UK Nature and Environment

Thousands of tyres have been pulled from a river in a major clean-up to help the environment and wildlife.

Over the past five days 6,000 tyres, which could have been there for decades, were removed by six excavators from the River Ogmore, in Bridgend.

Organisers have described it as Wales' largest community river clean, with hundreds of volunteers taking part.

Midsummer butterflies are on the wing in early May after a sunny spring prompted one of the most advanced seasons for Britain’s Lepidoptera on record.

The Lulworth skipper – usually found in June and July – is flying at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, the chequered skipper emerged in April rather than mid-May in Scotland and the first swallowtail, which is most common in mid-June, was spotted in Norfolk on 1 May.

“The chequered skipper is a butterfly you can set your calendar by – it typically comes out 13-15 May,” said Tom Prescott, the head of Butterfly Conservation Scotland. “I was absolutely staggered when it was seen on 26 April.”

A new survey carried out for The Wildlife Trusts has revealed that more than half of those responding said connecting to nature by listening to bird song, hearing bees buzz, and seeing and smelling wildflowers was beneficial to their health and wellbeing.

The Savanta poll1 was carried out ahead of The Wildlife Trusts’ 30 Days Wild challenge, which takes place in June and calls on people to soak up the joy of the natural world throughout the month, this year through a weekly series of fun, themed activities.

In the last ten years, 30 Days Wild has attracted more than three million participants and helped people to get outside, to enjoy and connect with nature as part of their everyday lives.

IT'S rare to see one of York's elusive tansy beetles - rarer still to catch them mating.

But these photos - taken this week at two separate locations in the city - capture this very act.

The tansy beetle is a visual treat to the eye on account of its iridescent green-and-bronze body, the beetles are known locally as the 'Jewel of York'.

A seabird reserve to protect locally endangered puffins, razorbills and other native wildlife will be built in Jersey.

Planning has been approved by the States of Jersey for the reserve on the north coast.

It will allow a 0.6 mile (1km) fence to be built along the cliffs between the Lecq shooting range and Plemont headland.

Work has begun to restore 100 miles (160km) of coastline after the Sussex Bay project received funding worth more than £1m.

The scheme will see the marine environment and rivers from Chichester to Camber Sands undergo a programme to accelerate their recovery from pollution and overuse.

Work is currently being carried out to create an artificial 'reef wall' and 'wildlife corridors'.

Made possible by National Lottery players, the project aims to protect and conserve populations of red squirrels in the north of England and southern Scotland.

The UK is at a critical point in the recovery of red squirrels as grey squirrels have driven reds out of the majority of mainland England and parts of Scotland, putting them at risk of extinction.

Now, thanks to the fabulous funding award, the RSRN project will be working tirelessly to ensure red squirrels have the best future possible by bringing together conservation partners and volunteer groups across the red squirrel range in southern Scotland and northern England.

The number of Cranes has reached a record-breaking high across RSPB nature reserves, with the latest breeding survey figures recording 30 pairs in 2024. This is a 20% increase from the previous highest total of 25 pairs in 2023.

These figures are the highest since the birds returned to the UK in 1979, after hunting and loss of wetlands drove them to extinction in the 16th century. The total UK population now stands at around 80 pairs.

The ongoing success is thanks to the dedicated conservation efforts by reserve teams and volunteers to restore and protect precious wetland habitats. I's these efforts that are bringing the species back from extinction and more than a third of the UK’s Crane breeding population can now be found on RSPB nature reserves.  

A coalition of landowning organisations and rural workers, including the John Muir Trust, Community Land Scotland, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association, Trees for Life and the RSPB, are hailing the Scottish Government’s groundbreaking commitment to a National Deer Management Plan.

The plan aims to reduce deer densities across the country and encourage natural regeneration at a landscape scale with the Government stepping in to fund the national effort.

We at the Trust, along with fellow landowning charity Trees for Life, provided a briefing showing that this approach would allow the Government to triple its woodland creation targets while saving around £900 million in taxpayer money.

More than 700,000 trees have been planted in Surrey as the county council aims for 1.2 million saplings by 2030.

In the past year, Surrey County Council said its initiative had created about 49,000 new trees and hedgerows.

This brings the total number of trees planted to 768,832 since 2019 – more than halfway to the county's target of planting one tree for every Surrey resident.

Elk could return to the UK after 3,000 years under plans by the Wildlife Trusts to reintroduce the “keystone” species into Britain’s landscapes.

The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust wants to introduce elk into two existing beaver enclosures in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with the hope of demonstrating that the large semiaquatic deer should be released to roam free in the wild.

Joanne Carnell, from Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, said they hoped to demonstrate that the “crucial ecosystem engineer can thrive in floodplain landscapes, shaping diverse habitats that benefit communities and support biodiversity recovery. It may also serve as a catalyst for engaging people in the long-term benefits of returning elk to the wild.”

A Highland rewilding initiative — the largest in the UK — has now launched as an independent charity in a bid to restore nature across more than 200,000 hectares of the central Highlands.

Affric Highlands began work in September 2021 after its first three years of work as Trees for Life’s East-West Wild project and operating as a joint venture led by Trees for Life with support and advice from Rewilding Europe since then.

Now, the initiative has grown so successfully that it has now been launched as an independent charity, to take forward and upscale its mission.

British woodlands and trees will benefit from new research aimed at boosting protection against pests and diseases, announced today (Tuesday 6 May).

Our plants and trees are estimated to contribute £4.1 billion per year to the UK’s economy – their vast canopies are teeming with birds and insects, they help mitigate the impact of flooding for communities across the country, trees outside woodland in towns as well as rural areas are cherished by the British people. But our trees are vulnerable, with plant pests and diseases posing a significant threat to nature and the economy.

