UK Nature and Environment

After a tense 3-way tie, a tie-breaking die roll resulted in an atmospheric woodland shot by YungOnions being declared the winner and becoming out new summer banner photo for the next 3 months.

Thanks to all who submitted photos for this - there were a lot of excellent shots there! Please do consider submitting again for the Autumn banner - which we'll be choosing at the equinox in September.

NHS Orkney has begun the roll out of ‘Nature Prescriptions’, a joint initiative with RSPB Scotland and conservation programme Species on the Edge, designed to increase patients’ physical and mental health through increased connection with nature.

A Nature Prescription is a guided conversation between a healthcare professional and patient which explores how the patient can improve their mental and physical wellbeing through deepening their connection with nature. Alongside the conversation, patients are given a Nature Prescription Calendar which contains suggestions of seasonal activities they can try to help them connect to nature in a way that is personal and meaningful to them.

Birdwatchers across the UK are being asked to get out and count gulls this autumn, as the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) continues to monitor populations of these characterful, if sometimes controversial, birds.

While they may be associated with stealing chips, and are frequently characterised as a menace to families enjoying a seaside break, the UK’s gulls are in serious trouble. Researchers from BTO are trying to get to grips with the causes of population declines in our breeding gulls and to monitor those that visit us from further afield.

In autumn and winter, gulls flock together to roost communally on lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries across the UK, in groups that can number many hundreds or even thousands of individuals. Understanding where these roosts occur, and the numbers of birds using them, is key to helping conservation organisations protect these familiar birds.

In a recent interview critical of the current government’s handling of the sewage crisis, Leader of the Liberal Democrats (and candidate for Prime Minister) Ed Davey said that Britain’s chalk streams are ‘really, really precious’ and ‘the equivalent of the Amazon for the UK, they’re so important environmentally.’ But what, exactly, do chalk streams do that’s so vital?

Chalk streams are some of the most unique and valuable freshwater ecosystems in the world, characterized by their crystal-clear waters, stable temperatures, and rich biodiversity. They are globally rare, with approximately 85% of the world's chalk streams located in England, primarily in the southeast and southwest regions. This rarity underscores their ecological value and the urgent need for their conservation. These streams are fed by groundwater from chalk aquifers, which function as natural filtration systems. The water emerging from these aquifers is crystal clear, mineral-rich, and maintains a stable temperature throughout the year, fostering diverse ecosystems.

Yorkshire Water has launched a £2m project to reduce sewage overflowing into the Huddersfield Broad Canal when it rains.

Work includes the construction of a new surface water sewer and redirecting highways drains.

It is expected the project, due to be completed by November, will reduce spills into the canal by 61%.

Yorkshire Water project manager Omair Khan said the scheme was just a "small part of a £180m investment" across the region.

The River Conwy in north Wales has been surveyed by scientists to establish new genetic information that can be used to monitor freshwater rivers worldwide. The work, involving multiple institutions, and led by Bangor University, Cardiff University, University of Birmingham and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) is published in Nature Communications .

Human activities such as climate change and habitat modification are causing populations of freshwater species to decline around the globe. Conservationists and scientists therefore need to conduct baseline ecological surveys, in order to monitor and improve these environments, but traditional methods of conducting freshwater surveys rely on individual expertise and can be time-consuming.

Sampling the water and sediment for trace DNA can provide a far more in-depth understanding of the species connected to that environment. Environmental DNA, or eDNA, can not only reveal the presence of species too small to see with the human eye, it also detects larger animals and insects who have moved through that space, from salmon to dragonfly larvae, because of the tiny fragments of DNA they leave behind in the environment.

A woman has shared the "incredible" moment she caught sight of what is believed to be a humpback whale splashing around on the Devon coast. Frequent Berry Head visitor Jade Moore, captured the "beautiful" creature on video after hearing a loud blowing sound from the coastline.

Jade said she was sat near the lighthouse at Berry Head on Monday evening (June 18) looking out for dolphins, which are frequently spotted in the waters. "I often go to Berry head to spot dolphins and it was a beautiful sunny evening," she said.

"Whilst looking out to the left, suddenly I heard a huge blow to the right hand side of me. I thought in my head that was so loud I wonder if that could have been a whale. When I turned around I could see faintly through the water it was a whale! I was so excited," she added.

A study has shown putting down food near bird eggs to draw away predators increases their chances of survival, leading to hopes the tactic can be used to save the capercaillie from potential extinction.

It is believed there are only around 500 of the ground-nesting birds left in the wild in the UK and its decline has been partly blamed on predators such as pine marten, which is itself a protected species, eating their eggs and chicks.

