UK Nature and Environment

Leaky dams may not sound ideal but they are being used to great effect on dried-out marshland in the English West Country to produce fresh habitat for carnivorous plants and a spider that whizzes over the surface of water to grab prey.

Bales made out of heather and bunds constructed out of peaty soil and timber are being used to create porous dams on two mires, Agglestone and Greenlands, in Purbeck, Dorset.

The idea is that they block artificial ditches originally dug to drain marshes for conifer plantations or to graze farm animals and encourage the water to seep away slowly and “rewet” the dried-out mires, which are managed by the National Trust.

Inspections on water companies will quadruple over the next year in a bid to crack down on pollution by firms, the Government has announced.

The measures to increase checks include up to 500 additional Environment Agency staff for inspections, enforcements and stronger regulation over the next three years.

Increased inspections and enforcement by the environmental regulator will be backed by around £55 million each year funded by the Environment Department (Defra) and from proposed charges levied on water companies.

Officials said the Environment Agency had already ramped up inspections on water companies’ infrastructure, with 930 completed so far this financial year.

Last year me and my fiancee were visiting the York Bird of Prey Centre and had decided to also visit a nearby nature reserve called the Forest of Flowers. It turned out that Google Maps had lied to us and it was in fact NOT a nature reserve but rather a private event space. Oops!

The staff were very kind and allowed is to explore the grounds for free, the weather was awful so there were no guests anyway. It was beautiful there, and inspiring! We picked up some potted wildflowers from their entrance after leaving, Bird's Foot Trefoil, Sorrel, Ox-Eye Daisy, and Knapweed if I'm remembering correctly.

Now, there's not a whole lot I feel I can do with my garden since I'm privately renting. But I want to make my garden a space that not only I can enjoy, but the local wildlife can as well! I cannot plant trees, bushes, install a pond or anything like that though, so I figure my best option is to sow wildflowers.

Last year I just let the garden grow wild and we had a couple of wildflowers pop up on our lawn such as Dandelion, Knapweed, Teasel, Ribwort Plantain, and Foxgloves. It was awesome, we had lots of bugs and birds visiting our garden. This year I thought it would be great to add some additional wildflowers to the garden. But it's surprisingly difficult to find wildflowers in garden centres, especially native wildflowers. It's a massive shame, I think!

So, I visited the Forest of Flowers website and have picked up some seed packs from there instead. Their seeds are harvested from their own wildflowers which are grown organically without herbicides or pesticides. I'm very excited to sow them and see if anything changes regarding what wildlife visitors I get!

Environment Minister Andrew Muir is to meet the owner of Lough Neagh's bed and soil later this week.

Andrew Muir announced he would meet with the Earl of Shaftesbury during his first minister's question time.

Mr Muir said he was looking forward to a "frank and open" discussion with the earl.

Last year saw the largest freshwater lake in the UK blighted by unprecedented blooms of potentially toxic blue-green algae.

Blue-green algae is a bacteria which can cause skin irritation and sickness in people who come into contact with it, but the biggest risk is to pets, livestock and wildlife.

UK opposition party Labour has pledged to eliminate fox hunting “within its first term” in power.

Currently, hunting with dogs is illegal in the UK. However, the practice continues under the cover of “trail hunting,” where hounds follow a pre-laid scent.

Reports have shown how, despite the ban, illegal fox hunting continues to have devastating impacts across the UK.

Last year, Scotland introduced new legislation to crack down on illegal fox hunting.

A man has pleaded guilty in court to stealing nearly 3,0000 rare birds eggs and hoarding them at his home.

Daniel Lingham, 71, from Newton St Faith, Norfolk had appeared in court twice before for similar egg offences and was given custodial sentences in 2005 and 2018.

In total, since 2005 over 10,000 wild bird eggs have been seized at Lingham's home by Norfolk Police, comprising of many rare and threatened species, including Turtle Doves and Nightjars.

The chief water industry regulator has warned companies they are endangering public trust by withholding secret data that could reveal illegal sewage spills.

David Black, chief executive of Ofwat, said that six water companies should “not wait to be pushed” into releasing details of when they start and stop discharging raw sewage into rivers. He told the water companies they also needed to stop hiding behind an investigation he is running.

Cross-referenced with weather data, the water companies’ timings can show whether spills are happening when it is not raining — an illegal practice known as “dry spilling”. Experts believe widespread evidence of dry spilling is a looming scandal for the water sector.

