Archaeologists have uncovered a prehistoric woodland “time capsule” buried in Exmoor’s ancient peatlands. The finding, filled with beetles and plant fragments, gives a time-frozen snapshot of the creatures that lived there – and could help restore the area to the richly boggy, carbon-sequestering, tree-filled landscape it once was.

The discovery was made during a peatland restoration project at the Holnicote Estate in England’s West Somerset.

After being absent for decades, pine martens are now present across the New Forest and successfully breeding here according to the results of a three-year study into these rare creatures. Conservationists placed 30 hidden cameras in 11 different parts of the New Forest to observe how these protected creatures are returning to the area.

Pine martens, a cat-sized member of the weasel family, were once widespread across the UK before habitat loss and persecution left only small and fragmented populations, mostly in northern England, Scotland, and parts of Wales.

The study began after a number of reports of public sightings suggested pine martens may have returned to the New Forest. Led by Forestry England and Wild New Forest, with support from Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, it aims to understand how these rare creatures are settling here and the size of the population.

A whale photographed by a wildlife surveyor off Cornwall's coast has been confirmed as a different animal to two seen offshore recently.

Cornwall Wildlife Trust's project Seaquest Southwest said the animal was seen in St Ives Bay on Thursday.

Tash Murch's photos of the whale were sent to experts who confirmed it was another whale.

The trust is appealing for people to get in touch with any other whale sightings from Cornwall.

Climate campaigners Coal Action Network (CAN) are this week appealing a judge’s ruling that effectively gives the green light to the extension of a coal mine at Aberpergwm in south Wales.

Last year, the campaigners took the Welsh Government and mining regulator the Coal Authority to court over the way they handled an application by the mine operator Energybuild to extend its extraction area by 1,460 hectares, and digging up as much as 42 million extra tonnes of coal.

The Coal Authority approved the extension of the licence in January 2022. It claimed it had no power to refuse the licence as long as applicants met the criteria set by the 1994 Coal Industry Act.

A SPECIES of turtle that normally swims in much warmer waters than around the UK was found washed up on Earnse Bay.

When Walney resident Paul Knight discovered the Loggerhead Turtle he initially thought it was dead. However, when they called marine experts they found that it was in cold-water shock and still had a chance of being rescued.

Almost £11m of lottery funding has been awarded to a project to make the Cairngorms the UK's first net zero national park.

The park authority (CNPA) has proposed creating more than 2,470 acres (1,000ha) of new woodland and restoring 16,061 acres (6,500ha) of peatland.

It also plans to improve walking and cycling routes and pioneer nature-friendly farming to help it reduce emissions and absorb carbon dioxide.

But CNPA has faced criticism from farmers and crofters who claimed the organisation was ignoring concerns about some conservation measures.

Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests. Scotland is endowed with vast areas of these wetland ecosystems. An estimated 20% of the Scottish landscape is covered in peat soils, but 80% of these are degraded and instead release stored carbon into the atmosphere.

The Scottish government estimates that the carbon stored in its peatlands is equivalent to 120 years’ worth of the country’s emissions. Keeping it locked away is essential for moderating the climate crisis.

Farmers have been urged to take part in a new farmland bird survey as figures show numbers have declined by more than 60% over the past 53 years.

The annual Big Farmland Bird Count, organised by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), began in 2014.

Officials launched the 2024 survey, which runs until 18 February, at Lodge Farm, in Westhorpe, Suffolk.

The trust said farmland birds "desperately" needed help,

Farmers' union the NFU said the best part of 20,000 farmers took part in the 2023 count.

New research published by the University of Sussex suggests that wild honey bee colonies are in abundance in the UK, thanks to our ancient or veteran trees.

In a new paper, researchers estimate that around 40,000 wild-living honey bee colonies could be nesting in ancient or veteran trees in England, with around 75,000 across the UK. But with UK trees under threat from the likes of disease, development and severe climate related weather, this latest research shows the value of veteran trees to our most important pollinators.

It’s not often we get to hear heartening news about wildlife. However, 2023 was a historic year for marine conservation in the UK according to the Wildlife Trusts, with the creation of the first highly protected marine areas and a spike in sightings of whales and dolphins, tentatively suggesting that some species may be recovering and growing in numbers.

Measures to protect bluefin tuna (a fish that has returned from the brink of extinction) led to an increase in sightings, while in Cornwall there were 156 recorded sightings of Risso’s dolphins in 2023, compared with 45 in the previous year. A “super pod” of 350 common dolphins and 10 minke whales was even spotted off the Scottish coast, and an orca recorded in the sea three miles from the Yorkshire coastline — the first time one has been seen in the area since 2007. Humpback whales, basking sharks and fin whales have all been sighted, and the number of seal pups born increased by a third in some areas of the country compared with the previous year.

Here, we round up the Wildlife Trusts’ most glorious coastal nature reserves to spot fantastic winter wildlife.

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Standing in a field close to the Somerset coast surrounded by her flock of sheep, Juliet Pankhurst shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “They want to flood this land that has been farmed for generations. We’ve got great crested newts in the pond over there, water voles in the ditches, hares all over the place. They’ll be lost.”

Her partner, Mark Halliwell, shrugged. “But they’ll get their way – they always do. No matter what scheme they come up with.”

The “they” in question is EDF, the French company building the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station a few miles down the coast from the farm. The scheme is to create a salt marsh on the land as “compensation” for dropping an innovative plan to stop millions of fish from swimming into the plant’s cooling system and being killed.

“The whole thing sounds a bit odd,” said Pankhurst.

A toxic mix of oil, chemicals and bits of tyre from roads is polluting English waterways and no-one is regularly monitoring it, the BBC has found.

