UK Nature and Environment

The total number of forests in the UK makes up an estimated 3.25 million hectares. They’re vital habitats for plants and wildlife, help sequester carbon and give us the air we breathe. A walk in the woods also benefits our mental and physical health. It invites us to slow down, revel in their beauty and find a greater appreciation for nature.

What Kind Of Forests Are There In The Uk?

Broadleaved woodland is common throughout the UK comprising trees that don’t have needles (e.g. conifers). Common trees are beech, ash, oak and birch.

In Scotland, tiny pockets of native Caledonian pine which once made up a vast forest still exist around lochs and glens.

New native woods have been planted to restore habitats while ancient woodland from around the 1600s or earlier only covers 2.5% of the UK.

Some of the rarest types of woodland are temperate rainforests. Referred to as the Atlantic or Celtic rainforest, it’s thought to be even more threatened than tropical rainforests.

A beach clean is taking place across Cornwall for its seventh year.

The Love Your Beach weekend, organised by Cornwall Wildlife Trust, aims to encourage volunteers to clean rubbish from beaches across the county.

Organisers said it hoped the event would "enable people to feel empowered to make a difference to their local nature".

British wildlife is being failed by the legal system, as people who commit crimes against birds of prey face a less than 4% prosecution rate, a conservation charity has warned.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has warned birds of prey and other British wildlife face routine shooting, trapping or poisoning - putting their populations at risk.

The latest data from the RSPB has found 54 confirmed crimes involving birds of prey in 2022, but just two people were prosecuted.

Wildcats could return to South West England for the first time in more than a century, thanks to a new study by the Devon Wildlife Trust.

The European wildcat, known as the woodcat in England, was once found throughout the UK but was hunted to near-extinction by the 18th century.

They can still be found in remote areas of Scotland, which has led them to be known as the 'Scottish wildcat', although a small population lived on Exmoor until the 1900s.

A national study recently found that the South West was among the best areas in England and Wales for their reintroduction.

DEFRA is seeking views on Natural England’s proposals to change the fees levied under the Wildlife Licence Charges (England) Order 2018.

The changes are required because Natural England needs to:

• enable full cost recovery in line with HM Treasury principles on Managing Public Money;
• introduce charges for new streamlined licensing routes, such as Bat Earned Recognition; and
• ensure funding for licensing service improvements such as digitisation.

There are no proposals to change exemptions to charges.

Share your recent wildlife encounters - large or small.

I haven't had anything really spectacular for a while, but I live in a fairly tucked away spot in East Anglia and the last stretch to reach home is along a farm track with an open field alongside. When I drive home along this in the evenings - with headlights on - one of the brown hares that spend time in the field will run in towards the lights and then curve to run parallel with my car maybe 20m away. I don't know why they do this, but I have found the same behaviour in the past too. I used to live and work on a coastal nature reserve. The drive on or off involved a couple of miles along an open shingle track and hares would frequently do exactly the same there if I crossed it in the evenings with headlights on. They would run in from the surrounding vegetated shingle. It seemed as though they were enjoying the 'race' - staying parallel with the Landrover for some hundreds of meters at a time before peeling off again.

One or two of the hares will visit our garden too later in the year - but they haven't over the winter.

National Nestbox Week is an established part of the ornithological calendar. Celebrated from February 14th each year, it puts the spotlight on breeding birds and asks everyone to put up more nestboxes in their local area.

Some 15 wildlife organisations are meeting in Norfolk to discuss ways of protecting the Eurasian curlew in an event described as the "first of its kind".

Curlew Action is hosting the gathering in King's Lynn and it will include a visit to the RSPB's Snettisham reserve on The Wash, which is a haven for wading birds.

Mary Colwell, founder of Curlew Action, said: "I want people to be aware that one of the iconic birds of the British countryside is declining so rapidly.

Image of basking shark in sea

Basking shark © Alexander Mustard/2020VISION

The Irish Sea Network, which includes Cumbria Wildlife Trust, is urging planners in all six nations bordering the Irish Sea to collaborate and cooperate, for the sake of nature.

In a report out today, the Network calls for planners to work together strategically and ensure that wildlife is protected, as they review how the Irish Sea is used.

The Irish Sea, which is bordered by England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, is coming under significant and increasing pressure from damaging activities such as industrial fishing, aquaculture, offshore renewable energy development, shipping, military activity, recreational activity and pollution. All of these activities take their toll on marine species, that are already endangered by the impacts of climate change.

A mammoth project to restore the Peak District’s “globally significant” landscape is well underway, and we headed to Hade Edge to see the progress being made by Moors for the Future.

