UK Nature and Environment

"Rivers will be checked for sewage and other pollution by the general public this month in an attempt to assess the health of British waterways.

Cuts to the UK regulators and a change in the law to allow water company self-monitoring of pollution in England mean there is little independent monitoring of the state of rivers in the UK.

When the UK was in the EU, it was subject to the water framework directive, which meant it had to carry out detailed pollution analysis of waterways and report every year. There has not been a survey done under the WFD since 2019, and the Conservative government began the process of removing the EU standards from UK legislation. The Labour government has not indicated whether it intends to continue this deregulation.

’Citizen scientists’ have therefore been intensifying efforts to check rivers for pollution to try to find the true scale of the problem..."

From the comfort of the riverbank you’d be forgiven for wandering beside the River Usk in ignorant bliss. At a glance it looks pleasant and inviting – but swim in it at your peril.

“It’s full of s***,” Phil Waggott says, pulling no punches. He began fishing for salmon in the Usk in the 1980s in Crickhowell when stocks were plentiful and demand was high but he has not seen, let alone caught, a salmon in the Usk for more than a year – and it’s depressingly easy to see why.

I’ve been beside the banks of the river at Usk Island in Monmouthshire for five minutes when one swimmer tells me they got out recently when they realised they were navigating their way through floating human faeces. “It’s slowly gone into decline and now it’s all but dead,” Phil sighs, recalling better times. “First the dace went, then the salmon, then trout, parr, and now very little is left at all. It’s really like chalk and cheese compared to what it was before in the Usk. It isn’t even recognisable to what it was 10 years ago.

Following the latest review from the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examination Board, Dom Higgins, The Wildlife Trusts' head of health and education reflects on its recommendations around making climate and sustainability more prominent in our teaching requirements.

“Climate change and sustainability topics must be made more explicit throughout the curriculum and within individual subjects and qualifications”.

This stand-out call to action features in Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examination Board’s latest review, Striking the Balance. Chaired by former Secretary of State for Education Charles Clark, the review highlights the critical need to update the school curriculum for 11-16 year-olds, making several recommendations relating to the role and use of assessment and examinations across secondary education.

Volunteers have been asked to help restore a natural wetland in the hopes it can encourage more wildlife to venture into the space.

Ham Mere, which is part of Ferry Meadows in Nene Park, Peterborough, has become overgrown with willow and scrub which causes the wetland area to lose moisture.

By using community volunteer conservation sessions in September and early October, Nene Park hopes to restore the area and attract more people to engage with nature.

We’re pleased that the Scottish Government have maintained their commitment to introducing a Natural Environment Bill in the coming parliamentary year. The Bill will include the introduction of statutory targets for nature restoration. These targets must be ‘SMART’, with lead and supporting agencies clearly stated, and a commitment that decision makers be held to account to attain them. The Natural Environment Bill and statutory targets will need widespread support and ownership across all government departments, local government and society. It must be costed and allocated the necessary funding for it to be successful.

We supported the Scottish Environment LINK (ScotLINK) ‘Scotland Loves Nature’ campaign calling for a Natural Environment Bill that establishes the framework for legally binding nature targets to be included in this year’s Programme for Government. A ScotLINK report, ‘Nature recovery targets: Statutory targets to drive the recovery of nature in Scotland’, which CIEEM contributed to, outlines many of the considerations surrounding Nature targets.

Migration-monitoring sites in Britain logged unusually high numbers of migrating Tree Pipits in August.

Tree Pipit breeds in Britain after arriving in April. Birds return south in August and September, bound for wintering grounds in central and southern Africa. As a diurnal migrant, birds in active migration are easily recorded by observers familiar with its 'buzzing' flight call.

Numbers of Tree Pipits logged on the migration recording website Trektellen reached 2,644 individuals across nearly 4,000 combined hours of observation at 36 sites this August. The hourly passage rate for autumn 2024 is already at 0.32 birds per hour, making it the best Trektellen season on record for the species, with some weeks of passage yet to come.

A puffin population has been declared "stable" following fears that bird flu might have had a more devastating effect.