Original article

This year marks a milestone for The Wildlife Trusts’ flagship annual 30 Days Wild as it celebrates its 10th anniversary in June. The nature challenge has grown from 12,000 participants in its first year to over half a million last year alone. 30 Days Wild has helped people to get outside, enjoy and connect with nature as part of their every-day lives.

This June promises to be a bumper 30 Days Wild – people of all ages and abilities are urged to participate and The Wildlife Trusts are offering free herb seeds and inspirational guide to everyone who signs-up to do a small, wild thing every day during June.

Severn Trent has been fined more than £2m for polluting the River Trent near Stoke, with the Environment Agency calling its storm contingency plans “woefully inadequate”.

Huge amounts of raw sewage were discharged into the river from Strongford wastewater treatment works near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, between November 2019 and February 2020.

A pair of kingfishers have become the earliest to start building a nest ahead of breeding at Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire.

The bird species do not usually nest until early March, and may have started early on 4 February "due to the mild winter", experts at the centre said.

Kingfishers have an estimated 4,900 breeding pairs in the UK.

Visitors to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust headquarters can try and spot the birds from a hide opposite the nest.

Hedgehogs have had some unexpected good news after years of decline in British gardens caused by habitat loss and fragmentation: their numbers may finally be on the way up again.

Readers of BBC Gardeners’ World magazine were asked to chronicle the wildlife in their gardens, and reported that hedgehog sightings were up two percentage points. The magazine’s previous annual survey had them to be declining.

Previous reports found that numbers of the mammals had fallen by 30%–75% across different areas of the countryside since 2000. This is thought to be because of habitat loss and fragmentation – hedgehogs like to travel around and walls and fences stop them doing so – and it has also been suggested that pesticides are killing the insects they eat. Poisonous pellets ingested by slugs and snails that are then eaten by hedgehogs can also kill them.

Dartmoor is one of England’s last and most valuable wildernesses. It is also one of the most vulnerable. There are an estimated 8-10 million visitors to the Dartmoor National Park each year, a massive increase over the past 40 years. Those visiting the open moor, the Dartmoor Commons, have a footfall that inevitably has an impact on wildlife. The obvious casualties are ground nesting birds — the decline in numbers of lapwing, curlew, golden plover, skylarks, and other ground nesting birds on Dartmoor is well known. Heavily compressed ground caused by footfall, exacerbated by camping, is ground lost to insects and plants. There are plenty of insects, like ground nesting bees, which depend on undisturbed ground. Even members of the public with the best intentions may not fully understand what impact they, and their dogs, can have on wildlife.

The Wildlife Trusts have launched a new campaign to raise awareness of hidden peat in retail products.

Many consumers are aware of the environmental dangers of using peat – both to wildlife and to the climate – and so avoid buying peat-based composts. But some people may be inadvertently buying peat-based products without realising that it is often used as a growing medium for houseplants, leafy salads and mushrooms.

The Hidden Peat campaign will help to increase consumer understanding of peat-based products and help more people to understand the pressures that UK peatlands face, such as those in Somerset which are being dug up for use in horticulture.

From 25 March, visitor boats will be able to land on the Farne Islands for the first time in two years, with bookings now open with boat trip operators.

The Farne Islands are a National Nature Reserve and are an internationally important home to approximately 200,000 seabirds, including the charismatic puffin, Arctic terns, and kittiwakes.

The birds return to the islands, just off the Northumberland coast at Seahouses, to breed each year from the end of March, departing once their chicks are fully fledged, at the end of the summer.  

The colony was hit hard by bird flu in 2022, with rangers collecting over 6,000 dead birds, and although the disease was also present last year, there was a reduction of 39%, with 3,647 birds collected by the ranger team, giving some hope that immunity is building within the colony.

Declan Coney, a former eel fisher, knew there was something wrong when the famed swarms of Lough Neagh flies failed to materialise. In past years, they would appear around the Northern Irish lake in thick plumes and “wisps” – sometimes prompting mistaken alarm of a fire incident, Lough Shore residents say.

Clothes left out on a washing line “would be covered in them”, Coney says. So would any windshield on a vehicle travelling around the lough’s 90-mile shoreline. Conservationists marvelled at their courtship dances, hovering above treetops.

Last spring the flies never arrived. “This is the first year ever that, if you walked up to the Cross of Ardboe or the area around there, you’d find there’s no flies,” Coney says.

t’s slow-moving but time flies. It’s meditative and weirdly exhausting. There’s jeopardy, exhilaration and the awakening of powerful protective feelings. And, on a good night, there’s cold rain trickling down the back of your neck.

