UK Nature and Environment

Belfast’s brownfield sites are hiving with rare and at risk species that could be lost forever if the accidental wildlife havens are destroyed in the name of development, a new report warns. In 2017, a Buglife study for NIEA identified 47 brownfield sites across the city as ‘Open Mosaic Habitat on Previously Developed Land (OMHPDL)’ - which is priority habitat.

The sites, which rewilded because they weren’t being used, supported a wide range of plants, animals and insects with many being the sole biodiverse green spaces in their areas.

But since nothing was done to protect them or alert planners to their high biodiversity value, 25.5% have been destroyed or partially destroyed while planning permission was granted for another 14.9% with a further 4.3% of the sites under consideration for development.

The National Trust is searching for a mysterious animal that is preying on an island’s seabird population.

It comes after the discovery of “unusual signs” of predation by a mammal on Canna, to the south of Skye.

A number of seabirds have been eaten on the tiny Scottish island, which provides a habitat to thousands of birds.

The elm, once a ubiquitous presence in the British landscape, was brought to its knees by Dutch elm disease in the latter half of the 20th century. Yet, amid the devastation, a remarkable story of resilience has unfolded. Find below some of the fascinating examples of elm trees across the United Kingdom – from busy city streets in London to the quiet fields of Yeovil.

A coalition of rural, wildlife and conservation bodies has called for an urgent review of the rollout of mobile network infrastructure across Scotland amid concerns about the impact of masts on the country’s most remote spaces.

Organisations including the John Muir Trust, Mountaineering Scotland and RSPB Scotland have written to Sir Chris Bryant, Westminster’s minister of state for digital and data infrastructure, asking for a review of the Total Not-Spot (TNS) element of the Shared Rural Network (SRN) programme.

The programme, introduced under the previous Conservative administration, is a collaboration between the UK Government and mobile phone operators including O2 and Vodafone, seeking to achieve 95% 4G mobile phone coverage across Britain.

Bird watchers in Cornwall were delighted by an “incredibly rare” sight last week when more than 70 white storks flew down the south coast.

The unusual sighting was witnessed by photographer Adrian Langdon among others.

He was taking part in a seal survey on Looe Island, as part of a Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust project, when the flock few directly overhead.

Work to understand how avian influenza behaves in wild bird and mammal populations will be accelerated with the launch of a new £2.3 million research consortium it has been announced today (27 August).

Scientists from the UK’s world leading Animal Plant Health Agency (APHA), alongside the British Trust for Ornithology, RSPB, University of Edinburgh and NatureScot, will collect and analyse samples from a range of bird and mammal populations to better understand how the virus behaves and fill current gaps in understanding about its transmission within wild birds, as well as the wider risks to mammals.

The most recent outbreaks of the current H5N1 strain of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI), commonly known as bird flu, were the largest ever in the UK and devastated wild bird populations including seabirds such as gannets and black-headed gulls. This strain has also infected numerous species of wild mammals around the world, including otters and foxes in Great Britain.

The UK is at risk of missing its legally binding target to protect biodiversity and nature, a report has warned.

Britain pledged to protect and conserve at least 30% of the country’s land and sea by 2030 – an international target known as 30×30 that was agreed at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal in December 2022.

However, the government risks missing the target unless it acts urgently to halt and reverse the unprecedented environmental crisis in the UK, according to a report released by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) on Tuesday.

Let me start with a confession: I love moths. If your instant reaction to that statement is a shudder and expression of dislike (or worse), be assured that you’re not alone. It is the commonest response I get. But before you scroll on or turn the page, I hope you will give me a couple of minutes of your time to persuade you to change your mind. Moths are extremely important and beautiful creatures, and we should all love them.

Almost all of them, anyway. There’s a couple of tiny species that nibble holes in your jumpers and chew your carpets, and I’m not going to try to make you love those. Feel free to hate them with a vengeance, particularly as autumn draws in and you open your jumper drawer to find unwanted evidence of their labours. But Britain has about 2,500 other species of moths, and it would be unfair to let the clothes moths colour your perceptions of the other 99.9%. And the others really are special, in all sorts of ways.

