Norfolk Wildlife Trust has launched a new project, funded by Natural England and working in partnership with the Norfolk Rivers Trust, to help water voles thrive once more throughout the Wensum and Yare rivers.

Thanks to £25,000 funding from Natural England, Norfolk Wildlife Trust, alongside Norfolk Rivers Trust, is embarking on a research project that holds the key to a brighter future for Norfolk's water voles.

Water voles were once commonplace throughout Norfolk's waterways but suffered a dramatic decline in the last half of the twentieth century. A major factor in this was predation by mink, a species which has now largely disappeared across Norfolk.

Community-led conservation is delivering fresh hope for wild salmon across Lancashire rivers.

Ribble Rivers Trust was one of the inaugural winners of the Orri Award, a UK conservation scheme backing practical, grassroots projects to restore wild Atlantic salmon and their habitats.

The project raised a combined £46,216 alongside fellow winner River Cree Hatchery & Habitat Trust, thanks to support from more than 360 donors and a £10,000 match fund grant.

A bird watcher has described the "truly extraordinary" moment he spotted a rare bird of prey in flight over a Hampshire beauty spot.

The pallid harrier was photographed at Testwood Lakes Nature Reserve near Southampton in April 2025.

The sighting by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust's Simon King has now been confirmed by the British Birds Rarities Committee (BBRC).

Inside a bothy overlooking the Summer Isles, in the north-west of Scotland, the lilting tones of a traditional Gaelic duo fill a room full of musicians, storytellers, artists, local people and revellers, hung with fish-shaped lanterns and “Happy Birthday” signs.

It’s no ordinary birthday. The people in the small cabin have come together, on a windy night in Achiltibuie, a string of coastal hamlets and villages north of Ullapool, to celebrate an important milestone in the community’s history: a hard-won battle to protect their waters from the ravages of scallop dredging.

The coastline here, a metallic grey seen through the bothy’s windows, is dotted with beds of one of the UK’s most biodiverse and carbon-rich habitats, a 9,000-year-old pink seaweed called maerl, two of which are a mile long. This rare, fragile and threatened seaweed produces hard, chalky, coral-like skeletons that provide nurseries for scallops and fish.

Bird-shaped kites and a floating scarecrow are being tested to try to stop endangered seabirds drowning in fishing nets.

Every year an estimated 95,000 diving birds, including razorbills and guillemots, are accidentally caught in nets off European coasts.

But simple deterrents tested by Cornish fishers and devised by scientists and the RSPB have been shown to reduce the toll by about two-thirds.

A rare pink sea fan colony (Eunicella verrucosa) has been discovered off of the south-west coast of England.

The discovery was made using camera tow imagery and data collected during CSM2026, a four-week joint survey back in April 2026 that brought together scientists from 11 organisations, including JNCC, to improve understanding of the marine environment.

Pink sea fans are a type of soft coral found in UK waters. They are nationally rare, classified as Vulnerable on the global IUCN Red List and protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

The air is scented with the sweet tang of ladies bedstraw and made musical by skylark and blackcap song. An abundance of marbled white butterflies, small skippers and common blue damselflies dart over the flowering knapweed, yarrow and wild carrot.

That the largest chalk grassland in the Chilterns is full of wildlife may not surprise you. But the fact that it is completely artificial, only four years old and has been built by the much-maligned HS2, may do.

The Western Slopes “rewilding” project is due to open to the public next year on land beside the high-speed railway as it dives under the M25 and into a 10-mile tunnel beneath the Chilterns. The trains may be running late, but the wildlife has already arrived.

The Bog Grass Moth was found at Cors Geirch National Nature Reserve on the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, as conservationists were surveying the area's species.

Experts called it a "special surprise" to find the "incredibly sparse moth" in the habitat.

An exact population figure in the UK for the Bog Grass Moth is not known, but they have only been recorded in a small number of English counties, such as Dorset.

Half a million trees will be planted across England in the next three years to protect against extreme weather, the environment secretary, Angela Eagle, will pledge on Wednesday morning.

Mayors, local authorities, charities and grassroots groups will be given new funding and responsibilities for restoring natural landscapes such as wetlands, river edges and meadows, which can provide natural flood management and reduce the damage done by droughts.

The £79m package, to be set out in Eagle’s speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool, will include £53m for tree-planting and £26m for “local nature recovery strategies”.

A rare pine marten kit has been captured on camera in an area where there is no formal re-introduction programme.

Longleat Estate in Wiltshire revealed in February that two of the mammals had been spotted together, bringing hope of a family.

The safari park then made changes to support the animls, including installing den boxes and changing its woodland management.

A new organisation supporting the restoration of beavers to the River Tweed has asked local residents for their views.

Beavers on Tweed has welcomed Scottish Borders Council’s discussion on the future of beavers in the Tweed catchment, while cautioning against deciding too early that natural recolonisation was preferable to a future licensed translocation.

Politicians and campaigners have shared their frustration at the pollution incidents that led to South West Water being fined nearly £8m for hundreds of sewage spills.

On Tuesday at Plymouth Magistrates' Court the company was fined £7,867,733 and ordered to pay £329,993 after admitting a series of pollution-related offences over six years in Bodmin, Harlyn, Playing Place, and Polperro in Cornwall, and Plymouth in Devon.

It apologised for what happened and said it remained "focussed on the future" and that "significant improvements" have been made across the sites.