Researchers seeking a non-lethal way to stop predators from targeting capercaillie placed hundreds of artificial nests filled with chicken eggs throughout the Cairngorms then left deer meat near half of them to see if this would discourage them from foraging further.

Residents have pledged to turn their hometown into a swift city by creating more nesting sites for a species of bird whose numbers are in decline in the UK.

A group of people in Lancaster have set out plans to create more wildflower areas and attract more insects to help the summer visitors flourish.

Swift numbers in the UK have fallen by 60% in the last 25 years due to habitat loss, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

Alasdair Mckee from the charity said residents wanted to create a "stable future for these iconic and long-distance travellers".

Prof Lynn Dicks has had her hands in the soil for almost three decades – and she has watched it slowly become stripped of invertebrate life.

“In my life, I have seen the decline,” says Dicks, an ecology professor at the University of Cambridge. She knows it from the data: “The data we have of long-term trends in insect abundance over time, that the decline rates are, on average, about 1% a year.

But she sees it, every day, as well. “There are fewer insects just flying around. When you leave the window open and the lights on at night, you don’t get flooded with them any more like you used to.”

We must ensure that the UK’s first ever heathland green bridge, straddling the A3 and a lifeline for diminishing wildlife, isn’t the last of its kind to open, says John Lewis-Stempel.

Why did the hedgehog cross the road? Perhaps it was out hunting slugs or seeking a mate. Unfortunately, it was run over when on its nocturnal ramble; up to 335,000 hedgehogs die each year on UK roads. Flattened. Together with about 750,000 other wild things.

How could the animals not end up as roadkill? The UK has a road network totalling about 262,300 miles, along which we drive 41.3 million licensed vehicles. People find tarmac and four wheels useful, whereas Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and friends find the road network at best a barrier, at worst a mortal experience and, somewhere in between, they discover themselves stranded in fragmented habitats with diminishing resources and a shrinking gene pool.

Rewilding has boosted job numbers at sites across Scotland by more than 400% while tackling the nature and climate emergencies, new research by Rewilding Britain shows.

An analysis of 13 major rewilding projects covering almost 60,000 hectares between them has revealed a 412% increase in jobs since rewilding began. The varied sample includes sites owned or managed by charities, communities, private landowners, and public bodies.

The first findings of their kind for Scotland come as calls grow for the Scottish Government to declare Scotland the world’s first Rewilding Nation and commit to nature recovery across 30% of land and sea.

With river and sea pollution dominating headlines in recent years, what do voters want politicians to do about the issue?

"Our very existence depends on water and it needs to be clean," says Louise Wainwright, standing on a bank of the River Avon in Devon.

The waterway covers a 23-mile (37km) stretch from its source on Dartmoor to the Avon Dam, where water is siphoned off for drinking, to the sea at Bigbury Bay where people play in the surf.

"This looks like a picture postcard river, but it simply is not,” says Mrs Wainwright.

Cheshire Wildlife Trust and National Highways have joined forces to deliver a new Network for Nature project, creating and enhancing 30ha of wildflower meadows that will improve habitats across Cheshire benefitting people, nature and wildlife.

Hannah Dalton, Senior Living Landscape Officer at Cheshire Wildlife Trust said: “We are delighted to have been successful securing this funding to support our Pollinating Cheshire project. The funding will help us to work with farmers and landowners, creating beautiful meadows to support a wealth of wildlife across Cheshire”

We live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. We’ve lost of 97% of lowland meadows across the UK and 99% in Cheshire. These places once hummed with the buzz of bees, and beautiful butterflies. Funding designated by National Highways aims to help create, restore and connect places for nature to come back and thrive; where the environment has been impacted by activities from previous road building.

Red-headed Bunting has been moved to Category A of the British list, the British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee (BOURC) has announced today, with a bird in Shetland in 2010 becoming the first wild record of the species in Britain.

The bunting, a migratory breeder that nests in Central Asia and winters in the Indian Subcontinent, was previously languishing in Category D, with a long history of escaped birds in Britain.

A marine conservation group has initiated legal action against the UK government, claiming the Conservatives’ decision to issue North Sea oil and gas licences without taking into account their impact on the environment was unlawful.

Oceana UK, part of an international conservation organisation, said that in issuing 82 licences, Claire Coutinho, the secretary of state for energy security, and the North Sea Transition Authority, ignored advice from independent government experts about the potential effects on marine protected areas (MPAs).

The licences, issued between October 2023 and May 2024, cover 226 areas or “blocks” – a third of which overlap with MPAs. Oceana claims the assessments of the blocks – provided by an agency on behalf of the government – did not reflect the advice given by the independent government experts and so were in breach of the law.

A communication plan could be launched in East Devon to help get support from residents for rewilding.

