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A wildlife trust has launched an appeal to help revive lost species of butterflies, crickets and dragonflies.

Lancashire Wildlife Trust said the population of the large heath butterfly, bog bush cricket and white-faced darter dragonfly had fallen due to a loss of habitat in Greater Manchester and Lancashire.

The large heath butterfly, known in Greater Manchester as the Manchester argus, had been extinct locally before being reintroduced in 2020, with the trust saying it hoped to further bolster the population.

Millions of Britons face a higher risk of stroke or heart failure because of dirty air where they live.

People living in areas of the UK with the worst levels of air pollution are 27% more likely to develop heart failure, compared with people in areas with the cleanest air, a study suggests.

Stroke risk was 7% higher in the worst areas, the research shows. The findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Madrid, the world’s largest heart conference.

An extreme winter could cause some insect populations to decline, despite a good summer, an expert has said.

Self-proclaimed "bug botherer" Dr Dave Skingsley, from the University of Staffordshire, said populations of some insects that had a successful summer could take a hit over the colder seasons.

Certain insects - including ladybirds, butterflies and wasps - thrived in 2025 after the warmest and sunniest spring on record across the UK.

A group of researchers had the "luck of a lifetime" after a close encounter with a group of pilot whales.

Researchers from the University of Plymouth were on a vessel which students board to conduct surveys on the marine animals along the South West coastline.

On the way back to the city, a student spotted a fin poking out of the water, over a nautical mile away.

A wetland project has been awarded a £213,000 grant to improve access and habitats for nature and visitors.

The River Great Ouse Valley Wetland Arc project will begin work on "a masterplan for a sustainable future of this unique parkland", said The Parks Trust.

The wetland arc stretches across the north of Milton Keynes and is made up of 355 hectares (about 500 football pitches) of linear parkland, nature sites and floodplain meadows along the course of the River Great Ouse.

A groundbreaking soil survey in Glen Prosen has unearthed a staggering number of species living beneath the ground.

The data has significant implications for biodiversity restoration and will inform the rebuilding of native woodland, peatlands, and open-ground habitats at the Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) managed Glen Prosen, located within the Cairngorms National Park.

The pioneering research, carried out by The James Hutton Institute (JHI) in partnership with FLS, detected 12,253 taxa across the seven kingdoms of life, including Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi, Animalia, Chromista, Plantae, and Protozoa. This will provide FLS with a baseline against which future changes in soil biodiversity can be measured, as new native woodland and other habitats develop.

A nature reserve is to be expanded to become part of the King's Series of National Nature Reserves.

Ingleborough National Nature Reserve (NNR) in the Yorkshire Dales will increase in size by 179 hectares (442 acres) to 1,186 hectares (2,930 acres).

The upland landscape has habitats which are home to nationally significant wildlife populations including the northern brown argus butterfly, curlew and Yorkshire sandwort.

The extension will allow for improved public access to nature, with visitors to the reserve benefitting from closer access to Ribblehead Station on the Settle to Carlisle railway line.

Two companies who illegally destroyed a habitat for the UK's fastest-declining mammal species have agreed to fund an ecological survey to "make amends".

The Environment Agency (EA) said it had received a report in March that ditch clearance work in Lechlade, Gloucestershire, had destroyed a water vole habitat.

The agency said a criminal investigation found there had been "no ill intent", although the companies had been given prior advice about laws protecting wildlife.

A nature reserve said it had had an udderly "bonkers" summer after its Highland cattle became a TikTok sensation.

Fans of the flame-haired beauties at Taverham Mill shared their close en-cow-nters on social media, with some posts racking up hundreds of thousands of views.

Thousands of people have now followed the herd to the beauty spot, near Norwich, which had previously only attracted a few hundred visitors a year.

A trial supported by the local community is harvesting rafts of dwarf seagrass adrift in the Kingsbridge and Tamar estuaries and replanting them at a new home on the River Yealm Estuary shoreline near Steer Point, Brixton.

Just over a dozen staff members and apprentices from the agency’s monitoring team, local environmental staff and groups of volunteers have lent their time to support the cause. This involved selecting the best specimens to replant, cleaning them of any potential invasive species, then planting into shallow holes poked into the mudflats. The seagrass is then helped kept in place with a ‘twig’ peg, a thousand of which were crafted by local volunteers.

Barn owls were once a familiar sight across farmland and are fondly known as the “farmer’s friend” for their natural pest control. But with the loss of rough grassland, thick hedgerows, and old trees for nesting, their numbers have plummeted, with fewer than 30 breeding pairs remaining.

Determined to help barn owls and a host of threatened farmland species, the Kelly family has been working with local nature conservation charities Ulster Wildlife and RSPB NI for many years to bring nature back.

From planting winter bird cover to feed birds and mammals, and maintaining thick hedgerows for nesting, to creating pollinator margins, and species-rich meadows to boost insects, every corner of the farm has been managed with nature in mind. Ten barn owl nest boxes have also been erected across the farm by Ulster Wildlife to provide much-needed nesting sites.

There is hope a diet change for an endangered mammal can help smooth the transition between captivity and the wild.

Water voles were a common sight at the start of the 20th Century and inspired the character Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, but their numbers have plummeted.

The voles are bred near Brecon in Powys and food is being grown using an innovative system involving fish poo and nutrient water in order to prepare them for life once they are released.