Latest News

Investigating the links between human activities and global insect declines

Monday, January 4, 2021

A new £2.2 million project could enable more reliable assessments of how human activities cause global insect declines, as well as better predictions of future species trends.

Despite widespread reports of reduced insect populations, there is currently limited evidence to link species losses to specific threats says Dr Nick Isaac of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), who is leading the study.

Will Biodiversity Net Gain improve English biodiversity? Results from the first evaluation of Net Gain, and what's next

Monday, January 4, 2021

Sophus zu Ermgassen and Dr Joseph Bull, researchers at the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, discuss what the impacts of mandatory Net Gain are likely to be and what wildlife and environmental groups need to think about next.

Read the article

Efforts to rewild London’s rivers are yielding results, finds report

Monday, January 4, 2021

Sightings of kingfishers in the capital have increased by 450 per cent since 2000, thanks to significant river restoration projects

The fleeting sight of a kingfisher flitting across the water has become more common in London over the last two decades thanks to ongoing efforts to rewild the city’s waterways.

Why natural regeneration should be our default approach to woodland expansion

Monday, January 4, 2021

There’s universal acknowledgement that we need more trees to help prevent species extinction and to tackle climate change. But how should we achieve this expansion of tree cover? Tree planting has become a go-to option but natural regeneration has a key role to play. 

Our latest report pulls together evidence that shows:

Bringing Wildlife Back

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Ian Jelley, Director of Living Landscapes for Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, explains why helping nature recover is as essential for us as it is for wildlife.

In the modern times we live in, it’s easy to forget just how reliant we are on the natural world. Especially as technology advances, solving life’s challenges and sometimes providing solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had. But with that ‘progression’ comes further separation from our relationship with the natural world; and that can result in unintended consequences.

Rewilding the Test

Thursday, December 10, 2020

From restoring a stretch of chalk stream, to designing an oak wood for woodcock, Richard Wills is leading a wide range of pioneering projects on his family’s estates in Hampshire.

Richard Wills has a record of breaking new ground with conservation on the Middleton, Portway and Wades estates. His team won a Laurent Perrier Award in 1990 for rewetting the water meadows for waders, and in 2016 they received a Purdey Award for grey partridge restoration. He is currently rewilding three miles of the Test as well as researching how to improve woodland for woodcock.

Thames21 restores its first London chalk stream

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Thames21 has begun restoring part of the river Cray, a chalk stream, at Foots Cray Meadows near Sidcup, south London. We aim to restore 800m of the river between now and March 2021 by adding large wood into the channel.

Chalk streams are a rare habitat globally; only approximately 200 exist worldwide. Eighty-five per cent of these are in southern England. The river Cray is a healthy urban chalk stream along part of its stretches, but it suffers the same pressures as any other urban river: plastic and other pollution, artificial modification and water abstraction for human use.

Major restoration works underway on the River Calder

Monday, November 23, 2020

The Calder is a large upland tributary of the Spey running through beautiful Glen Banchor above the village of Newtonmore. Recent concerns that, compared to other similar tributaries, the Calder was under-performing in terms of producing juvenile salmon were thought to be linked to the lack of riparian woodland along the river and the relatively uniform nature of the river bed, which lacked features such as the gravel deposits needed for fish spawning.

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