Part of a wide-ranging tree planting scheme on the Isle of Man has been completed ahead of schedule, with the team behind it hoping to plant 333,000 more across the island.

The Manx Wildlife Trust (MWT) owns three areas of temperate rainforest on the island - seeking to improve its biodiversity, flood defence and water quality through planting native trees.

The 105-acre (about 42-hectare) site at Creg y Cowin, in the Baldwin Valley, has since seen the last of its 30,000 mixed-native trees go into the ground by a team of volunteers.

Almost 40% of England’s seas are designated as marine protected areas. Their purpose, the government says, is “to protect and recover rare threatened and important marine ecosystems … from damage caused by human activities”.

And yet in the four years to 2024, trawlers using vast nets, including those that scour the seabed, caught more than 1.3m tonnes of fish within them, according to official figures that campaigners say show they are “little more than lines on a map”.

“The government claims vast areas of UK waters are protected, but the reality is a national scandal,” said Chris Thorne, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK.

A hibernating dormouse was rescued after being found fast asleep in an old helium balloon caught in a tree.

The tiny creature was discovered by an Essex Wildlife Trust officer during a litter-picking campaign in woodland north of Halstead.

It was in a torpid state, meaning a sleepy hibernation which they go into in colder weather as a survival strategy, the trust said.

Birders are in for a treat this spring as plenty of rare and beautiful creatures, big and small, will be taking to the skies.

Here are five species that you might see in Norfolk over the coming months.

Drivers across south-east England are being asked to count the number of insects which hit their vehicles as part of a nature survey.

Bugs Matter, organised by charities Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, is a survey which is due to start on Wednesday and finish on 30 September.

The organisations said the study was to help them understand of the health of flying insects, which are crucial to the ecosystem.

At one of the most remote spots in southern England, Al West skilfully tilts and rotates the bucket of a small digger, like a giant mechanical hand. He lifts turf, and pats it down gently on to the rich, dark brown peat beneath. Above him, the granite stack of Fur Tor looms above the vast, boggy, wild expanse of northern Dartmoor.

It is repetitive, delicate work, which West carries out with dexterity and care. Within a boundary of white flags, he takes from a borrow pit and fashions a peat embankment across each ditch and depression covering the land, to restore it to its natural smoothness and to stop the rainwater running off down the valley.

For West this is personal. His family have had common grazing rights on Dartmoor since 1904. In the early 1920s, his great-grandfather came to the same place where West works today to cut sods of peat, along with hundreds of others, before taking it back home for domestic heating.

Do you ever worry that your brain’s slowing down and your mind is … what’s the word … fogging? If you do, I have news. A recent study on birdwatching, with the appropriately named lead author Erik Wing, found that learning to become an expert birder causes changes to the brain that may help to protect against age-related cognitive decline. Compared with novice birders, when true bird nerds tease apart difficult species, they show more activity in brain regions linked to visual processing, attention and working memory. These same areas also appear more compact, and age-related changes in them are smaller.

The take-home message is that learning to tell a chiffchaff from a willow warbler could help us to stay mentally sharp as we age. But what about discerning a common quaker from a clouded drab? Or a brown-line bright-eye from a bright-line brown eye? These are the names, not of birds, but of moths. I’ve been hooked on moths ever since I was a kid.

At the risk of alienating an entire community of wildlife enthusiasts, birds are the low-hanging fruit. Moths are orders of magnitude more difficult to distinguish. As part of a citizen science project called the Garden Moth Scheme, I regularly run a moth trap in my leafy back garden. The devices, which can be bought or cobbled together, use light to attract night-flying moths, which then stumble into the body of the trap, where they stay, unharmed, till morning.

People are being asked to keep their distance at one of the island's coastal beauty spots, to protect endangered birds nesting.

Manx Birdlife has implemented an "exclusion zone" around Langness during the ground-nesting season from March to August.

Of the island's 332 known bird species, more than 200 have been recorded at the southern peninsula.

The last chance to spot a mysterious bird of prey that is making a quiet return to Norfolk is approaching.

Renowned for being "very secretive", goshawks are still a "very rare" bird in the UK, according to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

Otherwise known as the "phantoms of the forests", the raptors can soar through trees at up to 25mph as they hunt prey, including pigeons, crows, squirrels and rabbits.

Last year, sewage was discharged into England and Wales’ waterways for over two and a half million hours - 2,651,296 to be precise. Discharges occurred a total of 386,466 times. Today, data from water companies in England and Wales was released, containing information about raw sewage discharges into English and Welsh rivers during 2025. One thing is clear: it’s been another terrible year for sewage in our rivers.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/35828327

Citizen Science Month launch marks start of biggest ever survey season – now including France for the first time!

The UK’s popular insect citizen science survey is back – bigger, earlier and bolder than ever. Bugs Matter the bug-splat-counting survey, organised by Buglife and Kent Wildlife Trust, launches on Wednesday 1 April and runs through to Wednesday 30 September. That’s a full month earlier than previous years, timed to coincide with Citizen Science Month and to capture precious early-season data.

In 2026 Bugs Matter continues its international journey. For the first time, the survey expands into France – joining the UK and the Republic of Ireland in what is becoming a cross-continental effort to understand the health of our flying insect populations. Because, as nature knows and we’re learning, biodiversity knows no borders.

Visitors to England’s National Nature Reserves (NNRs) now have even more reason to explore, after a remarkable discovery.

A fungus never recorded before in the UK, has been found at the 150-hectare Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve in West Sussex. It comes almost 20 years after a similar discovery in Spain.

Blue-Based Earthtongue, also known as Microglossum cyanobasis, was spotted by a member of the public in the reserve’s ancient yew woodland.

A proposed end to trail hunting in England and Wales came a step closer on Thursday as the government launched a public consultation on a ban.

