UK Nature and Environment

In a field in the South Downs national park, undulating green hills meet the sky. In the distance, villages built of flint sit in the valleys, and chalky white cliffs lie like giant beached whales above the Channel.

For decades, the field where I’m standing has been in an arable cycle. It was last sown for wheat in 2022, and this year would have been planted with barley. Instead, it was sown with wildflowers: yarrow, vetches, clovers and oxeye daisies lie awaiting spring, when the monotonous green will break out into a sea of colour.

“We’re habitat banking,” says Ben Taylor, manager of Iford Estate farm near Lewes, in East Sussex. This farm is one of five in the country selected by government as a pilot project for the biodiversity net gain (BNG) scheme. Under the proposed rules (for England only at this stage), new roads, houses and other building projects must achieve a 10% net gain in biodiversity if nature is damaged on site: if a forest is bulldozed to make way for an apartment block, the developer must recreate a similar habitat, plus 10%. The priority is finding space for nature onsite, but if that is not possible, habitats are to be created elsewhere, ideally in the local area.

Ted Green is a rebel. He calls sheep “land maggots”. A horse-riding centre is “a dog-food complex”. And the ancient tree expert’s new book includes a photo of him sticking up two fingers at a portrait of Margaret Thatcher.

But the influential, iconoclastic Green, 89, who has lived his whole life around Windsor Great Park and still works as a conservation adviser for the crown estate, is also a staunch advocate for King Charles’s protection of Britain’s unique trove of ancient trees.

Conservationists have praised the launch of a new government strategy to revive the remaining fragments of the vast temperate rainforests that once formed the “jewels of Britain’s nature crown”.

Temperate rainforest, also known as Atlantic woodland or Celtic rainforest, once covered most of western Britain and Ireland. The archipelago’s wet, mild conditions are ideal for lichens, mosses and liverworts. But centuries of destruction have meant that only small, isolated pockets remain.

In England, just 189 sq km (46,624 acres) survive from the ecosystem that once stretched from Cornwall to the west of Scotland, and these remain threatened by overgrazing from sheep, invasive species and nitrogen pollution.

After three years of campaigning, the government published a strategy at the end of November to protect and recover England’s temperate rainforests, and committed £750,000 for research and development.

Spectacular feeding frenzies of Atlantic bluefin tuna, surging numbers of glowworms, and a record-breaking breeding season for pied flycatchers are among the British wildlife highlights of 2023.

But conservationists warned that overall wildlife continued to decline, with one in six species at risk of extinction – and that wildlife was being challenged in new ways by global heating, disease and other destructive human activities.

Animal rights campaigners are urging Michael Gove to stop the construction of the UK’s first fully on-land salmon farm, claiming the decision to give it planning permission was flawed.

Animal Equality says an environmental impact assessment (EIA) should have been carried out before North East Lincolnshire council (NELC) gave the green light to the salmon farm in Cleethorpes, which it says would be the world’s biggest at land or sea.

The disappearance of reliable seasonal patterns is causing chaos for the flora and fauna of the UK, a long-running annual audit of the impact of weather on nature has found.

Extreme weather events, from storms and pounding rain to searing heat and drought are putting huge pressure on animals, plants and the environment, the report from the National Trust says.

The conservation charity is urging politicians to prioritise “urgent action” to protect nature and people from future climate shocks and says parties should commit to making changes in their manifestos for the next UK general election.

The UK government should stop ignoring the science and block a bee-killing pesticide from being used, business leaders have said.

The neonicotinoid pesticide Cruiser SB is used on sugar beet and is highly toxic to bees. It is banned in the EU but the UK has provisionally agreed to its emergency use every year since leaving the bloc. In 2017, the then environment secretary, Michael Gove, promised to use Brexit to ban all neonicotinoids.

Government scientific advisers said in September they were not able to support an authorisation for Cruiser SB, because the “potential adverse effects to honeybees and other pollinators outweigh the likely benefits”.

Now a group of businesses that depend on pollinators, including some farmers and those who use botanicals in their products, have said the government must heed their advice and not allow bee-killing pesticides to be used.

My TL;DR:

The UK government decided to set catch limits for fish populations above those recommended by scientific advice and breaking their own post-Brexit rules.

When the government introduced the Fisheries Act in 2020, it said it would create a “world class” management regime drawing on “best available science” to ensure fish populations are healthy and sustainable.

The reality is different, say conservationists.

In the first year post Brexit, more than 65% of catch limits were in excess of independent scientific advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (Ices). In the second year, they were 57% above.

This month, for the third year in a row, ministers agreed to set at least half of the catch limits for shared stocks above scientific advice.

This means a green light for overfishing, according to the Blue Marine Foundation.

