UK Nature and Environment

It is dusk, a short walk from the big Ikea in Croydon, and a barn owl is emerging from its nest to hunt. In the fading light, the male owl sits on a fence post to survey the rough grass below. He has a busy evening ahead: he is responsible for feeding a roosting female for the next few weeks while she cares for their chicks. The owl hops to another fence post. Suddenly, he dives into the grass below, emerging a minute later with an unlucky rodent, and flies back into the nest.

“I still get really excited,” says Tomos Brangwyn, a local enthusiast who monitors the site, lowering his binoculars. “He’ll do that most of the night. It’s a great sign that there’s a female in there that we haven’t seen for a while, as she’s on the eggs,” he says.

The scrubland is surrounded by urban sprawl. Police sirens and souped-up cars roar past, and industrial buildings hum under harsh security lights nearby. Central London is less than 10 miles (16km) away, but the barn owls here are unperturbed, feasting on the same diet of voles, rats, mice and other small animals as their country cousins. This patch of land has supported as many as three breeding pairs in recent years.

The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) may have failed to comply with environmental law, according to a new report.

It is in relation to special protection areas for at-risk wild birds, such as puffins, whooper swans and light-bellied Brent geese.

An investigation from the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) had been previously launched in March 2024, following potential failures to implement recommendations given by a conservation body.

Previous estimates for declines of Critically Endangered angelsharks in Wales may have been overestimated, suggests our most recent ZSL-led study, identifying how changes to fishing practices have decreased chances of fishers encountering this native species.

Published today (9 June 2025) in People & Nature, a paper from our team, working with Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Welsh fishing organisations, reveals how a series of changes within the Welsh fishing sector – such as reduced angling efforts and decreased overlap between fishing activities and angelshark habitats – have led to a decreased likelihood of fishers encountering the threatened angelsharks.

This finding comes as the team confirm how new techniques could help them build a more accurate picture. Monitoring the DNA left by angelsharks in their environment could revolutionise their ability to understand how these Critically Endangered fish are faring by reducing reliance on chance encounters.

NatureScot is preparing to introduce new powers that would allow more widespread shooting of young Ravens in Orkney following reports of livestock attacks.

While some farmers claim the birds have caused injuries and deaths among lambs, sheep and calves, conservationists have warned against rushing into lethal measures.

At a meeting organised by local farmers, NatureScot officials conceded that existing controls are not working effectively. Since 2016, some 34 licences have been issued in Orkney across 28 sites, permitting the culling of up to 124 Ravens – though only 58% of the allowed number were actually shot.

A ban on a "destructive" type of fishing that drags large nets along the seafloor could be extended across English waters, the government has said.

The proposal would expand the the prohibition of bottom trawling from 18,000km2 to 30,000km2 (around 11,500 sq miles) of the UK's offshore areas that are already designated as protected. The plan is subject to a 12-week industry consultation.

The announcement comes as a UN Ocean Conference begins on Monday in France, and amid warnings from Sir David Attenborough that bottom trawling is destroying areas of the seabed and marine life.

Conservationists have launched a campaign to revoke the Lake District’s Unesco world heritage status, arguing that it promotes unsustainable sheep farming at the expense of nature recovery and local communities.

In a letter to Unesco, the ecologist Lee Schofield argues that the designation “promotes a false perception of farming, is not economically sustainable, is working against crucial efforts to restore the natural environment and mitigate the impacts of climate change, does not help sustain farming livelihoods, is not wanted by local people and is contributing to damaging overtourism.”

The campaign is backed by a report published by World Heritage Watch, co-authored by Schofield, Dr Karen Lloyd of Lancaster University and the University of Cumbria’s Prof Ian Convery. They argue that the inscription elevates sheep farming over equally traditional mixed farming that includes cattle, pigs, horses and poultry.

Campaigners have said they have "little faith" in a water firm's commitment to cut pollution at a seafront.

Northumbrian Water has agreed to pay out £15.7m after failures in the maintenance and operations of its sewage and water network.

As part of this deal, the firm agreed to a "binding commitment" to work with the Environment Agency (EA) to ensure its system at Whitburn, South Tyneside, complied fully with environmental legislation.

