Beaver Update: Two new licensed wild release projects, more to follow!

image of beaver on grass

By Stuart Otway – Principal Officer, Complex Licensing; Delphine Pouget - Principal Officer, Species Recovery & Reintroductions; Giles Wagstaff - Senior Officer, Complex Licensing; Amy Radford – Senior Officer, Species Recovery & Reintroductions Two newly licensed beaver projects will very …

A new mapping tool to support beaver reintroductions and dispersal across England

Posted by: and , Posted on: - Categories: Biodiversity, Science and evidence, Species re-introductions, Species recovery
A Eurasian Beaver in water

By Heather White - Senior Data Scientist and Daveron Smith - Principal Data Scientist In this blog, we launch the Beaver Considerations Assessment Toolkit (BCAT), a new mapping tool that has been developed by Natural England (NE), in collaboration with …

A Biodiversity Net Gain Solution for a High Value Brownfield Site

By David Feige, Northumberland County Council In this guest blog, David Feige, County Ecologist for Northumberland, explains the approach taken to approve a major new industrial development on a brownfield site at Cambois. The site contained a significant amount of …

Rediscovering the value of water meadows

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Biodiversity, Connecting People with Nature, Landscape, Natural England, Nature
Salisbury cathedral as a backdrop to the Harnham water meadows

By Edward Parrott, Senior officer - Agri-Environment Evidence team, Natural England Earlier this year I had the pleasure of joining contractors LUC and industry experts on a visit to Harnham water meadows - a rare surviving example of a centuries-old …

How citizen scientists are helping to close the freshwater data gap

With their semi-permeable skin and sensitivity to toxins and water quality, Toads are excellent indicators of healthy pond habitats. Image: Tabitha Roach Osborne.

By Amy Stocking and Matilda Dixon, Higher Officers for Citizen Science Ponds may be small, but they punch well above their weight when it comes to biodiversity, supporting around two-thirds of all freshwater species in the UK. Yet they have …

Species Recovery Programme - Call for Ideas Opportunity

By Karen Shelley-Jones - Senior Officer – Funding and Grant Scheme Management and Luke Gill - Senior Officer - Species Recovery Programme Earlier this month, we launched a new call seeking ambitious new ideas for projects aimed at recovering England’s …

Nature Returns: 4 years on

Posted by: and , Posted on: - Categories: Natural England, Nature, Nature Returns, Nature-based solutions

Nature Returns is a flagship programme led by Natural England, which is delivering practical solutions for nature and climate and building robust scientific evidence to support policy and investment decisions. Nature-based solutions address problems in ways that benefit both people and …

New Weed Control Handbook Published: A Smarter, Greener Approach to Vegetation Management

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Biodiversity, Landscape, Natural England, Nature, Nature Recovery, Weed Control
Himalayan balsam on a field edge. Natural England

By Patrick Shannon-Hughes, Environmental Quality for Nature Senior Officer (Agri Chemicals) We’re pleased to release the updated Weed Control Handbook: Guidance for Herbicide Use on Nature Conservation Sites - a long-awaited refresh of the 2002 Herbicide Handbook. This new edition …

Natural England’s response to Defra’s consultation on heather and grass burning

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Biodiversity, Evidence, Natural England, Nature, Peat, Wildlife
Moor House - Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve. Copyright: Dave Glaves

By John Holmes, Director of Strategy On 5 September, Defra announced strengthened legislation on burning on peat.  The new legislation came into force this week, with the new burning season commencing on Wednesday.  We welcome the strengthened legislation which will …

Nature Recovery Projects – next steps for growing collaborative action that drives nature recovery

Acting for nature recovery at scale Defra and Natural England invested £7.4 million to initiate twelve landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects (NRPs) across the country, over the three years of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2022/23-2024/25. Covering over 319,480ha, these projects were …