UK Nature and Environment

The National Forest for Wales now covers the equivalent of over 90,000 rugby pitches thanks to a network of woodland sites across Wales.

Recent additions include two new sites: Aberduna Hall in north-east Wales and Castle Wood in Carmarthenshire, adding 24 hectares between them.

Both these sites will help support nature, tackle the climate emergency, and support more people to spend time in green spaces.

Bird counts on an island haven for seabirds have revealed a mixed picture.

The number of puffin breeding pairs on the Farne Islands in Northumberland has dropped by 23% in a year from 50,103 to 38,500 breeding pairs, the National Trust said.

However, it cautioned against interpreting the drop as a sudden population decline after the island was hit by bird flu and storms in recent years which killed thousands.

A humpback whale called Pi is thrilling locals on the Isles of Scilly who see its annual visit as a winter highlight.

For islanders, spotting Pi has become a tradition, and this year photographer Inga Drazniece captured the moment on camera.

"I need to pinch myself sometimes still," said Inga, who works at a jewellers and spends her free time photographing the islands' wildlife.

Almost 40,000 birds have made their home on a nature reserve created using soil from tunnel excavations for the Elizabeth line.

Three million tonnes of earth were transported from London to Wallasea island in Essex and used to lift the ground level and make wetlands.

The RSPB bought the island in the mid-2000s and has been constructing the ideal conditions for wetland birds to feed, nest and refuel. The sea wall was removed in 2015 to make water flow on to the island for the first time in 400 years.

More cattle egrets have been spotted at a wetland nature reserve than ever before.

Experts used a thermal imaging camera to count the small, white herons - renowned for their close relationship with grazing animals such as cows, sheep and horses - as they gathered to roost at Martin Mere in West Lancashire.

The species feeds on invertebrates, including grasshoppers, ticks and crickets, taking advantage of grassy areas being churned up by hooves.

A new nature reserve for rare and declining species is due to be created in a county, after hundreds of thousands of pounds were raised.

Suffolk Wildlife Trust said £775,000 had been secured to complete the purchase of Worlingham Marshes, located within the Broads National Park.

It is hoped woodcock will return to the site's wet woodland, and otters and water voles will use the network of waterways as a breeding habitat.

Plastic nurdles have been found in 84% of important nature sites surveyed in the UK.

Nurdles are tiny pellets that the plastics industry uses to make larger products. They were found in 168 of 195 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), so named because of the rare wildlife they harbour. They are given extra protections in an effort to protect them from pollution.

The environmental charity Fidra, however, has been running nurdle hunts at SSSIs across the UK since 2013, and found pellets in 84% of them.

The Wildlife Trusts are very grateful to the many thousands of members of the public who got involved, to every MP who listened and to every parliamentarian who spoke up for nature.

Thanks to these collective efforts, and the Government amendments they secured along with verbal commitments from Ministers, the risk the Bill poses to wildlife has at least been reduced.

We will hold Ministers to their commitments, to minimise these risks further as the Bill is implemented.

Two Stormont departments are among three bodies under investigation by the UK's environment watchdog over sewage discharges into Belfast Lough.

The investigation by the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) will examine how the Utility Regulator, the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) regulate sewage discharges by NI Water.

The OEP's chief executive Natalie Prosser said nature was "under unsustainable pressure" and these bodies were "the primary regulators" for water quality.

Thousands of species at risk of extinction in Wales have been revealed in a new study.

The "first of its kind in the UK" report identified the country's rarest species, including the high brown fritillary butterfly and Snowden leaf beetle, based on how geographically restricted they are, said Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

Three thousand species were found to now exist in five places or fewer, making them highly vulnerable to habitat loss, climate change and sudden catastrophic incidents like storms, it said.

The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded spot in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders, pointing to the woodland around us. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, but the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba, the group’s engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the results are already visible, and audible. The farm used to be a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

UK wildfires devastated more areas in 2025 than at any time since records began, figures show

Firefighters call for long-term investment and say UK is dangerously underprepared as climate crisis worsens Matthew Taylor Mon 24 Nov 2025 14.23 CET

Wildfires have devastated more moorland, forests and fields in the UK this year than at any time since records began, putting huge pressure on the country’s fire service, figures show.

The Global Wildfire Information System estimates that by November, wildfires had burned 47,026 hectares (116,204 acres) in 2025 in the UK – the largest area in any year since monitoring began in 2012, and more than double the area burned in the record-breaking summer of 2022.

The Fire Brigades Union, backed by climate groups and tax justice organisations, has written to the government asking for long-term investment in the service to help it meet the growing threat from wildfires and floods as the climate crisis worsens.

The government’s “blinkered” drive for development could speed up nature loss to the point of no return, top conservation campaigners are warning at the 11th hour before a new law is passed.

The RSPB and Wildlife Trusts say Labour’s efforts to speed up building projects will prove disastrous for wildlife, habitats and green spaces – and could mean the greater use of chemicals.

The organisations are pulling out all the stops to try to have the most “destructive” parts of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill amended in its final stages in the Lords.

If you go down to the Thames today you might find a nice surprise – a hairy snail.