England’s most important tern colonies are showing signs of recovery after being hit by years of bird flu, flooding and increasingly unpredictable weather, new figures from the National Trust reveal.

The trust reported record numbers of little terns at Long Nanny in Northumberland, one of the UK’s most important breeding sites for what is the country’s second-rarest breeding seabird.

Numbers are also slightly up for arctic terns, the long distance superstars of the avian world that annually breed in places such as Northumberland before making the incredible journey south to Antarctica.

Marine experts on the Isle of Man had a bumper year of whale and dolphin sightings this year, describing it as the best since 2010.

"We've had an absolute abundance of them," Jen Adams, from Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch, said.

Almost 100 sightings have been reported to the charity so far, compared to about 20 last year and eight the year before.

Over 13 million trees have now taken root since 2018 as part of the Northern Forest, in an area that stretches from Liverpool to the Humber Estuary, according to recent analysis by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).

The new data, published on 24 September 2026, reveals that more than 738,000 households in the North of England now have a Northern Forest wooded site within a 15-minute walk of their home. One third of these households are from low-income communities.

New Lost Woods project will reconnect woodlands through planting of nature corridors across Sussex Low Weald and Downs.

The Lost Woods project has mapped out almost 6,000 trees across Sussex. Volunteers will work with local landowners to restore this ancient woodland through active management techniques, and reconnecting woodlands through the planting of nature corridor.

One Monday morning in spring last year, 12 people gathered in the morning drizzle at Joyce’s Pool, one of the sources of the Bristol River Avon, and took the first steps of the inaugural Avon pilgrimage.

Over the course of eight days, a revolving cast of pilgrims walked about 100 miles from the source of the river to the point at which it reaches the sea, in some cases bivvying on the riverside at night. Along the way they planted trees, sowed seeds, restored footpaths and presented councillors and decision-makers with a fledgling Avon charter, developed by the Bristol campaign group Conham Bathing.

“The reception was so good across political parties and interest groups,” recalls pilgrim Hamish Evans, who co-founded We Are Avon, which organised the pilgrimage and is building a movement to regenerate the Avon bioregion. “It felt inevitable that we would one day achieve better rights and representation for this river.”

Saving Wildcats celebrates landmark 50 wildcat releases

Conservationists at Saving Wildcats are celebrating the release of fifty wildcats into the Scottish Highlands. The major milestone was reached following the release of four wildcats this summer.

Saving Wildcats is a partnership project, led by wildlife conservation charity the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS). It works to save wildcats from extinction in Scotland and has been releasing the species into the Cairngorms National Park since 2023.

Tighter rules on intensive dairy farms and increased support for farmers to cut pollution, restore nature and build a more resilient sector are urgently needed, say The Wildlife Trusts

The rise of ‘mega-dairies’ is pushing nature to breaking point, according to a new report from The Wildlife Trusts published today.

The report, Doing Dairy Differently, warns that the shift towards larger, more intensive dairy systems is putting growing pressure on the land, water and wider environment on which farms, people and wildlife depend.

People should not have to travel far to experience the joys of nature, conservationists have said, as campaigners push for more wildlife-rich green spaces in urban areas.

From Greater Manchester to north London, organisations and volunteers are transforming former industrial land and neglected parks into habitats for wildlife and places for people to enjoy.

Research suggests many people do not have access to parks, woodlands or wetlands within a 15-minute walk of their home, despite evidence that time spent in nature can improve health and wellbeing.

The datacentre revolt spreading across the US has reached the rolling hills of north Devon in an uprising against a planned hyperscale AI data campus in the middle of a globally protected landscape.

Perched on an inland cliff, the town of Great Torrington has views that stretch for miles over the landscape of the Unesco biosphere reserve in which it sits, taking in the winding River Torridge and rolling acres of wooded valley and wildflower meadows. Pastoral and peaceful, its history was notably punctured by violence in 1646 when the royalists’ resistance in the first English civil war was brought to an end by the parliamentarian New Model Army in a battle fought out in the narrow streets in heavy rain and darkness.

Today, a very 21st-century threat is rippling through the same country lanes as the AI boom reaches the pubs, churches and parish halls of Great Torrington and its surrounding villages.

An oil-like substance has been bubbling up in the River Avon in Bristol for years and killing wildlife, according to local residents who have made regular reports to the Environment Agency (EA).

Nicola Irvine, who lives in Crews Hole, said it had been like "pulling teeth" getting the EA to investigate the pollution since she contacted them in July 2025.

Her partner, Toby White, said: "It's hard to describe how bad the smell is - at times it's like you're living on a petrol station and you start getting headaches."

Wildlife campaigners on Teesside are celebrating a bumper year for the barn owl population.

The Tees Valley Wildlife Trust has been running a project to boost the number of birds, which has been in decline due to a loss of nesting habitats, by installing nest boxes sponsored by the public.

Volunteers have been putting rings on owlets to track their location and survival. Last year they ringed 270 chicks, so far this year they have done 541.

On the slopes of Beinn Sciathan, a rocky outcrop in the Outer Hebrides, white and grey ponies roam freely. Eriskay ponies, one of the rarest native breeds in the world, are critically endangered.

They have often been mixed with the Highland pony and other breeds, giving the false impression of higher population numbers. Only about 300 to 400 true Eriskay ponies are thought to remain.