National Trust’s Holnicote estate says restored wetlands and rivers offer proof of resilience to drought, wildfires and flooding Sandra Laville Fri 21 Aug 2026 07.00 CEST Prefer the Guardian on Google

Aerial footage of an estate in Somerset has revealed the benefits of rewilding land in the face of extreme weather brought about by the climate crisis.

The area of the National Trust’s Holnicote estate where rivers have been returned to their natural courses and wetlands have been restored have remained green and lush during the five heatwaves across the summer. In contrast, the surrounding countryside has become parched and brown.

An extremely rare insect has been spotted for the first time in nearly two decades.

The Fen Mason Wasp, considered extinct in Britain until its rediscovery in 1986, has been recorded at Essex Wildlife Trust’s Howlands Marsh nature reserve in St Osyth—marking its first sighting in Essex in 17 years.

Harry Witts, ecologist at Essex Wildlife Trust, said: "It is fantastic news that Essex supports a population of this incredibly rare wasp.

Almost £1m is going to be used to support the long‑term recovery of nature across the Shropshire Hills National Landscape.

The £993,000 grant, awarded by the National Lottery, will support the first stage of the project.

The scheme aims to involve more than 200 landowners across the next 10 years to restore rivers as well as smaller nature recovery initiatives, Shropshire Council said.

Ancient oak and beech trees, rare heathland and even wetland have been devastated by the recent fire that swept through the New Forest, a survey has found.

More than 1 sq km (247 acres) of the national park has been destroyed since the fire broke out on 9 August, Forestry England said.

The government agency found areas devoid of vegetation, dead wildlife and scorched bogs in an initial inspection of the damage.

A diver who helped discover the sprawling size of the world's longest chalk reef has warned more needs to be done to protect it, 10 years after it was designated a Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ).

The Cromer Shoal Chalk Beds, dubbed Great Britain's Barrier Reef, external, date back more than 100 million years and stretch 20 miles (32km) along the Norfolk coast from Happisburgh to Weybourne.

But diver Rob Spray, who uncovered the reef's size with Dawn Watson, said the "conservation zone has brought nothing in the way of protection".

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has launched a new dedicated webpage on GOV.UK to keep the public, fishing industry and scientific community updated in response to the common octopus bloom in South West England

Since 2025, there has been a marked increase in sightings of common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). The new webpage acts as a single, central source of information on the bloom, bringing together updates from MMO and government, details of ongoing work with stakeholders, the latest scientific research and monitoring activity, and monthly octopus and shellfish landing figures. Infographics previously shared through the South West Regional Fisheries Group will now be published on the page and updated every month.

Swimmers are being warned not to enter the water at the first official bathing site on the River Thames, in south-west London, because of toxic blue-green algae in the water.

The blue-green algal blooms are rare in moving water but are likely to be caused by the extreme heat, low river flow, and nutrient pollution from sewage waste.

Thames Water’s Hogsmill sewage treatment plant, in Kingston upon Thames, is situated three miles upstream of the Ham bathing site.

Rural school pupils visiting Trees for Life’s Dundreggan rewilding estate near Loch Ness have been helping shape a pioneering nature-based research programme to boost young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Working alongside researchers from the University of South Wales (USW), pupils from Highland schools have been exploring how spending time in nature can improve wellbeing, help young people cope with difficult times, and support the mental health of those living in remote and rural communities.

Many young people face poor mental wellbeing, because of issues including exam stress, bullying, body image worries, and climate anxiety, say the researchers. Rural school students also experience infrastructure and social barriers, including isolation.

Recent aerial photographs show firefighters continuing to tackle a peatland blaze that broke out 11 days ago.

Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service stated last week that the incident at Holme Fen, situated near Peterborough, covers an expanse measuring roughly 60 football pitches and is deeply entrenched within the peat.

Formed in wetlands over thousands of years through the partial decay of organic plant matter, peat allows blazes to spread beneath the ground. Such fires are "notoriously difficult to extinguish", according to the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire on its website for The Great Fen.

England’s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer’s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland Trust, with trees and ecosystems unable to adapt fast enough to the changing climate.

The heatwaves across much of Europe this summer have had a notable impact on crop growth and plant health. To cope with the extreme conditions, many trees are undergoing “early autumn”, wilting and losing their leaves early.

John Parker, the chief executive of the Arboricultural Association, said: “The signs of heat stress and dry weather is visible.”

A Scottish wildcat has been recorded swimming in the wild for the first time, according to a conservation project.

The female, which was born in captivity in 2022 and released into the wild in 2024, was spotted by a group of friends canoeing on the River Spey earlier this summer.

Saving Wildcats, which involves the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), identified the cat because it has a GPS radio collar which allows it to be tracked.

A brightly-coloured sea slug spotted off an island's coast could potentially be a new species, according to marine experts.

The Marine Biological Association said the orange, purple and white nudibranch, also known as a sea slug, was spotted by Maggs Ashton while she was diving with Ilfracombe and North Devon Sub-Aqua Club off Lundy.

The creature, which was spotted in the wreckage of the MV Robert and measured 15mm (0.6 inches) in length, was found about 20 metres (65.6ft) under water.

A wildlife trust is celebrating after it was gifted 600 acres of land, the largest piece of land it has ever secured.

The site at Eyam Moor - which covers an area equivalent to about 375 football pitches in the Wild Peak - is crossed by a number of footpaths and will be free for the public to visit, while being managed by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust.

