UK Nature and Environment

The cash will be given to the Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust following an unauthorised crude sewage discharge into Kirk Bridge Dike and the River Don in Sheffield in April 2020.

Yorkshire Water also agreed to cover the Environment Agency’s investigation costs and to replace the sensor on the telemetry equipment at Darnall Road Combined Sewer Overflow to ensure they are made aware of any further issues.

London, with its dominant skyscrapers and perpetually murky skies is often cast as a grey metropolis but nearly half of the UK capital is made up of green and blue spaces, including more than 3,000 parks, 400 miles of waterways and 8.4 million trees.

We spoke to London National Park City founder Dan Raven-Ellison to find London's greenest spaces.

Daniel Raven-Ellison is a British geographer and "guerrilla explorer" who led the campaign to make London the world's first National Park City. He is also a National Geographic Explorer and Ordnance Survey GetOutside Champion.

"People often think of London as this cultural, political and financial centre. It's an incredible ecological centre too," says Raven-Ellison, who is also a National Geographic Explorer. "London has nearly as many trees as people and 15,000 species of wildlife have been recorded including more peregrine falcons than in Yosemite National Park."

Hundreds of worms have been found dead at a river overnight.

Dogwalkers were shocked to see piles of earthworms at the bank of the Cuckmere River at the village of Litlington near Seaford yesterday.

There was a spring tide overnight which caused the water to flow over the river’s banks. Sussex Wildlife Trust said this flooding of salt water could have proved lethal.

There were downpours of heavy rain last night which the trust said would have caused the worms to come to the surface before the floodwater came down.

Forestry England has released a family of beavers into an enclosure in the Wyre Forest.

It comes as part of their commitment to bring the species back to the nation’s forests.

Following successful reintroductions in the Forest of Dean and Yorkshire, Forestry England has teamed up with Natural England and experts at the Beaver Trust, to bring beavers to Wyre Forest.

Two adults and four kits were moved from Scotland into a big, five-hectare enclosure in the heart of the forest. The beavers are being enclosed to encourage them to establish a home in the location selected for them.

Tunnellers, fliers, crawlers: your nominations for the UK invertebrate of the year have been pouring in, paying tribute to these wonderful creatures and testifying over and over again to the wonder and awe that they inspire.

We still have a few days till the voting starts, and we haven’t yet worked out which of your many many suggestions will be added to the list – but the love and enthusiasm for the UK’s invertebrates has bowled us over, so we thought we’d round up some of the tributes to your favourite spineless creatures here.

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Volunteers counted moths on White Cliffs of Dover, created new habitat and even found new moth populations.

A three-year citizen science experiment encouraging the people of Kent to love and care for local moths has been hailed a huge success.

Leading wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation launched Kent's Magnificent Moths in 2021, capitalising on the fact that East Kent is home to the greatest concentration of rare and threatened moth species in the UK, including the fluffy white Marsh Mallow, the elegant Sussex Emerald and the wasp-mimicking Fiery Clearwing.

Climate change is making it more difficult to predict the migration season for toads, frogs and newts, according to conservationists.

This year the peak for amphibian movements was early February but last year it was mid-March.

More than 50 volunteers from the Charlcombe Toad Rescue Group, near Bath, helped 3,177 amphibians across a half-mile stretch of Charlcombe Lane during the 2024 migration season.

A college has begun a project to stave off the extinction of a critically endangered species of mollusc.

The glutinous snail has disappeared almost entirely in Britain and can now only be found at Lake Bala in Wales.

A team from York's Askham Bryan College have transported a number of the 1.5cm gastropods to a campus wildlife area, in an attempt to breed them.

If the scheme works, the college will create a dedicated glutinous snail reserve open to the public.

National parks are failing to tackle the biodiversity crisis, with just 6% of national park land in England and Wales managed effectively for nature, according to the first full assessment of how well they are supporting nature recovery.

National parks, which cover 10% of England and 20% of Wales and this year celebrate their 75th anniversary, are not restoring nature because of a chronic lack of government funding and because they were designed for a different era, according to the report by the Campaign for National Parks (CNP) charity.

