In November 2020, Tristan da Cunha made international news when it designated 687,000 square kilometres of its waters as a fully protected Marine Protection Zone (MPZ) - the largest in the Atlantic. This follows-on from an important earlier announcement - ...
Find out more about the 2021 Forestry Conference, held on 13 October at Newbury Racecourse, and what you can expect from the Forestry Commission on the day.
Climate change is already affecting the countries bordering the southern North Sea and English Channel. Known as the 2 seas region, we need to proactively adapt and protect the area from rising sea levels and heavy storms which are occurring ...
The Cotswold Water Park was created and continues to expand as a result of mineral mining activity across Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. It comprises of over 170 lakes, and is an incredibly important place for biodiversity, recreation, continued mineral operations ...
In March this year, members of the Blue Belt team hosted a roundtable discussion on Protected Area Management Effectiveness (PAME). PAME is a tool to assess how well protected areas - including Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) - are being managed ...
Last month, the first ever CHART (CatcH And Release Tagging) pilot programme went live in England, with the start of the 13 week-long Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (ABT) fishing season. From 16th August, flying their specially designed CHART flags and with ...
It has been great to see the growing amount of coverage in the news about Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), including a recent episode of BBC Countryfile. Under the Government's flagship Environment Bill, both Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA) and ...
Climate FundThe Nature For Climate Peatland Grant Scheme (NCPGS), administered by Natural England, has awarded Restoration Grant funding to five successful applicants. Over the next four years they will each receive a share of £16 million from the Nature for ...
The oak lace bug is a tree pest that feeds on oak leaves. It's not known to be in the UK, but it's vital that we keep an eye out for it to protect our oak trees. Our Biosecurity Officer, Freddy Toft, explains more.
In this guest blog RFS Chief Executive, Christopher Williams, writes about the release of 10 case studies in the free Managing for Resilience report published in July.
Woodland Resilience Officer Emily Fensom looks at what a changing climate could have on the future of our trees and woodlands.
Two years on from our centenary our Chair, Sir William Worsley, reflects on what we have achieved since then.
Local Nature Recovery Strategy Pilots Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) are a flagship measure in the Environment Bill. They are a new system of spatial strategies for nature which will plan, map, and help drive more coordinated, practical, focussed action ...
Southern Water have recently been fined a record £90m for deliberately pouring sewage into sea. The Environment Agency also highlighted their response to the case which saw 6,971 unpermitted sewage discharges taking place in Kent, Hampshire and Sussex between 2010 ...
Safe and sustainable seafood is the core focus of research teams in Cefas' Weymouth lab, investigating a range of hazards including bacteria, viruses and naturally occurring toxins that impact either human or animal health. Recently Cefas was bequeathed an entire ...
Serious diseases pose a threat to aquatic animal health both in aquaculture and in the wild. Many of these diseases have no effective treatment and have the potential to cause high numbers of mortalities in aquatic animals, with the consequent ...
One of the less well-known aspects of Cefas' seafood safety work is in support of seafood-borne human illness investigations. In the UK, an estimated 12,000-14,000 people per year experience sickness and diarrhoea after eating seafood, usually raw oysters. Frequently shellfish-borne ...
By Dave Slater, Director for Wildlife Licensing and Enforcement Cases at Natural England We are very pleased that 2021 has seen a further increase in the number of breeding Hen Harriers in England, with 31 breeding attempts, of which 24 ...
St Helena is an oceanic island located in the tropical South Atlantic. Home to a fantastic array of marine biodiversity, it is one of the ten UK Overseas Territories that are part of the new Global Ocean Wildlife Analysis Network. ...
In the latest of our blog series on the Global Ocean Wildlife Analysis Network, we hear from Simon Morley at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) about what this project means for the British Antarctic Territory (BAT). Simon Morley, British Antarctic ...
Natural habitats, such as peatlands, forests, saltmarsh and grasslands contain large amounts of carbon and will play an important part in reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions. There are two aspects to this: stopping emissions from damaged habitats and starting ...
Publishing Biodiversity Metric 3.0 was a landmark moment for biodiversity net gain, it will become the metric used to calculate and evidence whether a project has achieved the biodiversity net gain requirements set out in the Environment Bill. Biodiversity Net ...
As explained in my blog in January 2020, Natural England remains committed to making our wildlife licensing statistics publicly available. We published our 2018 and 2019 stats last year. We get a lot of correspondence and public reaction around our ...
The importance of peat for nature and for our climate have been making the headlines in recent weeks. With growing interest in restoring our peatlands, I am delighted to report that we are launching a new Discovery Grant today (7th ...
A year in the life of Bella Murfin and Naomi Matthiessen, job share Directors for the Nature for Climate Fund Tree Programme in Defra.
