UK Nature and Environment

A creeping "invasion" has been threatening to smother one of Wales's most popular lakes. Lagarosiphon major, also known as curly waterweed, is an invasive aquatic plant that can rapidly grow and spread - potentially dominating and "smothering" lakes.

It is from South Africa and is so bad that it was put on the EU's List of Invasive Alien Species in 2016. This means it's against the law to sell this plant or throw it away in nature.

A bird conservation charity has received lottery funding to develop an outdoor education programme to encourage children to connect with nature.

Manx BirdLife received £4,900 to expand its education programme for species monitoring in the Point of Ayre Nature Reserve, which is run by the charity.

The money would be used to buy equipment such as moth traps, bat detectors, butterfly nets and action cameras for schools and community groups to borrow for free.

The Met Office should name storms after fossil fuel companies, campaigners have said, after the weather forecasting service opened a storm naming competition.

Climate campaigners have recommended the Met Office names its storms after various oil and gas corporations to remind the public of the link between burning fossil fuels and extreme weather.

They are hoping to spark a craze similar to “Boaty McBoatface”, when in 2016 the National Environment Research Council opened a competition to name a £200m polar research ship. Nationwide hilarity ensued when the public voted Boaty McBoatface as the top choice for the ship’s name. However, the name was not chosen by the government, who opted to name it the Sir David Attenborough instead.

When newts go a-wooing, sometime in the spring, their signature move is the handstand. Girl newts cluster round to watch, while the boy newts flip on to their creepily human hands and shake their tails in the air. The waggiest newt is the winner, although the actual act of love is a strictly no-contact sport. The male deposits a packet of sperm on an underwater leaf for the female to collect and insert into her own reproductive tract. The whole business is best thought of, says Karen R Jones, as a “sexually charged game of pass-the-parcel”.

This kind of anthropomorphising often strikes naturalists as unscientific or even downright distasteful. But Jones is an environmental historian and her methodology allows, indeed impels, her to start from the principle that Britain’s human and animal populations are culturally entwined. Consequently, we cannot “see” a fox, hedgehog or newt without bringing to it a rich stew of presumptions and fantasy, drawn from childhood picturebooks, out-of-date encyclopedias and, in my case, the 1970s TV classic Tales of the Riverbank, in which small critters say funny things in the West Country burr of .

This pre-knowing can have a radical impact on the chances of a particular species flourishing or going under. Take hedgehogs, which, Jones tells us in this beautifully written book, have been in Britain for the last 15m years. They witnessed the extinction of the woolly mammoth and saw the first humans arrive in Europe. It was at this point that they started to pick up a reputation for general malevolence. Bandit-like, hedgehogs were reputed to sneak into human settlements at night and steal poultry eggs (true) and suck the udders of sleeping cows (almost certainly false). Their ability to munch on toxic toads without getting sick (true) and willingness to ferry any witch who had lost her broomstick (surely very uncomfortable) confirmed that hedgehogs had gone over to the dark side. No wonder that killing them counted as a public service: the records of one Cheshire village show 8,585 hedgehogs destroyed over a 35-year period in the late 1600s.

England’s Community Forests have taken another major step forward in creating new woodland across the country, with over 3.1 million trees planted during the 2024/25 season under the Defra supported Trees for Climate programme. This effort forms part of a long-term national commitment to expand tree cover and deliver the wide-ranging benefits that woodlands provide to people, nature and the economy.

Established in 2020, Trees for Climate is supporting local delivery of tree planting by Community Forests and other partners across England. The programme not only contributes to the UK’s net zero and nature recovery targets but also provides direct benefits to local communities, landowners and farmers.

From the rural landscapes of Cumbria to the urban fringes of Bristol, new woodland projects have created places where communities can connect with nature, enjoy improved health and wellbeing, and benefit from more resilient local environments. Trees planted this year are already beginning to improve air quality, reduce flood risks, and provide essential habitats for wildlife.

A nature reserve has been named as the UK's newest dragonfly hotspot as two rare species have been spotted at the site.

The white-faced darter, a rare dragonfly, was introduced to RSPB Campfield Marsh in Wigton in April and it is hoped there will be breeding pairs in summer.

The British Dragonfly Society designated it to become the 12th hotspot in the UK, saying it had "amazing habitat management" with deep bog pools which "should provide the perfect conditions for the species to thrive".

Swift Awareness Week starts this Saturday [28 June 2025], with 100 events taking place to help raise the profile of Common Swift.

Swift is in steep decline in the UK but there is now grassroots support across the country in the form of more than 150 local swift groups, with more forming each year.

