GreyShuck

The Saxons knew the West Sussex village of Storrington as Estorchestone, the “abode of the storks”.

But the graceful white birds disappeared from its skies more than 600 years ago, when they became extinct in Britain.

Now, after the white stork’s successful return, Storrington and the nearby Knepp estate have been designated a “European stork village”.

An operation is under way to retrieve thousands of plastic pellets from the North Sea that were spilt in a collision between two ships last week, in which one man died.

The coastguard said the pellets, made of plastic resin and known as nurdles, were spotted by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and have begun to wash up in melted clumps on beaches in Norfolk and the surrounding coast.

Although they are not toxic, they do pose a danger to wildlife, the coastguard said.

A record 50% more raw sewage was discharged into rivers in England by Thames Water last year compared with the previous 12 months, data seen by the Guardian reveals.

Thames, the largest of the privatised water companies, which is teetering on the verge of collapse with debts of £19bn, was responsible for almost 300,000 hours of raw sewage pouring into waterways in 2024 from its ageing sewage works, according to the data. This compares with 196,414 hours of raw effluent dumped in 2023.

The data, obtained by the analyst Peter Hammond in answer to an environmental information request to the company, comes after Thames Water won approval from the court of appeal for a £3bn emergency debt bailout to avoid collapse.

Train operator TransPennine Express (TPE) has installed dozens of bird and bat boxes at nine of its stations, aiming to provide additional habitats for native wildlife.

Fifty boxes have been installed on buildings, walls and trees at Yarm, Northallerton, Thirsk, Hull, Cleethorpes, Grimsby Town, Barnetby, Scunthorpe and Stalybridge stations.

The operator has used different types of boxes, which it hopes will encourage a variety of different species. It wants its stations to become home to a variety of bat species, and to species of birds including robins, blackbirds, wrens, wagtails, swallows, and swifts.

An area the size of 16 football pitches will be planted with 15,000 trees.

The National Trust's Dunstable Downs, in Bedfordshire, is set to welcome the trees over the next two years.

A spokesperson for the trust said a variety of native species, including oak, hornbeam, wild cherry, silver birch, small-leaved lime, hawthorn, hazel, willow, and crab apple, would be planted.

The project has been supported by the Forestry Commission through an England Woodland Creation grant.

Nature enthusiasts and bird watchers were treated to a rare sighting of a Eurasian spoonbill on the Lancashire coastline.

The elusive bird was sighted on Saturday afternoon, and suggests that they have moved to the North West after initial conservation efforts began on the East Coast.

Having been placed on the European conservation concern list, they are considered a very rare breeding bird in the UK.

Young people will play a key role in converting a brownfield site into a community nature reserve over the next three years.

The 2-ha 'Grow Wilder' site on the edge of Bristol is part of Avon Wildlife Trust's Intergenerational Action for Climate and Nature programme. The initiative recently secured £870,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund, with organisers aiming to use the funding to transform the area for nature.

Connor Meadows, a youth officer involved in the project, said the group of 13-18 year olds leading the transformation is "really engaged with nature."

He said: "They're also going to be working with the local community to learn the history of the land and what it meant to people and wildlife in the past and use that information to decide what its future looks like."

Ever wondered what to do with all that brash left over from pruning or clearing work undertaken this winter? Rather than sending it off to be chipped or burned, why not turn it into a dead hedge – a wildlife-friendly fortress of twigs, branches, and general woody odds and ends?

That’s exactly what a fantastic group of volunteers and I have been doing at Castle Heather, Inverness, and let me tell you, the local wildlife is already taking notice!

A dead hedge is exactly what it sounds like: a row of sturdy stakes knocked into the ground with heaps of cut branches and twigs wedged in between. It’s a no-fuss, all-natural barrier that doubles as a five-star refuge for birds, insects, and small mammals.

A project to restore a large section of a River Tyne tributary has been completed.

Tipalt Burn, near Haltwhistle, Northumberland, has been reconnected to its floodplain after the watercourse had been historically straightened and dredged to increase productivity of the surrounding land.

That resulted in worsening water quality, loss of a wildlife habitat and increased the risk of flooding to communities living downstream, the Tyne Rivers Trust charity said.

Now, the burn has been reconnected to its floodplain, meaning water will flow more slowly, reducing flood risk and improving water quality.

Conservation charity Buglife asked for the public's help last year to find evidence of the Strandline Beetle (Eurynebria complanata), which was last spotted in England 23 years ago in Braunton Burrows, north Devon.

The charity said it had five public responses to a survey, with two sightings in Swansea Bay, Wales, but no sightings were recorded in England.

Buglife spokesperson Paul Hetherington said it was looking unlikely the beetle was still in England but "further work" was needed before it could say conclusively.

Labour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.

Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been.

In recent weeks, Labour has given the green light to airport expansion and vowed to change planning rules to deprioritise nature, while ministers have repeatedly disparaged bats and newts and ridiculed measures to protect fish. The chancellor Rachel Reeves has suggested economic growth trumps the government’s legally binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and there are suggestions the national wealth fund, meant for green projects, will be coopted for defence.

A corner of south Manchester with ‘immense’ wildlife has been declared a nature reserve.

Manchester council formally earmarked a section of Southern Cemetery, the largest municipal graveyard in the UK, as a local nature reserve on Friday (March 14). It’s the tenth council reserve to be announced, with the last designation taking place in March 2023.

However, councillors have designated an area which is ‘away from active burial sites’. The 28-hectare plot in Chorlton is already home to bats, owls, birds, bees, and butterflies.

Deputy council leader Joanna Midgeley, who represents the Chorlton Park ward for Labour, said the ‘wildlife is immense’.