The first full count for five years on the Farne Islands off Northumberland has revealed the endangered species has in fact increased by 15% since 2019.

There are now thought to be 50,000 breeding pairs on the site, which is cared for by the National Trust.

Ranger Sophia Jackson said the birds' self-isolating behaviours meant they had "weathered this particular storm".

Group of eight NGOs and business groups warn current rules are allowing large numbers of developers to avoid paying into Biodiversity Net Gain schemes

The government is facing fresh calls to reform the rules governing the recently launched Biodiversity Net Gain scheme, amidst warnings that wide-ranging loopholes are allowing many developers to avoid rules requiring them to fund nature protection schemes.

Launched earlier this year, the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) scheme requires housing and infrastructure developers to deliver net improvements for nature of at least 10 per cent, either through on-site nature-friendly measures, the funding of off-site nature projects, or the purchase of official biodiversity credits.

One in 10 neighbourhoods across the South West has pollution levels deemed unsafe for wildlife, Friends of the Earth (FoE) has said.

The Isles of Scilly is the only authority in the region where air, water, noise or light pollution does not present a risk to nature, new data from the charity claims.

Across the South West, one in 10 neighbourhoods "breached safe pollution levels" in the four categories scrutinised by FoE, which said the levels threatened the future survival of species, including pollinating bees and native bats.

Councillors have accused water bosses of a “shocking disregard for environmental standards” over pollution in the Ouseburn.

Newcastle’s Liberal Democrats took aim at Northumbrian Water, as well as parks management charity Urban Green, on Wednesday over a “failure of corporate responsibility and environmental management” of the river. It comes after research published last year warned that pollution levels in the Ouseburn, which runs across the city and into the Tyne, posed a “significant risk” to people’s health and amid ongoing outrage over sewage spills into rivers and beauty spots across the country.

As the Labour Government introduced a new bill which could leave water company chiefs facing two years in jail for obstructing regulators, North Jesmond councillor James Coles told a Newcastle City Council meeting on Wednesday evening that the Ouseburn was facing an “environmental crisis” as a result of untreated human waste and other pollutants being dumped into it. According to data from The Rivers Trust, 2,276 hours worth of sewage spills from storm overflows into Newcastle’s waterways were counted in 2023 – totalling a duration of 9,607 hours, more than double the previous year.

Yorkshire Water said it is investing £3.4m to improve and upgrade storm overflows in two parts of East Yorkshire.

The projects, in Brough and North Ferriby, are part of the firm's £180m investment to reduce discharges and improve water quality in the region.

A spokesperson for the company said it would reduce discharges to the River Humber.

The firm is one of three facing sanctions from the industry regulator, alongside Thames Water and Northumbrian Water, over historic sewage spills.

Capercaillie could become extinct in Scotland once again after gamekeepers warned this year saw an almost ten per cent drop in male birds at lek sites - breeding grounds for the species.

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.

Only 153 male birds were recorded at leks in key forests this year, 15 less than this time last year, according to research from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA).

Twice a year we run Big River Watch weeks. where we invite you to take part in a simple citizen science activity that helps build a picture of river health across the UK and Ireland.

• Download the free Big River Watch app on your smartphone before visiting your chosen river.

• Pick a riverside location, spend 15 minutes observing, and answer the questions in the survey. You can complete the Big River Watch at your favourite local spot, or get to know somewhere new.

• Upload your Big River Watch survey. It's that simple to get involved!

A £5.77m cross-governmental funded project has shown that expanding access to Green Social Prescribing can promote wellbeing and improve mental health.

Researchers from the University of Exeter – in partnership with the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, and University of Plymouth – have today (September 4) published a report for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) on their findings into efforts to increase access to Green Social Prescribing, and its effectiveness in tackling and preventing mental ill health.

Green Social Prescribing is the practice of supporting people with mental health needs to engage in nature-based activities. Referrals will typically come from GPs, community mental health teams, or social workers, but people can also self-refer. Social Prescribing Link Workers, and other trusted professionals, then connect people to community groups and agencies for practical and emotional support. There are many different types of nature-based activities and therapies, including conservation, horticulture and gardening, care farming, exercise and sports, or talking therapies in the outdoors.

