The UK's deer population is at its highest level for 1,000 years, and is growing exponentially. Now at roughly 2 million animals, the UK’s deer stalkers need to cull at least 750,000 animals a year just for the population to stand still. There are also more food banks in the UK than ever. As the need for food grows, donations, especially those containing protein, become harder to find.

To combat these two problems, the Wild Venison Project has created a supply chain from deer stalkers all over the country to food banks that need protein-rich donations. The Guardian environment correspondent Damien Gayle follows the process from forest to food bank, to see if venison could provide an answer to Britain’s food shortage.

Henry Jephson was wandering around the countryside near Bristol during a Covid lockdown when his eye was caught by the ghostly appearance of a lion’s mane mushroom, its shaggy fronds hanging across a tree trunk.

Jephson, the head of research at the Bristol Fungarium, knew he was looking at something rare and special. A staple of traditional Chinese medicine, the lion’s mane is also native to the UK, but is under threat. The “absolutely enormous” specimen spotted by Jephson was the first to be seen in south-west England in eight years.

Little did he know then that the fungus would change the focus of Jephson’s work. He is now working with Natural England and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) to get native mushrooms back into England’s woodlands. He helps run a mushroom farm, which has pivoted from growing oyster and shiitake mushrooms for restaurants, to conserving native fungi and creating health supplements from them.

My TL;DR:

The Sea Ranger Service, which launched last week in the UK, trains young people from predominately deprived coastal regions to become ocean conservationists, while paying them a salary.

The Sea Ranger Service was founded in the Netherlands in 2016 and is also operational in France. In both countries, it receives money to service government contracts for ocean conservation.

The aim is to train 20,000 people for maritime careers by 2040.

Young Britons aged 18-29 are being invited to apply to take part in the UK programme. But be warned, it’s no picnic. Applicants must go through a rigorous bootcamp to prove they’ve got what it takes to work in challenging circumstances.

Successful applicants will take to the water on sailing expeditions from Port Talbot, Wales, where the ship is based, and will be employed as full-time sea rangers.

A wildlife group is aiming to eradicate invasive American mink from all of Britain after ridding them from part of England during a three-year trial. This involved a new approach that used the scents of mink’s anal glands as bait to lure them into smart traps, marking the first time the animal has been eradicated from a large area anywhere in the world.

“Until about a month ago, I thought mink had not been eradicated from anywhere,” says Tony Martin, chair of the Waterlife Recovery Trust, which organised the trial alongside volunteers. “Then I found a report of a little island off Estonia where they had got rid of them, but nothing on anything like this scale. This is the orders of magnitude bigger.”

Mink are small semiaquatic predators that are related to weasels and are often farmed for their fur. As a result of them escaping from farms or being released by animal activists over the past century, American mink (Neogale vison), which are native to North America, have spread to many parts of Europe and South America.

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<yoink!> - I'm grabbing this quote from an article @GreyShuck posted: “There is a real need for us to inspire people to connect with nature and to make biodiversity a central part of their lives – particularly in urban areas and less affluent communities” Well I did just that the other day, in a l-o-n-g wait for a bus to turn up. There was a small raptor perching on the streetlights, avidly hunting just before sunset. One time he came over into the trees and dived off them into the undergrowth, but didn't seem to catch anything. It was blunt-tailed, probably a sparrowhawk or a kestrel. This was right on the edge of the urban and less affluent community I live in, around a multi-laned highway. [Re the quote - why in "less affluent areas"?] 🪶

Ancient trees are as much a part of our heritage as stately homes, cathedrals and works of art. But they don’t get the same protection.

Identifying where ancient trees are takes us one step closer to giving them the care and protection they need. That’s where you come in.

Your records of these oldest and most characterful trees help us to identify ancient tree hot spots, monitor current threats and future losses, plan how best to conserve them in the future and much more.

Some of Scotland’s most famous bird species, including grouse and kestrels, are among those declining as a result of climate change, a new report has found.

The study, by public body NatureScot, charted the populations of Scotland’s terrestrial breeding birds between 1994 and 2022. It found significant changes to the numbers and species of birds living in the country’s urban, woodland, upland and farmland habitats, in large part due to ­hotter and wetter weather related to the climate crisis.

The Environment Agency faces new allegations of neglect of the River Wye after a project by a conservation group found effluent and contaminated waters at free-range egg farms flowing directly into watercourses in the catchment.

Out of 47 sites visited in England and Wales in the Wye catchment, 19 had drains running from the poultry units to a nearby watercourse. Many of the farms had drains excavated within a few metres of the sheds.

Bats fly back to their roosts after a night of hunting in a “leapfrogging” pattern that allows them to maximise their time out and stay safe from predators, researchers have found.

A team from Cardiff University and the University of Sussex developed a mathematical model using “trajectory data” that tracked the flight of greater horseshoe bats in Devon to pinpoint how the creatures engage with the nocturnal environment.

They found that when they leave their roosts, typically caves or loft spaces, the bats initially spread out in a radius of about a mile for the first hour and a half to two hours, before beginning to gradually make their way home.

The furthest bat out never appeared to want to be at the periphery and so leapfrogged past the closest bat on the way back towards the roost, researchers observed.

Walkers wanting to enjoy footpaths across the British countryside are being blocked or obstructed in nearly 32,000 places across England and Wales.

But they are fighting back, with one rambler even training as a lawyer to force councils to keep the way clear.

A BBC investigation found councils which have responsibility for footpaths had 4,000 more access issues on public rights of way in 2023 than in 2022.

Campaigners said this showed a "growing abuse and neglect" of the path network.

Local authorities said "funding constraints" limited what they can do.

As floods hit the UK and the rest of the world with growing frequency, “natural flood management” (NFM) is increasingly becoming part of the response. Much of the research in this area is in its relative infancy, and a lot of it is UK-based – partly because of the impact floods have on such a densely populated and heavily built-up country.

The Nature Friendly Farming Network – set up as a way for agricultural businesses to share knowledge about nature-friendly farming and holistic climate strategies – has been a central locus for this work, and farmers are joining in increasing numbers. The NFFN also helps farmers sign up to the various UK government environmental farming schemes, so they can receive grants for their work.

I have just made myself very popular with a local social housing company: I've brought to their attention, for the second time in about the last ten years, the miserable condition of a tiny strip of land at the end of one of their roads. It's no more than 3m by 2, and has a grassy bank and small trees, all planted by Nature. In spring the bank has primroses all over it, except that's not been so obvious since people started using it as a rubbish tip. It used to be OK, and so pretty. I've come to realise there's some obscure psychological reason for people going out of their way to screw up bits of natural terrain, so what can the housing company do? I've asked them why they don't just check the surroundings of their properties every so often and give them a quick clean-up. 🌸 😢

Wildlife is under even more pressure than ever as basic rules which protect hedgerows and stop farmers from causing excessive river pollution ended on 31st December 2023. The National Trust, RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts are calling for immediate action to fill the gaps left by these vital protections.

Basic regulations known as ‘cross compliance’ had to be followed by farmers in order to receive rural payments between 2005 and 2023. The rules included not farming the land right up to the edge of rivers to ensure farm pollution and soil was not washed into the water – as well as protecting hedgerows and maintaining green cover on soils.

Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, the UK Government announced these rules would cease to exist after 31st December 2023 and be replaced by new UK ones. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has not confirmed if protections for nature will be maintained – and the absence of rules means that farmers are free to cut hedges in the spring and summer which risks harming nesting birds. It could also mean that more farm pollution and soil is washed into rivers which are already under huge pressure from excessive nutrients caused by manure, soil and other pollutants.

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) 🧊