A critically endangered fungus reintroduced to the UK, where it had been extinct, is still not growing but scientists say it is too early to suggest a project to save it has failed.

Parts of the fungus known as willow gloves were moved from the Scottish borders to woodlands in Cumbria in March last year.

Natural England fungi specialist Matt Wainhouse said this type of relocation had not been tried before and had not been straightforward.

Some specimens had since been eaten by rodents and others would not grow but Mr Wainhouse said this "doesn't mean the fungi is dead or that this has failed - it's just too early to tell".

Conservationists have abseiled down a 60-metre gorge in the Highlands to tackle invasive species such as Japanese knotweed in a bid to protect biodiversity in Scotland.

Rope access specialists from the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) dealt with invasive plants which had grown in crags in Corrieshalloch Gorge National Nature Reserve in Wester Ross.

The gravity-defying feat is part of efforts to tackle invasive non-native species (INNS), including Japanese knotweed and rhododendron ponticum, under NTS’s new Plan for Nature, which identified it as the main driver of nature loss in Scotland.

Over the past 50 years, global aquaculture including fish, mussel and seaweed farms has grown dramatically. Almost half of the world’s wild-caught fish is used to produce fishmeal and oils that feed farmed fish.

Mussel farming provides a more sustainable alternative protein source for human diets, because mussels filter feed on plankton and do not have to be fed wild-caught fish. Mussel farming also takes some pressure off the need for so much industrial agriculture and fish farming, and could therefore help reduce greenhouse gas emissions of food production – in line with the UK’s goal to reach net zero by 2050.

Most mussel farms are typically located in sheltered bays but as space to grow mussels inshore is limited, there isn’t always room to grow mussels at scale.

The Solway coastline in south west Scotland has secured a major funding boost to help with its conservation, restoration and development.

It is the first project to secure support through the National Lottery Heritage Fund's (NLHF) £150m Landscape Connections initiative.

The Solway Coast and Marine Landscape Connections Project, external - Scamp for short - will receive £1.4m to shape plans which will help unlock a further £6.4m.

Beneath the surface of the ocean is a world filled with a vast array of fauna and flora but scientists say "somewhat unusual" changes are taking place. Intensified by a marine heatwave in May, they say waters off the south coast of England are getting warmer and disrupting the food chain.

"I'm not a scientist or anything like that," said Cornish snorkeler and underwater photographer Heather Hamilton.

"But because I've been in the sea so much over the last 20-odd years, I have seen changes, especially in the last two years."

Academics from Liverpool John Moores University, along with rangers and volunteers from the National Trust, are working together to explore what factors make pied flycatchers, a fly eating bird slightly smaller than a house sparrow and on the amber list of conservation concern, decide where to nest on the Longshaw Estate in the Peak District. The study will also provide data to uncover how these birds are adapting in an ever-changing world.

The project which featured on last night’s Springwatch on BBC2 and iPlayer, named “Should I stay, or should I go?” will see researchers analyse bird poo and data about microhabitat differences around nest boxes to help ornithologists and conservationists understand more about what gives these fascinating birds, whose numbers are in decline in the UK but doing well at Longshaw, the best chance of breeding success.

The National Trust has been working on a pied flycatcher nesting conservation project at Longshaw since 2014 following population declines across the UK.

Conservationists have hailed the white stork as "an emblem for nature recovery" as they work to reintroduce the long-vanished breeding bird to the UK.

Once a common sight in Britain, with their large nests adorning rooftops, buildings, and trees, the birds disappeared centuries ago due to hunting and habitat loss. While migratory storks still visit from the continent, conservationists say that the lack of existing colonies prevents them from settling to breed.

Since 2016, a reintroduction project in southern England has been underway, aiming to establish new colonies using rehabilitated injured storks. These colonies are intended to act as a "magnet," attracting other wild birds to settle and breed.

The government’s leading environmental adviser has said ministers are wrong to suggest nature is blocking development.

Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, is to oversee a national nature restoration fund, paid into by developers, which will enable builders to sidestep environmental obligations at a particular site – even if it is a landscape protected for its wildlife.

Central to Labour’s growth plan, the controversial planning and infrastructure bill cuts environmental regulations to fast-track the construction of 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament, according to three legal opinions.