First of all, moths are stunningly beautiful animals. Take the merveille du jour: a velvety plush of green, black and white, perfectly camouflaged to hide on a patch of lichen, but fabulous on any background. The puss moth is a thumb-sized swatch of ermine fur coat. The burnished brass looks a colourless blob when angled away from you, but turn it sideways and its metallic sheen is revealed, more gilded than its name implies. The elephant hawk-moth is candy-striped gold and bubblegum pink, and larger than most British butterflies.

A project that aims to restore and protect the Chilterns’ chalk streams has received a £351,083 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Not Bourne Yesterday is being developed by nature reserve Chilterns National Landscape (CNL), which covers 833 sq km (322 sq miles) across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

The project encompasses 12 interweaving initiatives that aim to conserve the rare rivers' environmental and cultural heritage, which spans 8,000 years.

WHEN regulator Ofwat recently announced that it proposed fining three of the worst performing water companies — Thames Water being the worst — I, and the rest of the Henley Mermaids, felt that we had had a “little win”.

However, the proposed £104m fine is measly and just a drop in the poo-filled ocean for the failing water monopoly.

Considering they’ve never put more money into infrastructure investment than they’ve paid in dividends then I’m not sure what real improvement we can expect.

Money set aside for restoring nature is to be diverted into funding wage settlements in Scotland’s local authorities.

BBC Scotland News understands that ministers have written to councils telling them to divert the current year’s allocations from the Nature Restoration Fund to settle pay deals.

The fund is worth £29.2m although the cash is split between councils and the Scottish government’s nature agency Nature Scot.

More than two years after a fire destroyed part of Neston Reedbed in Cheshire, wildlife is "bouncing back", according to the RSPB.

A blaze, started deliberately, ripped through 10 ha of the site on the Wirral Peninsula in March 2022. Three 15-year-old boys were handed nine-month referral orders for arson and damage of a Site of Special Scientific Interest last year.

However, the RSPB has recently said that the site is recovering well as the organisation announced new measures to prevent future fires and anti-social behaviour.

Almost 455,000 trees have been felled across the country by local councils over the past 10 years, i can reveal.

Campaigners have said more must be done to preserve trees and have accused councils of prioritising planning developments over environmental concerns.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to all 382 councils in the UK revealed North Lanarkshire felled the highest amount of trees at 31,480, followed by Birmingham with 21,486 and Hampshire County with 18,535 trees felled over the last decade.

Golf courses across the South Downs National Park are clubbing together to share knowledge and practical support to help fight biodiversity loss.

The project aims to help green-keepers create havens for wildlife, particularly bees and butterflies, as well as introduce mowing methods to protect rare chalk grassland and encourage wildflowers.

A total of 14 golf clubs from across Sussex took part in a seminar at Pyecombe Golf Club, near Brighton, which has become one of the best courses in the country for chalk grassland flowers and butterflies.

Water is Life

Yet here, in Britain, it's on life support.

We are marching to reclaim our right to clean, healthy and abundant water for all people across the UK.

March for Clean Water is a national gathering of all those concerned and outraged about the state of our waterways.

Cromwell Bottom nature reserve has welcomed some new and very important visitors this year, as a group of swifts have made the reserve their summer home.

Cromwell Bottom near Brighouse is managed by Calderdale Council in partnership with the Cromwell Bottom Wildlife Group.

As part of conservation efforts at the site, a number of swift boxes were installed three years ago, to provide safe nesting spaces for these very special but threatened birds.

Water meadows near Hereford are to be transformed into a nature reserve.

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust (HWT) has been awarded a £243,129 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, alongside £30,000 funding from Welsh Water, to restore Bartonsham Meadows, just south of Hereford.

Much of the site will be restored as essential floodplain meadow habitat through harvesting hay, grazing livestock and introducing wildflower and grass seed.

