drawing to a close, having taken impressive strides in protecting and enhancing the fragile ecosystems of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

The project, designed to safeguard coastal habitats and enhance biodiversity in farmland adjacent to the iconic coastline, works in close collaboration with local farmers and landowners, to restore habitats, strengthen ecosystem resilience, and promote sustainable land management.

Connecting the Coast has yielded impressive results, with land management changes creating flourishing habitats for wildlife. This is evident in the reappearance of coastal wildflowers like centaury and sheep’s bit where conservation grazing has been implemented and the appearance of scarce arable plants, such as weasel’s snout and bugloss, in crop margins that have been left unsprayed.

A whale that washed up near a coastal resort has been formally identified as a Sowerby's beaked whale, which is rarely seen at sea.

The body of the juvenile male was found on Saturday near Smallmouth Beach in Weymouth, Dorset.

Experts from London Zoo confirmed the species, which is thought to inhabit deep ocean trenches in the North Atlantic.

Conservationists on an island 28 miles off the UK mainland are concerned after signs there may be a mouse there, potentially putting a colony of seabirds at risk.

Mice and rats have been eradicated from St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly, as part of measures to protect its "nationally significant population of storm petrels".

The Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust said "probable" signs of a mouse including droppings and urine had been spotted, and suspects the creature was brought in within some animal feed.

The trust has been running a successful program with the RSPB and others to get rid of rodents on the islands for the past decade, which has led to the petrel population "bouncing back", it said.

Almost 56m litres of sewage was dumped in a river in 2023, according to campaigners.

The Cleddau Project said Welsh Water data showed pumps at Picton in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, were running at 80% capacity from July 2022 to February 2024.

That meant 55,857,000 litres of waste - equivalent to 17 tankers a day - which should have been going to a sewage treatment plant, was instead going into special conservation area the Western Cleddau.