Trail hunting was introduced after the Hunting Act 2004 as an alternative to hounds chasing foxes and involves using an animal-scented rag. Labour first announced a planned ban in its 2024 election manifesto.

Animal welfare campaigners, including the RSPCA, say live animal scents are often picked up by packs instead and that trail hunting is being used as a "smokescreen" to hide the deliberate hunting of foxes by some hunt groups.

Sewage released into England’s rivers and seas nearly 300,000 times last year

Campaigners criticise frequent use of storm overflows when parts of the country were in drought for months Sandra Laville Thu 26 Mar 2026 12.49 CET Prefer the Guardian on Google

Raw sewage was discharged into rivers and seas almost 300,000 times last year after the driest spring for more than 100 years and the sunniest and warmest year on record in England.

Water companies released raw sewage into rivers and seas from storm overflows – designed to be used in extreme wet weather conditions – 291,492 times. This was a 35% reduction on record spills in 2024. Average discharges were 20.5 spills for each overflow, compared with 31.8 in the previous year.

The duration of raw sewage discharges into waterways fell by more than half, to 1.8m hours, from a high of almost 4m hours in 2024. Some water companies had reductions of more than 60% and 70% compared with the previous year, according to figures released on Thursday by the Environment Agency (EA).

They were released this time last year with fanfare, much hope and also, perhaps, a little trepidation.

Twelve months on, there have been ups and downs for the first beavers to be (officially) reintroduced into the wild in England since the semiaquatic mammals were hunted to extinction 400 years ago.

Providing an end-of-year report, the National Trust, which is in charge of the project, said it was thrilled the beavers had been reshaping their new home in Dorset, where they have felled trees to construct a 35-metre dam, slowing the flow of a stream and creating a deep, wildlife-rich pool.

An action plan has been launched to help revive a rare and valued wildlife habitat.

A recently published Natural England report identified habitat pressures at the Adur Estuary, a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) that supports threatened coastal saltmarsh and mudflats.

In the wake of the report, conservation volunteer group Friends of Adur SSSI are leading the implementation of a new action plan to help recovery efforts.

Protecting Peregrine Falcons, creating Marine Protected Areas and championing nature at global conventions are just some of the critical projects delivered by JNCC and highlighted in our Impact Review, published today.

Covering the period 2024 to 2025, the review sets out how JNCC delivers on its strategy, Together for Nature, and highlights a year of significant progress in turning science into action for nature, people and the planet.

One of the year's standout achievements was JNCC's role at the latest Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties (COP16), where we supported UK negotiations on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. JNCC led negotiations on invasive alien species and sustainable wildlife management, and co-led the development of the Monitoring Framework, which will track global progress towards nature recovery goals.

Amid the U-turns and Keir Starmer’s personal approval ratings, it’s easy to forget that Labour was elected in 2024 on a platform of optimism. Less than two years on, manifesto promises to “stop the chaos” and “grow our economy” are proving difficult to fulfill.

Yet, there remains one area where the government appears to be performing well.

The UK’s target to reach net zero by 2050 is “within reach, provided the government stays the course”, according to a 2025 progress report from the Climate Change Committee, which is the public body whose role it is to advise the government on its progress in meeting its legally-binding climate targets. This is not only being driven by the power sector - with wind energy soaring and the UK’s last coal-fired power station closing in 2024 – but also through heat pumps and electric vehicles decarbonising heating and transport: areas considered much more fiddly to go green.

A charity has launched its "largest and most ambitious" nature recovery project after receiving multi-million pound backing.

Cornwall Wildlife Trust said its Tor to Shore scheme aimed to link habitats across the county and reintroduce animals to areas, including bringing more beavers to the Helman Tor nature reserve near Bodmin.

Funding for the £5m initiative has been boosted with a £3.3m grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

A specially designed raft has been launched on the east coast of Scotland to create new homes for vulnerable seabirds.

Dubbed the “Maid of Sterna Stuff III”, the raft is moored within the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Montrose Basin Wildlife Reserve and will provide nesting habitat for over 100 common terns.

Scotland’s seabirds face numerous threats, including from climate change and overfishing, while in recent years they have suffered further declines as a result of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (bird flu). No terns bred on the reserve’s previous raft in 2021 or 2022, however their numbers have climbed steadily since, and in 2025, around 140 chicks fledged as the species continues its recovery from the devastating disease.

An eel fisher is to argue at the high court in Belfast that the authorities have allowed the ecological collapse of Lough Neagh by failing to take action over pollution.

Declan Conlon, whose family have for generations fished the inland lake in Northern Ireland that once hosted the largest wild eel fishery in Europe, is seeking to take a judicial review against the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera). He will argue the department has failed to act against polluters despite clear evidence of the ecological collapse of the lake.

Lough Neagh, the UK’s largest lake by surface area, is situated in the heart of Northern Ireland and is a globally important and internationally protected site. But it is suffering from an acute environmental crisis. It is overloaded with phosphorus and nitrogen from agriculture, including farm runoff, fertilisers and animal waste, as well as from inadequate wastewater treatment facilities and septic tank leakage.

The Environment Agency is too weak to tackle an “out-of-control plague” of waste dumping, a powerful group of MPs has said.

The public accounts committee (PAC) said the EA had gaps in its powers and intelligence gathering which meant it was not set up to deal effectively with the rise in waste dumping.

“The widespread and increasing issue of illegal waste sites surpasses the EA’s powers,” the committee wrote in a report published on Wednesday.

A pine marten has been caught on camera in Cornwall in what conservationists hope could be the start of a comeback in the county.

Kernow Conservation recorded the creature during routine monitoring on the Trewithen Estate, near Truro, where staff have been working to restore native wildlife.

The footage was captured on a camera which was set up to track reintroduced water voles.