Councillors on the district council’s scrutiny committee acknowledged that supporting the environment and encouraging biodiversity were positive aspirations, but residents don’t always know whether land is simply being overlooked or left for rewilding.

Council officers said so-called wildlife improvement areas, where the authority manages land to help promote nature, had been created since 2010, starting with wildflowers in 13 meadows and several older cemeteries.

The march to Restore Nature this Saturday could fill London’s streets with rage at the politicians’ and corporations’ complete lack of urgency in dealing with climate and ecological breakdown.

The demonstration is backed by direct action groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.

And it’s also supported by much more mainstream forces such as The National Trust and the RSPB birds’ charity.

Organisers say the protest’s aims include a “pay rise for nature”, meaning a doubling of budgets for nature and climate-friendly farming.

The birth of wildcat kittens at a Kent wildlife park has sparked fresh hopes for the survival of Britain’s rarest mammal species, conservationists said.

The Wildwood Trust’s Herne Bay park, just outside Canterbury, said the litter were born around nine weeks ago in a dedicated off-show breeding enclosure, to parents Talla and Blair.

Laura Gardner, director of conservation at the trust, said the kittens will play an important role in bringing back the species from the “brink of extinction”.

European wildcats are considered rarer than the Bengal tiger and giant panda, and are the only native cat species surviving in Britain, with a small population still roaming the Scottish Highlands.

But with an estimated fewer than 300 individuals left, the population has been declared “functionally extinct”.

For Wales Nature Week, June 29 to July 7, Tenby Town Council is having a FIT Count Challenge during the week to encourage people to go outside and take a close look at a flower!

A FIT count is a Flower Insect Timed count and involves someone going outside to find a flower and spending ten minutes watching it to see how many insects land or sit on the flower during that time.

The flowers you can choose from are dandelion, buttercup, hawthorn, blackberry, lavender, hogweed, common or greater knapweeds, white clover, ragwort or white dead-nettle.

A SEPTUAGENARIAN sleuth hunting for one of Britain's rarest moths was stunned to find it living in his own garden.

Retired doctor Jo Davis, 78, from Lanarkshire, walked for miles along the banks of the Clyde over the past year looking for the Currant Shoot Borer moth and the Red Currant bushes it feeds on.

He was astonished to realise the treasure he sought was under his nose the whole time when he spotted one of the tiny black-and-yellow insects on his own Red Currant bush.

Scientists have put “mini backpacks” on rare beetles found in temperate rainforest fragments to record their movements as part of a study that could help to support conservation efforts.

Researchers from the University of Exeter have been working with the Woodland Trust to examine the blue ground beetle, an elusive animal that lives in the habitat in south-west England, and about which little is known.

The team delicately placed radio trackers, which look like small backpacks, on 36 of the insects to record their daily comings and goings in various woods across Dartmoor.

A council has paused verge cutting along a road after two species of orchids were found growing.

Dorset Council said its greenspace team was working along the A354 Easton Lane on Portland when they came across bee and pyramidal orchids.

The council said cutting on the road's verges had been temporarily paused to allow the bright flowers to finish flowering and go to seed.

It said it hoped the move would see more orchids grow in the area in the future.

Funding has been secured to monitor and protect Black Grouse in North Wales.

The species is celebrated for its lively leks, where males gather and display to watching females. A recent episode of Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy Moir on Sky TV featured a Black Grouse lek in the region's hills. However, numbers have fallen by an estimated 45% since 2018.

After a successful bid to the Nature Network Funding programme, work will be carried out in partnership between RSPB Cymru, Natural Resources Wales and Clwydian Range and Dee Valley National Landscape to monitor numbers of lekking Black Grouse more accurately in the project area.

The funding will also be used to deliver best practice for sustainable upland management for a wide range of species, as well as enabling the development of a landscape-scale conservation strategy that works for the uplands, woodlands and the communities of north-east Wales. Targeted conservation management is known to work and, as well as sustaining and increasing numbers, can provide multiple other benefits including carbon storage, habitat creation for other wildlife and prevention of wildfires.

If you look up to the skies of Sussex, you might be lucky enough to catch sight of something that hasn’t been seen for more than 600 years: a stork, fledged from a nearby nest. With their enormous wingspan, it’s hard to mistake them for anything else and the last time they were resident in England was just a year after the Battle of Agincourt.

Amid fears of biodiversity loss and climate change, their return is a rare piece of good news. Thanks, though, to the hard work of the RSPB, dedicated conservation groups, collaborative farmers and thousands of volunteers, there are growing numbers of certain species of birds in Britain, some brought back from near extinction, others have been reintroduced after an absence of hundreds of years.

“Generally, things aren’t doing well, there’s a perpetual decline for many birds,” admits Jon Carter of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), “but there are key species that are turning a corner or bucking this trend.”

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