Welcome to the world of toading, where endangered amphibians are rescued from lethal roads as they make their annual nocturnal pilgrimage to their mating grounds.

Charlcombe Toad Rescue, on the edge of Bath, is one of the busiest groups, and particularly hectic on a Thursday night of torrential rain.

Hundreds of people campaigning for the right to roam in England are to descend on Dartmoor in an effort to highlight the limitations of the country’s system.

More than 90 years since the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, which helped establish the principle of the right to roam in the UK, organisers say England’s partial right to roam is “ridiculous” and are calling for a system of access rights that echoes Scotland’s.

Supporters will gather at Vixen Tor in Devon on 24 February, in what organisers say will be the largest mass trespass in a generation.

It's been a week since our politicians got back to work after a DUP-enforced hiatus - and two ministers, whose decisions will have major implications for our environmental security in the years ahead, have certainly hit the ground running.

I was delighted to see our new Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister, Andrew Muir, set out his stall “for protecting our improving our natural environment, farming and food production, animal and plant health, fishing and forest regeneration”.

These are all issues that need serious attention and the Alliance politician has a lot to do.

Natural England and the Environment Agency (EA) should be stripped of their responsibilities, two former Cabinet ministers and grassroots Tory activists have urged.

The Conservative Rural Forum (CRF), a pressure group that relaunched last year to champion the countryside, will call for the quangos to be brought back into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) after criticism of their performance.

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An "extraordinary mistake" led to a wildlife photographer being able to capture rare pictures of British birds showing light refracting through their wings in a rainbow effect.

Professional Andrew Fusek Peters said he had been left "gobsmacked" by the images.

After first photographing a blue tit's display in his Shropshire garden he has spent the past few weeks making a collection of other visiting birds recorded mid-flight and surrounded by colour.

"They're so beautiful," he said.

Bird flu has killed an estimated 30% of Alderney's gannet colony, The Alderney Wildlife Trust has said.

The Trust believed the population had "not recovered" from an avian influenza outbreak in 2022 which killed hundreds of the sea birds.

Experts from the Trust initially thought the remaining gannets would recolonise the islands in 2023.

The Trust's Paul Belben said the speed of recovery was not a complete "surprise".

An eerie glow has been emanating from Wales' forests and rockpools for the country's annual dark skies week.

David Atthowe, a nature guide from Norwich, was invited to shine his ultraviolet (UV) torches on some of the best nature spots in Pembrokeshire and Monmouthshire.

His photos of temperate rain forest in Wales reveal shapes, structures and colours that rival a coral reef.

"It is hidden from our human senses, waiting to be discovered," he said.

The 34-year-old is on a one-man mission to shine UV light on what he calls a "magic world" in which plants and animals fluoresce to communicate.

"Wales is so lucky to have so many beautiful sites [for biofluorescence] with its rockpools and temperate rainforest," he said.

Thousands more badgers than planned could be killed if the government gives the go-ahead next week to raising the target number of animals in certain areas, experts say.

Until now, official policy has been that culls aimed to reduce badger numbers by 70 per cent within in each cull area and across most of southwest England.

But The Independent understands that ministers are preparing to allow that target to be raised to 100 per cent in “exceptional” circumstances, subject to a consultation.

What is sewage fungus?

It is slimy, murky brown, smells bad, and fills river enthusiasts and anglers with gloom.

But it is probably useful to know that sewage fungus, so called because of its fungal-shaped mass of filaments, is not fungus at all, but is primarily made up of several species of bacteria, most commonly Sphaerotilus natans, Beggiatoa alba, Carchesium polypinum, and Flexibacter species. By the time you see its characteristic slimy, floating fronds, it will contain some fungi and algae, too, and it always spells bad news for the river in which it is spotted and for any unfortunate wildlife living there.

Across the British Isles, native toads are on the move - and they need your help.

Charlcombe Lane, a popular local shortcut in Bath, has just closed for the next six weeks to help protect the local toad population, as they wake up from their winter slumber and hit the streets - en route to a local breeding pond. The annual street closure is the result of close work between nature-loving volunteers and local authorities, but amphibians aren't just at risk in Bath.

UK-wide, frogs, toads, and newts are embarking on migrations in search of food, mates, and a safe spot for their young - and so-called 'toad patrols' across the country need volunteers to help them on their way. NationalWorld spoke to Charlcombe Toad Rescue Group volunteer Mike Collins about what a huge difference toad patrols can make, and what you can get out of taking part.