When sodium cyanide leaked into a Walsall canal this month, leading to major incident being declared and miles of the waterway closed off, the Canal & River Trust was working in uncharted territory.

The charity is used to fighting pollution in the waterways that crisscross the country, but this type of chemical – and the extreme risk to public health that came with it – was not something it had tackled before.

“I’ve never known an incident like this in 20 years of pollution incidents on the canals,” said Karen Jackson, a contamination officer. “It’s not like when we’re dealing with oil or farm pollutions, where we know exactly what we need to do. With this, it’s unprecedented. We’re looking at lots of options but the fear is they may not be fully effective, and some are incredibly expensive.”

When Jimmy Reid goes looking for incredible wildlife to photograph, he doesn't have to stray very far from home.

He looks under drain covers, beneath rocks and even inside the dilapidated shed in his garden in Loanhead, Midlothian.

To some, the wasps, moths, ants and spiders that emerge may be considered mundane, or even a pest.

To Jimmy, a professional photographer, they are the subject of striking close-up shots revealing fascinating detail.

Marsh harrier chicks have successfully fledged at a Solway coast nature reserve for the first time.

The pair have successfully taken flight at RSPB Scotland’s Mersehead nature reserve.

The species was once extinct in the UK and while populations have recovered in the past 50 years, only a few breeding attempts have ever been recorded in Dumfries and Galloway.

A pair of snorkellers have captured stunning images of a rare sea salp colony off the coast of West Cornwall.

Salps are a type of floating sea squirt that often form chains, resembling structures that look like lights in the water.

Marine photographer Heather Hamilton and her dad David Hamilton were snorkelling near Porthcurno when they spotted thousands of the jellyfish-like creatures drifting through the water.

Rare prehistoric pools known as "ghost pingos" have been brought back to life by a project aiming to recreate nature-rich Ice Age landscapes in the Brecks.

Pingos are shallow ponds formed in post-glacial depressions which harbour a unique wealth of wildlife - but over the centuries many were lost after fields were filled in for agricultural use.

The Norfolk Wildlife Trust (NWT) reserve at Thompson Common, between Watton and Thetford, has around 400 pingos, but hundreds more are believed to be buried on the surrounding land.

Two sightings of a rare breed of shark have been reported off the Pembrokeshire coast in recent weeks.

The thresher shark is an uncommon visitor to Welsh waters but has was spotted twice during the 2024 National Whale and Dolphin Watch which ran from July 26 to August 4.

The event aims to get a ‘snapshot’ of what can be seen in UK waters, with the data collected giving an idea as to the distribution of whales, dolphins and porpoises.

More than one in five ponds in the UK could be designated as “priority habitats” but only about 2% have been identified so far, experts say.

Priority ponds are recognised as being the highest-quality water spaces for freshwater wildlife, often providing a last refuge for plants and animals that have been lost from surrounding areas. The designation can help preserve ponds threatened by proposed construction and other landscape changes.

Because so many of these water bodies go under the radar, the Freshwater Habitats Trust (FHT) is asking citizen scientists to help identify what could make up more than 20% of Britain’s existing ponds.

Despite embracing an unruly approach to gardening, I am compelled to battle our hedge when the path becomes impassable. While cutting back some beech recently, my partner yelled out that he’d been stung. Moments later, we spotted a football-sized wasps’ nest hanging from a branch of our dogwood. Within minutes, I was nursing a sting of my own and hatching a relocation plan.

Being a former beekeeper, I’m fairly confident around stinging insects. So come nightfall I put on my old beekeeping suit and carefully placed a compost bag around the nest before cutting off the branch it hung from and placing the whole thing in a secure box. We nervously walked the package into the woods, opened the box and bag, then ran home. The internet assures me that the wasps will be temporarily baffled but eventually set about making a new home – far from my garden, hopefully.

Now, I’m not recommending this approach to ill-equipped gardeners. But the experience made me realise that the prejudice I’ve long held against wasps (developed while keeping bees – they are known to attack hives to eat the honey and the honeybees) was starting to come undone.