The latest results from the annual UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) were published last week and the red admiral stole the headlines north of the border - with the butterly having its best ever year in Scotland.

The UKBMS, which began in 1976, is one of the world's longest-running insect monitoring schemes, led by Butterfly Conservation, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC).

If elegance is your thing then consider the ash-black slug. Its nightly forays through the forest in search of fungi are the epitome of grace, a stately glide not only along the woodland floor but up and along the mossy branches of trees.

If size is your thing, then the ash-black slug must get your vote. Britain’s biggest slug is one of the largest land slugs in the world. The ash-black slug can grow up to 30cm (11.8in) in length, although most measure up at a still impressive 10-20cm.

A collaborative project led by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has reintroduced dozens of rare Shore Dock plants in the Southerndown Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) along the Glamorgan Heritage Coast.

Shore Dock is a globally threatened plant and has recently become extinct from the Dunraven Bay Special Area of Conservation (SAC), which is located within the wider Southerndown Coast SSSI.

Within Wales, it is currently only found in coastal areas on Anglesey and in Pembrokeshire, although Pembrokeshire’s Shore Dock population was reduced following storms in 2013 and 2014. In the rest of the UK, it is mostly found in Devon and Cornwall.

Shore Dock was first discovered in Dunraven Bay in 1934 and continued to be recorded there until 1958. It was rediscovered in 1996 with Dunraven Bay SAC designated with Shore Dock as a key species in 2004.

Since then, Shore Dock has disappeared from the Dunraven Bay SAC due to erosion and rock falls which has been exacerbated in recent years due to more frequent and more extreme storm events linked to climate change, and was last seen by NRW officers in 2018.

Up to £11m in water company fines is to be reinvested into schemes that improve waterways and wetlands under a fund launched by the government.

The Water Restoration Fund has opened for applications and will offer grants to local groups and charities, farmers and landowners to improve rivers, lakes, streams, wetlands and access to nature in England in areas where illegal pollution has occurred.

It is being funded by fines and penalties levied on water companies for environmental breaches, such as dumping sewage from treatment plants, which have been ringfenced for improving the water environment since April 2022.

An environmental charity is “thrilled” after being awarded close to £250,000 to create a four-kilometre corridor for pollinators in Hackney.

ecoACTIVE, which uses a hands-on approach to teach people about sustainability and conservation, successfully applied for National Lottery cash for its Hackney Buzzline project.

The idea is to plant a green passageway, with the help of local residents, for bees and other wildlife to travel along.

Pollinators have lost huge swathes of their habitats in the UK, with almost all wildflower meadows having been destroyed, and many species are at risk.

Buzzline will form a link between four parks – Hackney Downs, Millfields, Clapton, and Mabley Green.

Rare flowers only found in Yorkshire are to be protected as part of a scheme to restore a wildlife habitat.

Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales is a mix of meadows, limestone pavements and nature reserves - and is home to rarities such as Yorkshire sandwort.

Rachael Bice, from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said a new scheme could see the area become one of the world's "most significant limestone landscapes".

However, she said the Wild Ingleborough project was "a race against time".

SEVERAL videos have been posted to social media of an otter wandering the streets of Aberystwyth on Monday morning.

The otter was seen near the seafront, near Baravin before heading up Eastgate and towards Great Darkgate Street.

A video posted over the weekend also showed an otter walking along the A487 in Bow Street.

It is unclear what has driven the otter to venture into populated areas, with those who have witnessed the creature saying they have reported the sighting to Natural Resources Wales.

As we enter the spring and summer months, West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) is looking at ways it can help promote environmental awareness for the natural environment and gain further understanding on how people locally support national campaigns to enhance biodiversity.

Last year, WNC supported the national campaign run by Plantlife, No Mow May. The Council will again be supporting the campaign this year in May and will be enabling some of the green spaces it looks after to grow wildly for May, where safe and reasonable to do so.

People across West Northamptonshire are being asked to share their views on the national campaign and let the Council know if they take part in these, so that it can gain a better understanding of how West Northamptonshire residents positively impacted biodiversity.

