Latest News

England wide action for Nature. What we can achieve together

Monday, November 16, 2020

Imagine a world where there are nature rich spaces, open and accessible to everybody, within a mile from everybody’s homes. The things that give our landscapes character and sense of place, such as dry-stone walls of the Yorkshire Dales, the hedgerows of the midland shires, or the parks and street trees in our towns and cities, are intact and flourishing. Businesses of all types, including farms, are drawing value and earning an income from natural assets, be that being paid for the value that pollinators bring to the food chain, or being able to run wildlife tourism businesses.

Cranborne Chase AONB Environmental Land Management Scheme Test

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

The new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMs), which is to replace Countryside Stewardship and the Basic Payment Scheme, is currently being designed through various tests around the country, commissioned by Defra. The tests will work with farmers and land managers on the ground to continually feed into national pilots, to co-design the scheme and understand how new features of ELMs would work in real-life environments.

Scottish Beaver Forum

Thursday, November 5, 2020

In Scotland, beavers became a European Protected Species in May 2019. Their numbers have expanded across Tayside and beyond in recent years, centuries after they became extinct. Beavers are amazing ecosystem engineers, playing a vital role in creating habitats such as ponds and wetlands where other species thrive, alleviating flooding and improving water quality. But beavers also detrimentally impact on some areas of prime farmland by causing flooding of fields.

Rewild to mitigate the climate crisis, urge leading scientists

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Restoring degraded natural lands highly effective for carbon storage and avoiding species extinctions

Restoring natural landscapes damaged by human exploitation can be one of the most effective and cheapest ways to combat the climate crisis while also boosting dwindling wildlife populations, a scientific study finds.

Partial removal of Long Preston weir

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Last week, the Ribble Rivers Trust completed a partial removal of the ‘Long Preston weir’, taking out 60% of the weir. The weir had a width of 21 metres across the river and a head of around 0.5m.

The weir is located on the river Ribble within the Long Preston Deeps floodplain, near the historic town of Settle in North Yorkshire. The weir only starts to appear on maps in the 1970s and was originally built to provide aeration to Settle sewage treatment works (adjacent to the site) but is no longer required due to advances in sewage treatment works.

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