The legal challenge, expected to start in January, will argue that the government is “illegally squandering” a public asset and going against laws aimed at improving sustainable fishing.

My TL;DR:

Photos mostly garnered from fishing industry social media accounts, show that trawling the seabed for langoustines to produce scampi also traps many other fish, including young white fish, flatfish, starfish and sharks.

Fishing for langoustines in Scotland is big business, with landings worth £91m in 2019, providing 43 per cent of the world’s supply.

But there have long been concerns about the fish accidentally caught in the nets of the langoustine trawlers.

One picture shows a critically endangered flapper skate, dead and allegedly dumped on the seabed.

The industry body, Seafish, insisted suggestions that bycatch made the langoustine fishery unsustainable were “incorrect”. Whiting, haddock and cod caught along with langoustines can be harvested and can together make up 80 per cent of catches, it said.

But Seafish accepted that “unfortunately, endangered, threatened and protected species can occasionally get caught in fishing gear”.

My TL;DR:

The five-year Wilder Humber programme seeks to restore the seagrass meadow at Spurn Point. It also aims re-build the estuary’s lost native oyster population and halt the decline of other precious habitats such as salt marshes and sand dunes.

Thriving seagrass meadows can be havens for nature, providing a breeding ground for juvenile fish and a feeding ground wading birds as well as absorbing carbon dioxide at a rate which is estimated to be between and two and four times faster than a rainforest.

Seagrass can also help improve water quality by removing excess nutrients, chemical contaminants and biotoxins.

A vast oyster reef once stretched from the mouth of the Humber to the Thames estuary. However, this has all but vanished. The small number of surviving fragments of this biogenic reef considered too isolated and depleted to be able to recover naturally.

The Humber programme is giving mother nature a helping hand. The goal is to reintroduce 500,000 native oysters to the area.

Once in the estuary, their filter feeding system naturally helps clean the water by removing algae, organic matter and excess nutrients as they grow.

The examples of flora and fauna disappearing because of human excesses over the past 50 years are manifold, but research has found that the decline of a characterful bat began in the UK when its trees were felled for shipbuilding 500 years ago.

Experts from the University of Exeter and the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) have concluded that a 99% drop in Britain’s western barbastelle bat populations began when trees were chopped down in the early days of Britain’s empire building.

The conclusion was made possible by analysis of bat DNA that can pinpoint a “signature” of the past, including periods when populations declined, leading to more inbreeding and less genetic diversity.

I'd forgotten how short&sweet these country diary entries are. Hadn't read them for years. (scroll up, scroll up) 🧊

Labour will take on vested interests from water companies to housebuilders and farmers in an effort to restore the UK’s degraded natural environment, the party’s environment chief has said.

Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, said: “If the Tories want to have an election fight over that, bring it on, because the British people care about the countryside, they care about nature. They care about living in a beautiful country. They value their access to the countryside. The Conservatives are on the wrong side of all that, and to many, many voters that will tip their votes.”

My TL;DR:

Downing Street is facing calls to explain why it has appointed an unelected shooting enthusiast as its animal welfare minister after it emerged he has backed the culling of seals and wild birds.

Robbie Douglas-Miller, who was last week given a peerage to allow him to become minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), owns a grouse moor in Scotland and has argued for the relaxation of rules on shooting wild birds that prey on salmon.

He is also on the board of a fishery which applied to obtain a licence to kill seals in 2021; last year he gained a licence to kill wild cormorants and sawbill ducks.

Furthermore, in September, he signed a letter with fellow grouse moor owners lobbying the Scottish government to water down new laws that bring in licences for grouse-shooting in an effort to address persecution of birds of prey.

Douglas-Miller was made a baron on Friday in a surprise appointment as an environment minister and given the portfolio responsibility for animal welfare this week.

My TL;DR:

Red squirrels are one of Scotland’s most beloved and most threatened woodland animals.

Red squirrels and their tree nests are protected under law. But in 2017 Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) was granted a licence by the Scottish Government’s wildlife agency allowing dreys to be damaged during forestry operations.

FLS estimated that the “theoretical maximum” of red squirrel babies killed when their nests were destroyed during tree felling between 2017 and 2022 was 1,976.

FLS’s estimates, however, were dismissed as “bullshit” by Dave Anderson, an award-winning wildlife expert who worked for FLS and its predecessor bodies for 43 years.

What was going on within FLS was a “disgrace”, with staff being put under increasing pressure to ignore wildlife so that more money could be made from selling timber, Anderson alleged.

FLS treated the deaths of red squirrels, birds and other wildlife as “collateral damage”, he told The Ferret.

New genetic research has revealed how British otters were able to recover from species loss in the 1950s with the help of their counterparts from Asia.