Groups from Devon to Aberdeenshire and from Kent to North Wales will be running swift-watching evenings or information. Some will have live webcams allowing visitors to see inside active nests.

New generations of wild ash trees are rapidly evolving resistance to the fungus devastating their numbers, scientists have discovered.

The discovery gives hope, the researchers said, and shows that allowing the natural regeneration of woodlands is vital to enabling this evolution to take place. However, it remains too early to say if the development of resistance in the ash trees can outpace the destruction being caused by the ash dieback fungus.

The genetic analysis is also a scientific breakthrough. It is the first convincing proof of a prediction made by Charles Darwin that significant changes in organisms can result from natural selection driving very many small changes, not just from one or two obvious ones.

Under cover of darkness, a nocturnal creature emerges from a crate and takes its first tentative steps into a new life in the wild.

"It is just essentially God's work. We're undoing the damage of hundreds of years ago and bringing back these extraordinary animals," claimed Ben, who spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity.

He is part of an underground network where members risk arrest, jail and hefty fines by carrying out covert and unlicensed releases of beavers.

A wildlife trust condemns the government's proposal to weaken biodiversity net gain (BNG) requirements warning that it could "devastate local nature".

The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) says the government's requirements for small and medium-sized housing developments will erode community wellbeing across the three counties.

BNG was introduced , externalto ensure that new developments leave nature in a better state than before.

A Surrey landscape which is home to lizards and an area known as the Devil’s Punch bowl has been designated a national nature reserve.

Natural England, which advises the Government on the environment, announced the creation of the Wealden Heaths National Nature Reserve on Friday.

This means the 2,766-hectare landscape has been marked out as an area of focus for conservation and nature restoration efforts.

A study focused on protecting Scotland's capercaillie population by managing predators through non-lethal means has seen brood numbers double in target areas.

The capercaillie is a ground-nesting bird that, with just over 500 left in the wild, is in danger of extinction in the UK. One contributor to its decline is the eating of eggs and chicks by predators, including another protected species, the pine marten.

Diversionary feeding is a conservation technique designed to reduce predator impacts on vulnerable species without harming the predators themselves. By providing an alternative, easy meal - deer carrion in this study - it gives predators a readily accessible food source so they don’t need to search for rarer food like capercaillie nests in the same area.

New detailed assessments of marine protected areas (MPA) in Wales show which habitats and species are doing well in Welsh waters, but highlight the need for more action to improve habitat, biodiversity and water quality, according to Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

A total of 85 features designated across 17 marine special areas of conservation (SACs) and special protected areas (SPAs) have been assessed to determine if their conservation objectives are being met. This covers 37% of the Welsh Marine Protected Area network.

These features include a range of rare and protected species and habitats, such as grey seals, sea lamprey, otter, sandbanks, mudflats, reefs and saltmarsh.

In March 2020, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) launched the Forests for our Future programme. This initiative set an ambitious target: to plant 18 million trees and create 9,000 hectares of new woodland by 2030. This was in the context of the ongoing nature and climate crises and the important role of woodlands as nature-based solutions.

The programme supports woodland creation by providing grant aid to cover associated costs, with funding available through the Small Woodland Grant Scheme and the Forest Expansion Scheme.

This year marks the halfway point of the 10-year Forests for our Future programme. While woodland planting rates have increased since its launch, progress remains well below the level required to meet the 9,000 hectare target. To date, 2,016 hectares of new woodland have been created through the Small Woodland Grant Scheme and the Forest Expansion Scheme, less than a quarter of the overall goal at the programme’s midpoint. This shortfall highlights the urgent need for DAERA to accelerate delivery if the full ambition of the initiative is to be achieved.

The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and its partners have launched the first-ever Pine Hoverfly Conservation Strategy, a landmark plan designed to safeguard one of Britain’s most endangered native species and restore the health of the native woodland ecosystems it calls home.

The strategy, developed by the Pine Hoverfly Steering Group as part of the Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms (RIC) project, sets out a coordinated, science-led approach focused on breeding, habitat restoration, identification of suitable release sites, post-release monitoring and securing ongoing project funding. This comprehensive plan aims to reverse the decline of the pine hoverfly, an insect that plays a crucial role as both pollinator and decomposer in Scotland’s forest environments.

Dr Helen Taylor, conservation programme manager at RZSS, said, “The Pine Hoverfly Conservation Strategy is a major milestone. It provides a clear roadmap for improving the long-term prospects of this species and highlights the importance of a collaborative effort across multiple organisations to maximise chances of conservation success. Having a clear strategy is recognised as a key step in reversing the decline of threatened species and is a key part of the work that RZSS is involved in.

A monumental clean-up operation has commenced in Kent to remove 30,000 tonnes of hazardous waste illegally dumped in a woodland in Kent.