A West Belfast man is overjoyed after Black Mountain Rewilding Project managed to entice an at-risk barn owl back into the city hills after efforts spanning four years.

Barn owls were once common in Northern Ireland but habitat loss, extreme weather and toxins from eating poisoned prey have taken their toll on the species, with less than 30 breeding repairs thought to remain here.

Ulster Wildlife say the future of the iconic species is in peril and "without urgent help... could be lost forever". It is also listed on the Northern Ireland Environment Agency priority species list as "sensitive".

The eyes have it. If you’re a sucker for a charismatic gaze, an impressive name and great rarity, then the distinguished jumping spider should get your vote.

But this acrobatic, spectacular-looking tiny spider with two large black forward-facing eyes is not merely a pretty face. It is a powerful environmentalist and mighty representative of the value of often-derided, seemingly desolate post-industrial landscapes.

The spider was only discovered in Britain in 2003 and is today only found in two locations: West Thurrock marshes and Swanscombe peninsula. Both are “brownfield” sites in the Thames Gateway, the largest area designated for new development in Europe.

In 2019, 15,000 children from primary schools across the UK went out to their local playing field. Instead of kicking a ball around, they dug up worms, looked out for birds, and counted them both.

“The kids were just so enthusiastic about it. It was incredible,” said Blaise Martay, lead researcher from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Martay had worried about the data quality – she thought children’s counting might vary with their enthusiasm. But the results “showed exactly what we’d expect”, she said: that more worms meant a greater number of blackbirds, robins and thrushes, the birds that rely on earthworms as a vital part of their diets. The data was consistent across school groups.

It’s so dark, it makes no difference whether my eyes are closed or open. The only sound is breathing and a faint ripple when I weightlessly shift position in the salt-laden, skin-warm fluid. Inside an egg-shaped pod at Float in the Forest, one of my personal nightmares (being left alone for an hour with my own thoughts and no distractions) turns out to be a strange, peaceful experience, where time is condensed and space expands. Initially sceptical, my husband, Luke, also emerges from his pod and declares the experience “profoundly relaxing as few things are” (£60, book ahead).

We’re visiting the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire for a car-free spring break and our hotel is a leafy 15-minute bus ride from the flotation centre. Thrice-daily bus 27 is cash only with no number on the front (just the company name FR Willetts), and people greet each other as they board. We chat to Julia, “born and bred a forester and proud of it”, who tells us: “Town people are weird. They don’t understand the slow pace of country life.” As if to prove her point, at that moment the bus detours carefully round a sheep with two new lambs suckling unconcernedly in the middle of the road.

When I am asked to choose my favourite insect, I have no hesitation in choosing the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris). I have been stung many times, having first fallen into a wasp nest at 5 years old – though the young me was spared many stings as the wasps became entangled in the thick sweater my great-aunt had knitted.

But the wasp gets your attention and causes a reaction. It is perhaps the Marmite of the insect world, you love it or hate it but you’re never indifferent and that gives me something to work on.

The sweeping edge of the Pennines at Geltsdale is a cathedral for birdsong on a still spring evening. Everything from thrushes to curlew are calling from this diverse mix of heather moorland, resurgent scrub, rough grassland and pools of water around a rewilded stream.

The conditions on this large nature reserve are perfect for the rare hen harrier to thrive and conservationists hope that this year it will. But there remain fears that illegal persecution will continue to hinder the rare raptor’s recovery.

“There are loads of birds about but they are not lasting very long,” said David Morris, the RSPB area manager for Cumbria and north-east England. “It’s like the Bermuda Triangle for birds when they leave the reserve.”

Endangered species are being put at risk by pollution from farming and forestry industries, which has led to poorer quality in hundreds of Scottish waterways and dozens being rated ‘bad’ or ‘poor’.

Fertilisers, pesticides, slurry and other substances can have “severe impacts on plants and animals in rivers”, reduce drinking water quality, and pose a risk to human health, according to the Scottish Environment Agency (Sepa).