Labour is using post-Brexit freedoms to override EU nature laws and allow chalk streams and nightingale habitats to be destroyed, MPs have said.

The planning and infrastructure bill going through parliament will allow developers to circumvent EU-derived environmental protections and instead pay into a nature restoration fund.

This would override the habitats directive, which protects animals including otters, salmon and dormice. Under the new bill it will be possible to pay into the fund and build over their habitats.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has today launched Wilder Derbyshire 2030, a bold and hopeful strategy to reverse the decline in the county’s wildlife — powered by people and rooted in local action, equity, and green skills.

The launch comes alongside a stark new State of Nature in Derbyshire report, revealing that at least five much-loved bird species — the willow tit, marsh tit, hawfinch, spotted flycatcher, and lesser spotted woodpecker — have suffered steep declines in the county. The lesser spotted woodpecker is now on the brink of disappearing locally.

These declines are being driven by habitat loss, unsustainable land use, species persecution, and climate change. But Derbyshire Wildlife Trust says this crisis can still be turned around if people are empowered and supported to act.

Nightingales don’t sing much during the daytime. So when their clear, pure voices rang out from some brambles in Kent on a late spring morning, it felt as if they were campaigning for their home.

Their music has charmed writers from Keats to Oscar Wilde. But over the decades, the little brown bird has had its habitat gradually hacked away because the thick brambles it likes to nest in have little use for humans.

And now one of its most important strongholds is under threat from the Labour government’s planning and infrastructure bill. For the best part of a decade, developers have been eying up Lodge Hill in Kent, where more than 100 singing birds are known to live. The derelict army training camp, which is mostly off-limits to the public though there is a footpath through some of the woodland, is prime brownfield, a 10-minute drive from Strood, which is on the high-speed line to London.

Every night, while most of us sleep, the world comes alive for millions of animals: moths, glow-worms, bats, badgers, owls, toads, and more. Yet this vibrant nocturnal world is vanishing fast, threatened by our actions and our neglect – light pollution, habitat loss, and our failure to see what is happening in the dark.

That is why Buglife has launched the “Don’t Neglect the Night” campaign, calling on governments, planners, and the public to take urgent action and protect the half of nature that we are ignoring.

Night isn’t just a time of rest, it is half of Earth’s daily life cycle, and provides vital conditions for the two-thirds of all animal species that have evolved to thrive after the sun sets. From moths and other nocturnal pollinators that work the night shift, to bats that flit through our night skies in search of prey, to amphibians that migrate to breeding grounds in moonlit wetlands, countless species rely on the dark to feed, migrate, communicate, and thrive.

Rare wetland birds such as cranes and great egrets have appeared within hours of the completion of a peatland restoration project, according to the National Trust.

The charity began restoring 590 acres (238 hectares) of lowland peat, a vital carbon store, at its oldest nature reserve, Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, a year ago.

Peatland restoration project manager Ellis Selway said: "Seeing nature respond so quickly gives us real hope for the future of this landscape."

Ministers must ban bottom trawling for fish in marine protected areas, an influential group of MPs has said, because the destructive practice is devastating the seabed and marine life.

The UK parliament’s environmental audit committee called for a ban to encompass dredging and mining as well as the bottom trawling of fish in the 900,000 sq km covered by nearly 180 marine protected areas.

Despite the name, these areas are open for many sorts of fishing, including bottom trawling – the practice of dragging immense and heavy nets across the seabed to scoop up all in their path, most of which is discarded while prized fish such as sole, cod and haddock are kept.

More than 5,000 of England’s most sensitive, rare and protected natural habitats are at high risk of being destroyed by development under Labour’s new planning bill, according to legal analysis of the legislation.

The Guardian has examined the threat the bill poses to 5,251 areas known as nature’s “jewels in the crown”, as some of the country’s most respected wildlife charities call for a key part of the bill to be scrapped.

The areas at risk from Labour’s planning changes include cherished landscapes such as the New Forest, the Surrey heaths, the Peak District moors, and the Forest of Bowland.

A new Environment Agency research project has seen 22,914 rare and protected glass eels swap the River Severn for a new home in the Berkshire this month.

The eels were transferred in late April to nine locations on the Kennet chalk stream by Environment Agency fisheries specialists, initiating a research project that will monitor their development.