The threat from pests and diseases is growing due to factors like climate change, and it is increasingly important to plant resilient trees that can withstand warmer temperatures so people and nature can enjoy the widespread benefits they bring.

Results from a long-term field experiment shed new light on how grasslands can be restored for nature, the environment, and for farmers.

From richer biodiversity and benefits for pollinators, to carbon storage in soils, while balancing hay yields for grazing livestock, the study published in Nature Communications by researchers at The University of Manchester and Lancaster University, in collaboration with the Universities of Yale and Bergen, shows that using combinations of different restoration techniques can markedly enhance the restoration of grasslands.

Given many current grassland recovery projects typically only use one type of technique, or ‘intervention’, in attempts to deliver ecological benefits, the scientists behind the study hope their findings can help boost grassland restoration initiatives across the country and elsewhere,

A large wildfire that destroyed about 1,230 acres (50 sq km) of land on Dartmoor happened at "the very worst time for wildlife", a charity has said.

Farmers, Dartmoor National Park rangers and firefighters all helped tackle the blaze at the Dartmoor Forest area near Cut Hill.

The fire started on Sunday and was extinguished at about 17:00 BST on Monday. Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service said the cause of the blaze was still unknown.

There is very little evidence that protections for nature are a blocker to development, the government has admitted in its own impact assessment of the controversial new planning and infrastructure bill.

The analysis by Whitehall officials provides no data or research to back up the government’s central argument that it is environmental legislation that holds up building.

Ministers say the new bill will speed up housing developments and large infrastructure projects by allowing developers to avoid meeting environmental obligations to protect habitats and species such as barn owls, otters, bats and newts, at the site of their project, by paying into a central nature recovery fund (NRF) which will be used to create environmental improvement elsewhere.

There are few gains from the climate crisis, but a new bee species colonising UK shores is one of them. The European orchard bee, Osmia cornuta, which has established itself in southern England, is an important pollinator because it is among the first to begin foraging in the spring. On the continent, colonies are encouraged to live in cherry and apple orchards since they are said to be better pollinators than honeybees. It is about the size of a honeybee, but more brightly coloured.

The UK is falling behind on international efforts to tackle microplastics, scientists have said, as the pollutants continue to infiltrate food, ecosystems and human bodies.

The tiny fragments of plastic have been found in human testicles and brains, and they burrow into plants, inhibiting their ability to photosynthesise. The impact on human health is largely unknown, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks.

Microplastics are broken down from plastic waste and have polluted the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People consume the tiny particles via food, water and by breathing them in.

On more than 50 occasions over the past three years, Hannah Bourne-Taylor has lugged an oversized brick through the parliament’s security screening.

Security staff know her fondly as “the swift brick lady”. But now Bourne-Taylor is having to ruffle political feathers over what appears the simplest of nature-friendly measures – a small legal clause requiring all new dwellings to include a £35 hollow brick, providing homes for endangered cavity-nesting birds including swifts, house martins, sparrows and starlings.

After walking naked except for a thong through London – twice – to raise awareness of the plight of swifts, winning a parliamentary debate and cross-party support for the brick, Bourne-Taylor is facing her greatest foe yet: a Labour government terrified of voters defecting to Reform.

Surrey wildlife groups are urging people to make sure their gardens are welcoming to hedgehogs.

Hedgehog Awareness Week, an annual campaign by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, runs until 10 May.

Anne Brummer, founder of Harper Asprey Wildlife Rescue in Windlesham, said hedgehogs "get to know an area really well so it's really important that we look after the hedgehogs in our local area".

A wild beaver has been filmed on a river in Wales in what has been described as a "hugely significant" sighting.

Beavers disappeared from Britain about 400 years ago after being hunted to extinction, but in the past two decades they have been making a comeback.

Naturalist and presenter Iolo Williams, who encountered the wild beaver on the River Dyfi near Machynlleth, said the clear and prolonged sighting was one of the "very, very best" things he had ever witnessed.

The only pair of breeding ospreys in southern England have laid four eggs at their nest site for the second year in a row.

Ospreys typically lay three eggs, so for four to be laid two years on the run is highly unusual and it would be "unprecedented" if all four hatch again this year, according to the Birds of Poole Harbour group.

A reintroduction programme began in Poole Harbour, Dorset, in 2017 and in 2022 female CJ7 and male 022 became the first nesting pair of ospreys on the south coast of England in 180 years.

All of the UK’s rivers are now polluted with sewage, with campaigners warning of a “toxic chemical soup” in our waters.

Leading campaign group Surfers Against Sewage is calling on the government and water companies to tackle the issue, as new data showed only 40 per cent of rivers are deemed to be in good ecological health.

According to the website Top of the Poops, which collects information on sewage dumps, found there were at least 513,234 spills into rivers in 2024, lasting more than 4 million hours.

Conservationists are fighting to restore and expand the last remaining fragments of the UK’s rare temperate rainforest as climate change looms.

Wildlife experts describe temperate rainforest – a globally rare habitat that once swathed western coasts of England, Wales, Scotland, the island of Ireland and the Isle of Man – as the “jewel in the crown” of the country’s landscapes but warn they are a pale shadow of their former selves.

The area of Britain covered by these woodlands has shrunk from a fifth to just 1%, cleared for timber, commercial forestry and agriculture.

A Farne Islands boat skipper captured some incredible footage of orcas swimming off the Northumberland Coast on Friday.

Andrew Douglas, who has been working for Serenity Boat Tours for more than 30 years, said he has "never seen anything like it".

After getting a call from his friend who was out on a fishing boat, Andrew was heading out to the sea within minutes, hoping that he would catch a glimpse of the pod of orcas.