The extensive effort at Hoad’s Wood in Ashford, coordinated by the Environment Agency, is expected to take a year to complete.

The vast quantities of harmful material, which first appeared in 2023, are piled up to 15ft high in some areas of the woodland.

The UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (PoMS), which engages thousands of citizen scientists to record insects on surveys across the UK countryside and gardens, is emphasising the value of having a wide range of plants and habitats to support a diverse range of pollinators.

The latest annual report of the scheme, coordinated by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), has been published at the start of Insect Week 2025, organised by the Royal Entomological Society (RES). The RES is calling on everyone to pledge to discover, observe and protect insects in all their fascinating glory.

The PoMS report highlights some interesting findings from 2024.

Hidden but vulnerable marine treasure discovered in collaboration between the Marine Biological Association, Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios.

In an extraordinary moment of chance during the production of Ocean with David Attenborough, a vibrant and exceptionally well-preserved pink sea fan reef has been discovered off the southwest coast of England. The find, described as a “little sanctuary”, showcases a flourishing underwater habitat that has remained hidden until now.  

This vibrant, undisturbed habitat, teeming with marine life, was uncovered by researchers from the Marine Biological Association (MBA) and filmmakers on Ocean with David Attenborough, and underscores both the resilience of the ocean and the urgent need to protect its hidden treasures. 

A rich fenland has been chosen as one of four locations in Europe to trial a system of "wet farming" to maintain valuable wildlife ecosystems.

Great Fen at Speechly's Farm, between Peterborough and Huntingdon, is part of a so-called "paludiculture" pilot, known as the PaluWise project.

The method involves growing without draining the land - and at the Great Fen it will be used to grow crops including bulrush and wet grassland.

The combination of sunny spring weather and habitat improved by a herd of red Devon cattle has led to a surge in numbers of one of the UK’s rarest butterflies on moorland in the English west country.

As well as increasing in established pockets on Exmoor, the heath fritillary is spreading to new areas, which experts say is highly unusual.

More than 1,000 heath fritillary butterflies, nicknamed the woodman’s follower, have been seen at sites on the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate on Exmoor and nearby land, a significant rise from about 600 at the same time last year.

A moth species long thought to be extinct in England has made a dramatic return, rediscovered at local conservation charity Kent Wildlife Trust’s Lydden Temple Ewell Reserve near Dover after a 73-year absence.

Periclepsis cinctana, once known as the ‘Dover Tortrix’ and more recently renamed the ‘Tiree Twist’, was last recorded in England in 1952. Believed to survive only on the remote Scottish island of Tiree, its rediscovery has stunned the UK conservation community.

The breakthrough came when Rebecca Levey, an ecologist with Butterfly Conservation, was surveying the site with volunteers searching for Straw Belle caterpillars. Spotting the small chalky-white moth with distinctive orangey-brown markings, she immediately recognised its significance and contacted Dave Shenton, Kent Wildlife Trust’s Local Wildlife Sites Officer and Kent County Moth Recorder.

This Insect Week (June 23rd to 29th), The Wildlife Trusts and Royal Horticultural Society are asking gardeners to look out for hornet look-a-likes, as part of their ‘Be a hoverfly hero’ campaign.

According to insect experts at the two organisations, nature can be canny: what you think is a hornet may be a hoverfly disguised as its more fearsome fellow pollinator – both do important jobs in your garden.

These creatures are deploying a cunning art – Batesian mimicry – named after explorer Henry Walter Bates. Whilst exploring Amazon rainforests, he noted that many species had evolved to look scarier than they actually were, to avoid being eaten by predators.

Woodland where 12 football fields worth of trees was illegally felled by its owner is to become a nature reserve after an organisation which helped in a long-running court case bought the land.

Jeff Lane caused a "devastating loss" to the environment by the illegal felling of 2,000 trees in 2019 on more than eight hectares (20 acres) on Gower, Swansea.

At the time, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) called it the worst case of illegal tree felling it had seen in 30 years.

The organisers of an initiative aimed at reversing a decline in numbers of house martins are asking members of the public to report the locations of nests.

The distinctive dark blue and white birds, which migrate from Africa each spring, are on the UK's Red List of endangered bird species.

The Hampshire House Martins Project will use the data gathered to help with conservation efforts, including providing artificial nest cups.

Northern Ireland’s first Climate Action Plan. Some positives, but it’s late, has limited ambition and refuses to take on the biggest polluters in Big Agri-Food.

There are some good things in the Climate Action Plan, but you must work hard to find them in this 280-page consultation. The Climate Action Plan should have been laid before the Assembly by the end of 2023.