GreyShuck

We are reaching out to you at a critical moment for bat conservation in England. Last week, the government published the long-anticipated Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and its proposals could have devastating consequences for bats, other wildlife, their habitats and protected sites.

The government is blaming bats for blocking development, but the real issue is a failure to plan for nature and people. The Bill threatens to strip away key protections and undermine decades of conservation progress.

We gave an initial response on Monday after the government’s damaging rhetoric was ramped up and they specifically claimed bats are the cause of housing and infrastructure project delays.

Trees felled at a national park in Devon during Storm Darragh are helping support insects, conservationists have said.

Exmoor National Park Authority said the storm - which brought winds of up to 88mph (142km/h) in December - caused "significant damage and disruption" to the park.

However, senior woodland officer Graeme McVittie said the "silver lining" was dead wood could help improve Exmoor's ecosystem and the park was strategically cutting certain trees to help support wildlife.

More than 130 acres (54 hectares) of land in Leicestershire has been set aside for a major rewilding project.

Harborough District Council said it had purchased a site, equivalent to about 80 football pitches, close to Great Bowden near Market Harborough, for £1.9m.

The Market Harborough Rewilding Project will be supported by the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust (LRWT) to improve an area of countryside described as some of the most heavily-modified and nature-depleted in lowland England.

The world record for a volunteer river clean-up has been smashed by 998 with 1,327 people taking part.

The previous record stood at 329 people and was set on the River Ganges, in India, in February.

Friday's attempt happened on the River Taff between its source in the Bannau Brycheiniog national park, also known as the Brecon Beacons, and Cardiff Bay.

A flood prevention project that aims to work with nature has received more than £800,000 in government funding.

The scheme involves planting 40,000 trees, restoring historic waterways and installing 5,000 natural "woody-debris features" at the Forest of Dean to slow the flow of water to nearby towns and villages.

The project, for the Cannop area of the forest, is being run by Gloucestershire County Council in partnership with Forestry England.

Nearly one million tonnes of raw sewage is estimated to have been released from a pumping station into the North Sea in 2024.

Northumbrian Water produced the figure for releases from its site at Whitburn after an Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) request from South Tyneside resident Steve Lavelle.

It calculated 944,673 tonnes of sewage had been pumped into the sea, a slight drop from its number for 2023 of 1.007 million tonnes.

The use of pesticides on UK farms is to be reduced by 10% by 2030 under government plans to protect bees and other pollinators.

Campaigners welcomed the news, but said they were disappointed that the target applied only to arable farms and not to urban areas and parks.

The plan has been a long time coming – it has been delayed since 2018. The EU’s target for pesticide reduction is more ambitious; its member states aim to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides, as well as the use of more hazardous pesticides, by 50% by 2030.

If humanity has an epitaph, it might read something like this: “Knackered by the things we missed.” It is true that several existential threats are widely known and widely discussed. But some of the greatest dangers we face appear on almost no one’s radar.

How often have you thought about this one: spreading sewage sludge on farmland? I would guess very few would include it in their top civilisational hazards. Despite the best efforts of a handful of us, it trundles on, unknown to most. Surprising as it may seem, new research suggests that it could help call time on us.

In principle, we should return human waste to farmland, as it is rich in nutrients. But thanks to years of regulatory failure, this waste in many countries is now contaminated with a vast range of toxins. Some come from runoff into the sewers: from roads, building sites, homes and commercial premises. But what we are now discovering is that a great volume of contaminants is introduced deliberately.

Bats are being “scapegoated” by Rachel Reeves, Chris Packham has said, after the chancellor suggested the winged creatures were getting in the way of economic growth.

Reeves recently said she wanted businesses to “focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”, and this week the press release announcing her shake-up of all the UK’s regulators mentioned bats six times. A very niche directive to Natural England, the nature watchdog, to take advice from the Bat Conservation Trust out of a planning document, became the linchpin of Reeves’s deregulation plan.

“It’s absolutely absurd,” the broadcaster and nature campaigner said. “I am always someone who likes to deal with the facts so I would really like to know over the course of a year how many planning applications are completely refused because of bats, as a percentage of all those across the country. I am going to hazard a guess that it would be a fraction of 1%.”

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) watchdog has launched an investigation into the UK government over potential failures to clean up England’s rivers under EU-derived laws.

The OEP published a report last year saying that plans to clean up waterways were too generic and did not address specific issues at individual sites. It said plans were being put in place despite low government confidence that their objectives could be achieved.

The watchdog will now look at whether those issues represent failures by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to comply with environmental law.

Hundreds of volunteers will attempt to set a new world record on Friday when they gather to clean the River Taff.

Organisers said 1,330 people have signed up to attend the event along the river between its source in the Bannau Brycheiniog national park, also known as the Brecon Beacons, and Cardiff Bay.

The current world record for a volunteer river clean-up stands at 329 people, which was achieved on the River Ganges in India in February 2025.

A marine rewilding initiative to restore an underwater kelp forest in West Sussex is celebrating "remarkable" results, a wildlife trust has said.

The project was launched after the implementation of a new bylaw prohibiting trawling in a 117 sq mile (302 sq km) coastal area between Shoreham-by-Sea and Selsey in March 2021.

Celebrating its fourth anniversary, Sussex Kelp Recovery Project (SKRP) researchers have reported positive signs of recovery, including an increase in the populations of lobster, brown crab, angelshark and short-snouted seahorse.