A special project has been launched to save one of the UK’s most endangered and strangest molluscs.

Conservationists are carrying out a series of surveys to better understand the rare German hairy snails which can be found across London.

A hedgehog expert has said the health conditions of the animals she rescued this year have been the worst she has seen.

Dru Burdon of the Jersey Hedgehog Preservation Group (JHPG) said the condition of the hedgehogs they had admitted "is worse than it used to be" with some dead on arrival or dying soon after.

She attributed this to a lack of available food because of a hot, dry spring and summer and after pest controllers had asked islanders not to leave food out for wildlife due to a rise in the number of rats.

A wide range of plants have been classified as threatened species according to a report by the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI).

Some of those plants were found at nature reserves managed by Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust.

Of the 1,720 species evaluated for the new list, 26% were assessed as threatened. This included Betony, Marsh Marigold and Devil's-bit Scabious.

A countryside charity is calling for people to help it plant hedgerows as part of a project aiming to care for the rural environment.

CPRE Shropshire is now in the fifth year of its Hedgerow Heroes scheme.

The organisation is aiming to plant more than 4km (2.5 miles) of new native hedgerow in the county this winter.

A fifth woodland is to be created in Lincolnshire, Forestry England has said.

The 252 acre (102 hectare) woodland near the village of Hagworthingham will join four others announced on 17 November.

The other sites at Cadney, North Carlton, Newball and Mickleholme and the one at Hagworthingham will mean 3.7 sq miles (9.6 sq km) of new trees in the county.

Forestry England said that Lincolnshire is one of the least wooded places in England, with 4% of land area covered by trees.

In a once scenic ancient woodland outside Ashford, an enormous biohazard cleanup operation is under way to remove the toxic aftermath of the criminal dumping of 35,000 tonnes of rubbish.

Tankers come and go along a new road, built for the purpose. Behind metal gates away from public view, specialists in hazmat suits dig through the mountain of waste dumped on an industrial scale in a woodland that is a protected site of special scientific interest.

The £15m cleanup of Hoad’s Wood in Kent began this summer, five long years after local residents first started to complain about illegal dumping in the protected woodland. In some cases they provided the names of companies involved and footage of the activities to the police, the local authority and the Environment Agency.

November was once the quiet season for bumblebees. By mid-autumn, most colonies had died away, leaving only newly-mated queens tucked into soil or leaf litter to wait for spring. But across the UK, and most noticeably in the south and in towns and cities, the gentle buzz of bumblebees now lingers well beyond summer.

Since the 1990s, sightings have shown that buff-tailed bumblebees are breaking from their usual seasonal patterns. Rather than entering dormancy, some queens are setting up nests in autumn, producing workers, males, and even mating pairs during a period when bumblebee activity was once virtually unknown. This remarkable shift is one of the clearest insect responses to our warming climate.

Why is this happening? Milder winters are a key driver. Warmer temperatures allow queens to remain active instead of entering their dormant phase, while towns create a micro-climate known as the Urban Heat Island effect, keeping city habitats warmer than surrounding countryside. Urban gardens, parks and amenity plantings also provide something essential: winter flowers. Species such as mahonia, winter honeysuckle, heather and even late-flowering ivy now supply nectar and pollen at a time of year when wild forage was once scarce.

A water company has enlisted the help of a Labrador to help detect and relocate wildlife in areas where it plans to work.

Northumbrian Water has employed the skills of Bracken, a four-year-old dog trained to detect vulnerable species including hedgehogs and nesting birds before it conducts surveys across North East sites.

Bracken, who lives with his trainer Trina Barrett in County Durham, is deployed ahead of hedgerow cutting and vegetation clearing works.

There is broad support for regulated lethal control of wild deer to reduce their numbers and impacts among subscribers of nature organisations in England and Wales, a new study has found.

According to research led by Bangor University and published in People and Nature, it was the most supported and widely used deer management practice.

The authors of the study believe that the findings might help nature organisations and decision makers feel more confident about recommending its use.

Some of the UK's top wildlife photographers have come together to highlight the dwindling of habitats needed to support wildlife.

A book containing dozens of images has been produced as a "manifesto to what is at stake," said Irene Amiet, who heads the Wilder Britain project.

"We can only feel nature's losses if we know what we stand to lose," she added.

Blakeney Point on the Norfolk Coast is once again the stage for one of England’s most extraordinary wildlife spectacles, the annual grey seal pupping season.

Home to the country’s largest colony, over the coming weeks the beach and dunes are set to come alive with thousands of newborn pups over the coming weeks. And, for the first time this winter, audiences everywhere can witness the drama unfold in real time.

A discreet, solar-powered camera has been installed among the dunes, streaming live from inside the colony until early January, when the last pups are expected to be born. Viewers can tune in for regular ‘pup-dates’ at www.nationaltrust.org.uk/blakeney-seal-cam

Bewick's swans have returned to Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire this week.

The migratory birds flew thousands of miles from northern Russia to spend winter in the UK.

Experts say this is one of the latest times in the year they have seen the birds arrive back.

Last year Slimbridge reviewed the swan count from the end of 2023 and found they have lost about 43% of their Bewick's swans over the last five years.