The Norfolk snout was always a rare moth in Britain. By the late 1960s, populations of this small beige moth with a distinctive protuberant “nose” had dwindled to just one site – a working quarry in north-west Norfolk.

Bad weather or possibly over-collecting by a few zealots meant that the moth, which has a 20mm wingspan, became extinct in Britain in 1971.

Now, after an absence of more than 50 years, the Norfolk snout (Nothris verbascella) has reappeared, close to where it was first discovered in 1853.

Water bosses in England and Wales could be jailed for up to two years if they cover up sewage dumping, under legislation proposed by the Labour government.

At the moment, CEOs of water companies face fines for failing to comply with investigations by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), but there have been just three such fines since privatisation three decades ago.

Civil servants at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told journalists on Wednesday that they planned to tighten compliance rules to force companies to hand over sewage data quickly, and that the maximum sentence for covering up this information or failing to release it would be two years.

Skiddaw has long stood proud in the northern Lake District, a distinctive, treeless peak that is England’s sixth highest mountain. But now the fell’s barren heights will spring back to life after its purchase for rewilding by Cumbria Wildlife Trust.

More than 1,200 hectares of Skiddaw Forest, once a royal hunting ground, will become England’s highest nature reserve and the UK’s biggest project to restore Atlantic rainforest, after the site came up for sale for £6.25m.

“We can’t believe it, to be honest,” said Stephen Trotter, the chief executive of Cumbria Wildlife Trust. “It’s not every day you get the chance to buy a mountain – in fact, you never get the chance, especially in the Lake District. It’s really exciting to have the opportunity to put some nature back into this landscape.”

Updated: 13 mins ago

The Nottinghamshire Water Vole Recovery Project – one of more than 60 projects aimed at recovering a wide range of our scarcest animals and plants supported by £14.5 million of funding via Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme – has reached an exciting stage with the release of over 100 captive bred water voles at the charity’s Idle Valley Nature Reserve near Retford.

The project, which runs until March 2025, is investing £491,740 in a range of measures to restore and create vital wetland habitat to support the species; boosting water vole numbers, and a targeted programme of mink control across 900 hectares of wetland habitat and more than 50km of rivers.

Reed delivered a rousing speech on Wednesday night (4 September) as part of think-tank Green Alliance’s 45th anniversary gathering in Westminster.

He said: “We live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and that is not just a disgrace, it is an absolute tragedy. We have to stop it and we have to reverse it.

“I want to use this opportunity to make this the most nature-positive government this nation has ever had. This is an ambition we can make real. Two months after the election, it is dawning that we can do stuff rather than just talking about it.

A pair of cranes have successfully reared a chick to fledging in Wicken Fen, in East Anglia, in what is thought to be the first time in hundreds of years.

The cranes have chosen to breed at Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve in Cambridgeshire, which is cared for by the National Trust, since 2019, but this is the first time they have successfully reared a chick.

The common crane is 4ft tall, making it Britain’s tallest bird, and was native to East Anglia’s fenlands before it was driven to extinction in this country in the 16th century because of hunting and the draining of its wetland habitat.

New Programme for Government a key moment to prevent Scotland being “left behind” on nature recovery, says Alliance.

80% of Scots think the Scottish Government should have policies in place to support rewilding, shows polling carried out for the Scottish Rewilding Alliance.

But the coalition of more than 20 organisations is warning that despite overwhelming public opinion in favour of large-scale nature restoration, the Scottish Government and public bodies are being too slow to engage with the opportunities offered by rewilding.

People in Orkney and North East Scotland are being asked to look out for greylag geese with special GPS collars as part of an international project to understand more about the birds.

NatureScot and the Icelandic Institute of Natural History are working together to gain a better understanding of the current migration patterns for Icelandic greylag geese.

The birds are known to spend the summer in Iceland and winter almost exclusively in the UK, particularly in Orkney and North East Scotland.