Heavy rain forces run-off into streams and rivers. Campaigners say it causes 'absolutely horrific' damage in places, including just downstream of where The Great British Bake Off is filmed.

England's major road network has more than 18,000 outflows or drains.

National Highways runs the network and says it's working to improve them.

Britain’s tallest bird, the spectacular, wetland-loving crane bred in higher numbers last summer than at any point since they disappeared from the UK in the 16th century.

At least 80 pairs of cranes were recorded in 2023, up from the previous high of 72 two years earlier. The birds, which make distinctive bugling calls but are surprisingly elusive in the breeding season, as they hide in reedbeds, successfully fledged at least 36 chicks.

The species, which performs elaborate mating dances each spring, first returned from Scandinavia to breed in east Norfolk in 1979. The population was kept secret for years and very slowly spread.

More recently it has been boosted by a reintroduction project where hand-reared cranes were released on expanded wetlands in the Somerset Levels.

From leaf buds bursting to blackberries ripening, let us know what’s happening near you. You'll be contributing to a long biological record that dates back as far as 1736.

The UK Government’s decision to close the sandeel fishery in the English North Sea comes after more than 25 years of campaigning by the RSPB and others, which called out the practice as one of the leading causes of seabird decline. Many seabirds, including Puffins, rely on sandeels to feed their chicks. But climate change and over-fishing has vastly depleted sandeel populations, having a devastating knock-on effect on seabirds.

Britain's loudest bird, which had been driven to extinction, has been caught on camera at a nature reserve.

The bittern was spotted at Willington Wetlands, in Derbyshire, on 16 January, months after the bird bred in the county for the first time since records began.

Male bitterns make a distinctive, booming "foghorn" call.

They are part of the heron family, and were driven to extinction across the UK in the 1870s before they returned to Britain in small numbers in the early 20th Century.

Kate Lemon, landscape recovery manager at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, said she was "absolutely thrilled" bitterns had made Willington Wetlands their home.

Plans for new laws to reverse the loss of wildlife and protect nature have been outlined by the Welsh government.

They include setting up a new, independent watchdog to hold organisations' feet to the fire on environmental issues like sewage spills or air pollution.

Public bodies in Wales will also be forced to publish nature recovery action plans.

Opposition parties and campaigners said the changes were long overdue and urged ministers to "crack on".

A pair of rare white-tailed sea eagles have been spotted in west Suffolk.

The species, which is Britain's largest bird of prey with a wingspan of up to 2.5m (8.2ft), was driven to extinction in the UK in the 20th Century.

A reintroduction programme has helped the birds, nicknamed "flying barn doors", return to the Britain.

Birdwatchers, who were alerted to the rare sighting, have said they feel "lucky" to have now seen one of the birds.

Ministers are “window dressing” with nature policies announced to “cover up” the government’s failings on environmental targets, wildlife groups have said.

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) found earlier this month that nature in England is at risk of falling into an “irreversible spiral of decline” because of the government’s failures to meet its legally binding targets on species abundance and water quality.

Instead of providing a detailed response to the OEP, the government has issued an announcement that it will ban the industrial fishing of sandeels to celebrate a year since it announced its legally binding environmental improvement plan (EIP) targets. These targets are to replace the oversight of the EU and are part of the Environment Act 2021.

The swallowtail, one of Britain’s rarest butterflies and also the largest, has suffered its worst summer since records began.

The butterfly is confined to the Broads in East Anglia, where its caterpillar’s food plant is found, and is now breeding on just 16 sites.

Eighty-three per cent of English rivers contain evidence of high pollution caused by sewage and agricultural waste, according to the largest citizen science water testing project ever to take place in the UK.

Hundreds of anglers took part in the study, organised by the Angling Trust, after being angered by the brown blooms of sewage in the waters they painstakingly tend for the benefit of fish.

Six hundred and forty-one anglers from 240 angling clubs now regularly monitor pollution in 190 rivers across 60 catchments. Between them, they have taken more than 3,800 samples, which are revealing the systemic pollution across England’s waterways. This is mainly caused by agricultural runoff and sewage spilled by water companies.

England's hedgerows would stretch almost ten times around the Earth if lined up end to end.

That's according to a new map - the most comprehensive to date - of these historic features of the landscape.

Ecologists hope the data will lead to better protections for the much-loved lines of trees and shrubs that provide food and shelter for wildlife, and store large amounts of carbon.

Laser scanning from the air reveals a total of 390,000 km of hedges.

A typical British countryside walk may conjure up images of vast green fields, heather-topped moorlands, and of course, countless stiles providing access throughout the right-of-way network. However, while stiles connect trails and public pathways, they are a physical barrier to accessible green spaces for all.

Over the last two decades, national parks across England have been removing stiles as part of a programme of measures to create more easy-to-navigate walking routes. Research by us and others shows how opening up natural spaces in such ways can particularly benefit young and disabled people. If such schemes were adopted more widely, the benefits could be spread even further.

More than 100,000 trees are being planted in north Devon as part of efforts to boost temperate or Celtic rainforests, some of the UK’s most magical but endangered environments.

The trees are being planted close to surviving pockets of rainforest at two spots close to the coast and one inland.

Among the trees that will be planted is the almost-extinct Devon whitebeam, which is only found in the English West Country and in Ireland. It can reproduce without fertilisation, creating seeds that are genetic copies of itself. Its edible fruit used to be sold at Devon markets as “sorb apples” – celebrated in the DH Lawrence poem Medlars and Sorb-Apples (“I love you, rotten,/Delicious rottenness.”)