Moors for the Future (MFTF) is a not-for-profit partnership working since 2003 to revive the Peak District and part of the Pennine moorland, which became the most degraded upland landscape in Europe due to 200 years of heavy pollution resulting from the industrial revolution, among other factors.

Built like a torpedo, weighing more than a male polar bear when fully grown and fetching prices in Japan of more than £2m for a single fish, the bluefin tuna was once an abundant apex predator in British waters. In the 1960s, these warm-blooded aquatic hunters disappeared – pushed to the brink of extinction in the eastern Atlantic by overfishing.

But since 2014, the enormous migratory fish have returned in their thousands off the coast of south-west England after deep cuts to fishing quotas in the eastern Atlantic to revive the species. Nobody is really sure why they are back in such great numbers – with populations also recovering in the Mediterranean, where the vast majority are caught – but bluefin tuna is no longer listed as an endangered species in the UK, and is now often spotted hunting close to shore by wildlife photographers. With its return, minds have also turned to how to catch it without causing it to vanish from British waters again.

Peatlands are our largest terrestrial carbon store, however, as a result of centuries of drainage for agriculture, just 1% of England’s lowland peatlands remain in a near-natural state, and these drained peatlands account for 88% of all greenhouse gas emissions from England’s peat.

The projects will use government funding to improve the management of water on lowland peat and enhance understanding of climate change impacts and flood risk.

Wildlife and Countryside Link, a charity umbrella group whose members include the RSPCA, WWF and National Trust, made the claim in evidence provided to Parliament on racism and its influence on the natural world.

MPs in an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) were informed that the British countryside has been influenced by “racist colonial legacies” which have created an environment some fear is “dominated by white people”.

The country’s green spaces are governed by “white British cultural values”, the report argues, and the perception that the countryside is a “white space” prevents people from other ethnic backgrounds from enjoying the outdoors.

Original link

Most councils risk failing to deliver a boost for nature linked to new housing developments in their areas, conservationists have warned, as new rules come in.

From next week, planning rules that require developers to create new habitats as part of building projects to deliver an overall 10% boost to nature – known as “biodiversity net gain” – come into force in England.

The rules will see developers required to take steps such as creating new woodland and restoring natural wetland areas, where possible within the project itself.

During the long, solitary days of lockdown, I found solace in raising houseplants. Suddenly stuck at home, I had more time to perfect the watering routine of a fussy Swiss cheese plant, and lovingly train our devil’s ivy to delicately frame the bookcases.

But I started noticing that these plants, sourced online, often arrived in the post with a passport. Most had travelled from all over Europe, with one common tagline: contains peat.

As a peatland scientist, these labels instantly filled me with horror. Hidden Peat, a new campaign launched by The Wildlife Trusts, is now highlighting the presence of peat in all sorts of consumer products, including house plants.

A new project from Trees for Life and Woodland Trust Scotland aims to discover Scotland’s ‘lost’ native pinewoods – home to wild Scots pines with an ancestry that can be traced back to the end of the last ice age – so they can be saved and restored before it’s too late.

Caledonian pinewoods are globally unique and support rare wildlife including red squirrels, capercaillie and crossbills. Yet less than 2% of the Caledonian forest, which once covered much of the Highlands, survives. Just 84 individual Caledonian pinewoods are now officially recognised, having been last documented more than a quarter of a century ago.

But Woodland Trust Scotland and Trees for Life have become aware of other lost wild pinewoods, and from historical documents and anecdotal reports, more are thought to exist.

The charities have teamed up to identify and save these forgotten pinewoods through the Wild Pine Project, beginning with the western Highlands, where Scots pines form part of Scotland’s rare temperate rainforest.

My TL;DR:

The Environment Agency and the UK government have failed to protect the River Wye from catastrophic decline by allowing pollution from industrial chicken farming to saturate the land and devastate the protected river, a legal challenge is to argue.

Farming rules for water state it is an offence for farmers to apply to the land fertilisers or organic manures at a level that exceeds what the land can naturally absorb. But a loophole in the law states farmers must abide by these rules unless it is impractical to do so.

A judicial review brought by the group River Action is being heard in the high court in Cardiff. River Action says this loophole in the law is allowing poultry waste from 25 million chickens intensively farmed in the catchment to poison the Wye.

River Action said in court documents submitted to the judicial review that it was not disputed that the Wye, one of the most celebrated rivers in the UK, was in ecological crisis.

“In recent years [the River Wye] has been blighted by algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water[.] The algal blooms are agreed to be caused by excess nutrients, nitrogen and especially phosphorus … It is not disputed that by far the largest single contributor to that nutrient overload is agricultural runoff.”

Charles Watson, the founder of River Action, said the loophole meant the river was almost dead as "huge quantities of manure have been allowed to be dumped in the Wye".

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.