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National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports has welcomed the ban on snares which comes into force in Scotland on Monday 25 November. It called on the UK government to deliver on its manifesto commitment and ban these barbaric traps in England as well.

The League has campaigned successfully with partners in recent years to get snares banned in both Scotland and Wales, leaving England and Northern Ireland as the only countries in the UK where they remain legal.

Water voles are returning to rivers and streams in the West Country after a 20-year absence.

The small mammals, often described as 'nature's engineers', are making a comeback to parts of the region including Lawrence Weston moor.

Made famous by 'Ratty' - who is actually a water vole - in The Wind in the Willows, the species was once commonly seem on Britain's rivers and streams.

Pine Martens have been released at two sites in the Lake District in an effort to grow populations of the mustelid.

Eight females and five males were released into Grizedale Forest and the Rusland Valley in a project led by the University of Cumbria and the University of Leeds.

It is the first of two releases by the Pine Marten Recovery Project in a bid to boost numbers in their ancestral woodlands. The martens were moved under licence from populations in the Scottish Highlands.

National Tree Week, brought to you by The Tree Council and partners, brings together the conservation sector, volunteers and tree-lovers to mark the start of the annual tree planting season.

There are now over 100 National Tree Week events submitted to our interactive map! Make sure to scroll through all pages to find activities near you.

When British conservationists flew to Slovenia this summer hoping to catch enough singing cicadas to reintroduce the species to the New Forest, the grasshopper-sized insects proved impossible to locate, flying elusively at great height between trees.

Now a 12-year-old girl has offered to save the Species Recovery Trust’s reintroduction project. Kristina Kenda, the daughter of the Airbnb hosts who accommodated the trust’s director, Dom Price, and conservation officer Holly Stanworth in the summer summer, will put out special nets to hopefully catch enough cicadas to re-establish a British population.

“I’m very pleased to be able to help the project,” Kristina said. “I like nature and wildlife and it was fun helping Dom and Holly look for cicadas when they were here. Cicadas are a part of the summer in Slovenia so it would be nice to help make them a part of the summer in England as well.”

A new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.

A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications.

According to green space metrics created by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the nature charity Wildlife and Countryside Link, half of local authorities in the worst 10% for access to nature are in eastern England. Almost nine-tenths of local authorities in the east have below-average access to green space.

A pioneering south of Scotland conservation project is setting its sights on re-introducing golden eagles into England and Wales.

For the past six years young birds have been taken from the Highlands and released into rural parts of the Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.

The population of the birds in the area has soared from a threatened handful in 2018 to currently standing at about 50.

Dr Cat Barlow, project manager with the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project (SSGEP), said: "We hope our next phase will be to give the eagles a hand to establish themselves in the English uplands."

A charity is trying to raise more than £3m to buy an ancient Lincolnshire woodland.

The Woodland Trust said it had until December to purchase Harrison Woodlands near Louth.

The trust said the 483 acre (195 hectare) forest was recorded in the Domesday Book and was home to a variety of wildlife, including goshawks and the rare, white admiral butterfly.

More than 300 harvest mice have been released at a site in the North York Moors National Park in the hope of re-establishing a local breeding population of this once-common species.

The initiative, led by Hawsker residents Steve Mills and Hilary Koll, has been supported by a grant of £4,200 from the Defra-funded Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme.

The release follows several years of habitat restoration by Steve and Hilary, who have been working with Derek Gow Consultancy – experts in UK small mammals – to ensure the right environment for the mice. The couple purchased the ‘wild and windy’ pasture field around five years ago, and have since planted trees, built ponds and watched as a habitat full of birds, butterflies and bees has slowly developed. It was a chance bit of research, however, which led Hilary down the path of harvest mice reintroduction.

Woodland Trust Scotland has launched a campaign to raise the next generation of lone trees and micro woods on farms and crofts.

Woodland Trust Scotland director Alastair Seaman said:

"As in so many cases where our woods and trees are concerned, some of the big old ones are still going strong, but there are not enough young small ones coming up to replace them.

"It's three fields and lots of wet bits in between".

That is a wildlife trust's description of Betchcott Hill, a bit of land in the Shropshire Hills it has just purchased.

It now needs to raise more than £130,000 by the end of the year to help restore the habitat, home to many species of wildlife. The hope is that it can help boost the numbers of some declining species.

"It’s a wonderful place, it’s a wonderful bit of landscape with some fantastic views, but it’s also got some amazing habitats and some really interesting species," said Tom Freeland, Shropshire Wildlife Trust's head of nature reserves.

A wildlife expert has issued an appeal to Londoners amid a “sharp increase” in seal sightings in the Thames - which she says is likely to become a “new normal” in the capital.

Mary Tester, founding director of Thames Seal Watch, said there has been a sudden surge in seal sightings in the capital as more of the mammals appear to be making their way up the river and “exploring areas of London”.

She said she is anxious to avoid a repeat of the 2021 incident in which a beloved seal pup that had been named Freddie by locals had to be put down after being mauled by a dog on the shore near Hammersmith Bridge.

She has urged Londoners to keep their distance from seals if they them on shore, and to keep their dogs on leads.