Two new species of spider have been discovered on St Helena, a remote UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. The discovery of these species, a Goblin Spider with armour-like plating on its abdomen, and a Miniscule Spider with no eyes that is one of the smallest spiders ever seen, brings the total number…
Category: THE WILDLIFE NGOs – RSPB, Wildlife Trusts Wild Justice, BSBI etc
Famous glen managed by Scotland’s forestry agency joins UK’s largest rewilding landscape in ‘huge step forwards for nature’
The world-famous Glen Affric National Nature Reserve managed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) has joined Affric Highlands, the UK’s largest rewilding landscape – becoming the 20th landholding to sign up to the ambitious community-focused initiative. Affric Highlands aims to restore nature across more than 200,000 hectares of the central Highlands, through a linked network of landholdings…
Sunday book review – The Birds of Bedfordshire by Tony Ploszajski
This new county avifauna is a lovely book considering that Bedfordshire, like my adopted home county of Northamptonshire, is land-locked and, in many ways, is an unspectacular county for birds. But there are birds everywhere and their numbers change for a wide variety of reasons so every county avifauna is full of information destined to…
Press release – Scottish Rewilding Alliance
‘A win for people-led rewilding’ – new hutting law in Scotland to unlock public land to connect people and nature MSPs in the Scottish Parliament have voted to create a new hutting law compelling the Scottish Government to publish a model lease for hutting on public land. The change to the law will make it…
BSBI press release – New GB Red List for vascular plants published today
A new GB Red List for vascular plants has just been published – click here, providing a comprehensive revision of the previous (2005) list. Red Lists use internationally recognised criteria to assess threat status, and are crucial in providing the evidence which underpins nature conservation and helps prioritise future action. Of the 1,720 species evaluated…
Press release – Large landowners in Scotland may need to plan for biodiversity gain by Scottish Rewilding Alliance
New law says large landowners in Scotland need to set out biodiversity plans, in ‘big step towards a Rewilding Nation’ Yesterday MSPs in the Scottish Parliament voted to create a law obliging the owners of large landholdings to publish plans on how they will increase biodiversity, as part of the new Land Reform Bill –…
On (but not on) Walshaw Moor
If there were a fan club for Walshaw Moor then I’d be a member, despite never having set foot on it. I have passed it on the roads, stopped and looked at it, been glared at by its gamekeepers and spoken about it in meetings in both Hebden Bridge and Haworth and even won a…
Beavers released in Glen Affric 400 years after extinction in Scotland
Beavers released in Glen Affric 400 years after extinction in Scotland A family of five beavers and a beaver pair have been released at two sites on Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin in the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve in the northwest Highlands. The beavers were relocated under licence from agricultural land in Tayside to an…
RSPB press release – Cow retirement communities helping to save vultures from extinction
The RSPB, working with Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN) and Renewable World, has launched a new programme in Nepal to help some of the world’s most endangered vultures while also improving local livelihoods by using such comprehensive approaches as ‘cow retirement communities’ and boosting local dairy industries. With funding from the Darwin Initiative, the programme –…
RSPB press release – Slithering success for UK’s most secretive snake
Slithering success for UK’s most secretive snake The Smooth Snake is the UK’s rarest native reptile, found only on dry heathlands in southern England and restricted to sites in Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey. Reintroductions to restore the historic range of Smooth Snakes includes a site in Devon where the RSPB, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC)…