The trust said the new site would form part of a wildlife corridor spanning more than 1,000 acres and encompasses a variety of habitats.

Hundreds of fish have been found dead after a fire at an industrial unit caused masses of foam to run into a nearby river.

The fish were found in the River Tame following the blaze off Wellington Road in Greenfield, on Sunday, The Environment Agency said.

The foam was described by the agency as "firewater run off", which is left-over from the foam firefighters used to tackle the fire.

An English farmer who stopped intensive wheat farming in 1988 has unintentionally helped create one of central England's largest young woodland nature reserves, reports the Guardian. Strawberry Hill, a 377-acre site near Knotting in Bedfordshire, has now been permanently protected after the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN) officially purchased the land. The purchase followed a public fundraising campaign that reached its £1.5 million target. For 35 years, the land was left largely untouched after landowner Hugh White stopped farming there in protest against government agricultural policies. Over time, the former fields naturally changed into a mix of hawthorn bushes, scrubland, grassland and young woodland. According to ecological surveys by the BCN Wildlife Trust, the site now provides important habitat for threatened birds. It is home to around half of all breeding nightingales recorded across Bedfordshire.

A more than 300-year-old oak was among six sites given new preservation orders in Devon.

West Devon Borough Council said the orders would help safeguard the trees for future generations and protect their benefits.

On the list was The Honour Oak on Whitchurch Road in Tavistock, which has previously been described as one of the town's most historically significant trees.

A flock of rare black-crowned night herons have migrated to a North Yorkshire nature reserve after the recent heatwaves pushed them away from mainland Europe.

Bolton-on-Swale Nature Reserve is currently hosting one of the UK's largest flocks of the birds, with one also spotted at North Cave Wetlands Nature Reserve near Hull for a third consecutive year.

Jonathan Leadley from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust said they were finding "more and more of these birds pushing north looking for suitable places to live".

‘It sounds silly but I thought it was a person in the water waving,” says Kurt Lander, skipper of the Yellowfin charter boat, based out of Brighton. But when he grabbed his binoculars, he realised the fluttering movement he had noticed in the middle of the Channel shipping lane was a pair of sunfish.

The huge fish were lying on their sides and flapping their fins. “Apparently, they do it as a visual attraction to birds,” he says. “They’re trying to get the birds to eat the parasites off them.”

Lander has seen the huge fish with their unusual round bodies before. But the difference is that those that he spotted this year are part of a surge in sightings of the species off British shores this summer, probably as a result of a marine heatwave.

Measures have been put in place to protect an oak tree in Lincolnshire thought to date back to the time of Sir Isaac Newton, who lived nearby.

South Kesteven District Council said the tree in Manthorpe, near Grantham, had suffered significant soil compaction, with ropes being hung from its branches for children to play.

The authority said it had installed new wooden fencing to limit public access as a way of protecting the tree and to keep the surrounding area safe for the public.

A tree-planting project has secured government funding to continue its work until at least 2030.

The North East Community Forest (NECF) is an environmental initiative working across Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland, and urban areas throughout County Durham.

One of several community forests that will receive support from phase two of the government's Trees for Climate programme, NECF said the extended funding "provides the confidence and stability needed to continue creating woodlands".

Nature experts have painted a stark picture of the UK’s future landscape as heatwaves and droughts will dominate summers in years to come.

A string of fires have erupted around the country in the past month, including devastating blazes on Suffolk heathland, in the New Forest, and in the West Midlands.

Drought has been declared in around 70 per cent of England, leaving rivers and fields dried up, and the UK is on course for its hottest summer on record.

The manager of a nature reserve which is home to rare wildlife has said he is "frightened to death" that a wildfire could break out at his site.

Philip Parker manages Kings Dyke Nature Reserve in Whittlesey, near Peterborough, which is about five miles (8km) from Holme Fen Nature Reserve, in Holme, where a major fire broke out last week.

He said since that blaze took hold, he was terrified of waking up to news the tinder-dry conditions had led to a fire, with a disposable BBQ at Kings Dyke causing a small fire in recent weeks.

Sorry Elon, but they’re not your kind of tweets. Social media users are flocking to TikTok to join a burgeoning trend for birding videos as the hobby attracts a younger demographic.

With the internet ever more cluttered with polarising, shouty and AI content, evidence is emerging of Britons preferring a gentler, more melodic window on the world in the shape of footage of the nation’s feathered friends.

TikTok says UK posts of #birdwatching and #birdtok videos have risen by a third over the past three months as users flock to feathered friend content. The number of #birding posts has risen by 40% in the UK and the global number of posts carrying one of those three hashtags now stands at 1m. A video of Steven, a relatively tame seagull, being fed raw Tesco salmon fillet has more than 52m views.

A river is being topped up by a reservoir to maintain legally mandated water levels.

Water from Kielder Reservoir has been released into the River Wear since 13 July, according to the Environment Agency (EA).

Last month was the driest July experienced by north-east England since 2006.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has released updated advice on safeguarding garden birds across the UK from highly infectious diseases, following alarming new research revealing a troubling drop in the numbers of some of Britain's most cherished garden species.

The RSPB has highlighted that a highly contagious illness known as trichomonosis is spreading rapidly and having a devastating impact on garden bird populations, particularly greenfinches, chaffinches, and potentially bullfinches as well.

The statistics paint a deeply concerning picture - the UK's greenfinch population has suffered a dramatic decline of more than 65% over the past 30 years.