Using genome sequencing data, a team from Cardiff University's Otter Project showed that much of the genetic diversity of British otters was lost when chemical pollution led to severe population declines in the 1950–1970s.

The paper, "Genomics reveals complex population history and unexpected diversity of Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra) in Britain relative to genetic methods," was published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.

I'm feeling wistful when I see the two crimson sweet-pea buds still clinging on, in the garden. It's been around two weeks now. It doesn't look like they're going to bloom. I can't remember seeing them this late in the year before.

About 100,000 trees will be planted across Sussex and Hampshire this winter, the National Park Authority has announced.

As part of the scheme to help disease-hit woodlands flourish, the South Downs National Park will have 23,000 new trees.

“Our tree-scape supports a wealth of wildlife, from rare insects to nesting birds and complex fungi," said Nick Heasman, a countryside and policy manager for the park.

Research from the Woodland Trust shows that one third of all woodland species in the UK are in decline and one in 10 is at risk of extinction.

The newly planted trees will replace plants lost to pests and diseases such as ash dieback and Dutch elm disease.

England will get a new national park as part of a government set of "nature pledges" to give greater access and protection to the countryside.

Natural England will consider a list of possible sites, which could include the Chilterns, the Cotswolds and Dorset.

Some environmentalists gave the news a cautious welcome, as government funding for national parks has fallen in real terms, forcing service and staff cuts.

Funding worth £15m was also announced for a range of protected landscapes.

I have just seen a few ladybirds hanging about on the branches of a fatsia shrub in my garden. They have been prolific this year. Wondering why they're not off hibernating somewhere.

The medicinal leech is one of nature’s least loved hunters. Armed with three strong interlocking jaws and with a taste for blood, they will swim hungrily towards humans, deer or cattle that wander into their ponds to bathe, fish or drink.

Yet this small predator is the focus of an unlikely reintroduction programme by conservationists working in a small laboratory deep in the Scottish Highlands, at a wildlife park best known for its polar bears, wildcats and wolves.

They want to see hundreds released into Scottish lochs and streams, in the first project to repopulate the countryside with leeches after hundreds of years of habitat loss and exploitation.

My TL;DR:

According to the RSPB, its annual compilation of confirmed cases of illegal killings of birds of prey has always been the tip of the iceberg of raptor persecution, which is mostly driven by a desire to protect game shoots involving species including red grouse, pheasants and partridges.

Since the bird flu outbreak began in Britain in 2021, hundreds of dead raptors have been sent directly to Defra for testing. In most cases, if a bird tests positive for bird flu, no further postmortem tests are undertaken.

Moreover rules prevent carcasses that test negative from being moved to other labs to be examined for signs of persecution such as shooting or poisoning.

Convictions are vanishingly rare because evidence is difficult to gather on remote estates with little public access.

Of 191 individuals convicted of bird of prey persecution-related offences from 1990 to 2022, 67.5% have been gamekeepers. Of two successful convictions in 2022, both were gamekeepers.

My TL;DR:

Experts say a series of storms in October, culminating in Storm Babet, had caused the disappearance – and likely death – of these birds.

Records for the island have been kept since the mid-1970s, and there has never been such a heavy loss.

Shags feed within a mile of the coast but strong easterly winds stirred up the sea, which meant they could not hunt for days on end. They carry little fat because it reduces their ability to dive, and so die if they do not feed regularly.

The climate crisis is likely to make these events more frequent, and more destructive.

UKCEH is calling on people to report and send photos of any dead shags with coloured rings on to [email protected].

My TL;DR:

A city farm in Bath is highlighting the creatures that would have been unheard of in the area before the climate emergency.

They were concerned to find about 30 species that have moved in or have been found there in the winter where previously they would have visited only in the summer.

Ecologist and trustee Mike Williams, who led the wildlife recording, said insects and arachnids were important indicator species that help ecologists understand the effect of a changing climate on the natural world. “Spiders are a classic example as due to their short lifespan and mobility they react to changes in weather.”

“It fascinates and saddens me,” he said. “Our wildlife surveys have shown that climate change isn’t something that will happen in the distant future. Most of the crickets you hear calling in the meadows have only been in Bath for the past 20 years or so.

This is an interesting long-form article written by Emma Marris about their journey to the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland to explore the relationship between Mull's residents (especially it's hill farmers) and it's white-tailed eagles.

The hill farmers and the white-tailed eagles have a strained relationship, especially due to the belief that the white-tailed eagles take some of the farmers lambs every year. However, birding tourism to Mull is estimated to attracted up to £8 million. This tourism also benefits the farmers as many rent out vacation cottages.

It's hard for me the TL;DR this article since it takes around 20 minutes to read. However, there is an audio recording of the article that can be listened to!