GreyShuck

A disused treehouse in Worcestershire is set to be transformed into a bat hotel.

The Worcestershire Wildlife Trust is converting the wooden structure at The Knapp and Papermill Nature Reserve, to home a roost of lesser horseshoe bats.

The treehouse will have perch points installed, as well as being insulated and made dark on the inside.

Out of the 18 species of bats that breed in the UK, 14 can be found in Worcestershire and 11 of those will roost at the reserve.

Two whales that became stranded off an island in Essex have died.

A female pilot whale and her calf were spotted in trouble in Canvey Island on Friday.

Essex Police said it was called at 20:45 BST and a decision was made to "safely and humanely euthanise" the youngster, after the mother had died.

South Essex Wildlife Hospital, which attended the incident, said the pair were part of a pod of between seven and nine whales which had died in another recent stranding.

A festival showcasing the benefits of seagrass in restoring marine habitats is set to return to Hull for a third year.

The Super Seagrass Festival is taking place at The Deep on 12 and 13 October.

Organisers said it was a chance to learn how seagrass meadows benefited the marine environment and how the plant stores carbon, helping to tackle climate change.

Visitors would also be encouraged to make up hessian seagrass seed bags to be planted at Spurn Point, a spokesperson said.

Chris Packham is challenging the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to support rewilding across the Church of England’s vast estate.

The broadcaster is taking to the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday, to call on the Church to commit to rewilding 30% of Church Commissioners – the Church’s investment arm – to rewild its extensive landholdings.

Packham, dressed in a medieval costume, will unveil a nine metre-long scroll, outlining why the organisation should rewild 30% of its 105,000-acre estate by 2030 in line with the UN’s Global Biodiversity Framework.

As part of the programme, more than 500 schools and nurseries have been awarded a share of a £5 million grant to turn grey areas of their school grounds green

· More than 1 in 8 schools and colleges across all regions of England have joined the National Education Nature Park programme in its first year

· The programme's first annual report shows that children and young people have mapped more than 2 million m2 of habitats across the education estate, equivalent to about 1600 Olympic-size swimming pools, and created new habitats including green walls and ponds

CAMPAIGNERS say there is ‘still a long way to go’ after news that kingfishers are the latest species to return to the once ‘ecologically dead’ River Lim.

The west Dorset river was described as ‘ecologically dead’ last year after sewage was poured into it.

Data gathered by the River Trust on the River Lim showed an exponential rise in human waste surging into the river from storage tanks at a nearby South West Water treatment centre.

Shocked former freshwater ecologist Graham Roberts said in May 2023 that the river, which flows through Uplyme and Lyme Regis, was 'absolutely disgusting'.

But News readers have now told of their delight after dippers and, more recently, a kingfisher was seen on the west Dorset river.

A nature reserve in Essex is to undergo a significant transformation after receiving a £190,000 grant.

Langdon Nature Discovery Park will use the cash from the Veolia Environmental Trust to create a new pond-dipping station and make substantial conservation improvements.

The current pond-dipping station, built in the early 1990s, is no longer safe for public use. The new structure will host more than 40 supervised sessions each summer, catering for more than 850 people.

Innovate UK and Defra fund 19 business-led environmental monitoring projects looking at biodiversity, soil health, water quality and greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK relies on effective environmental monitoring to support decision making, for example on actions needed to tackle the impacts of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Some traditional methods of environmental monitoring can be slow, limited in scope and unable to capture the full complexity of these rapidly evolving issues.

Thirty conservation volunteers from Yorkshire have spent 500 hours in all weathers during May, June, July, and August monitoring RSPB Bempton Cliffs’ threatened Kittiwake population. Home to the UK’s largest mainland seabird colony, around half a million seabirds make these spectacular East Yorkshire chalk cliffs their home in the summer.

Now on the Red list of highest conservation concern (added in 2021, changing from Amber), the UK’s Kittiwake population has, shockingly, declined by 43% over the last 25 years and the colony at RSPB Bempton Cliffs is one of international significance.

RSPB Bempton Cliffs is a significant part of the Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protection Area, which holds more than 20% of the UK breeding population of Kittiwakes, so monitoring is crucial to understanding how the population is faring. Each conservation volunteer was given 50 nests to monitor within a specified ‘plot’ and they painstakingly recorded how many eggs were produced and crucially how many chicks fledged from each nest. 865 individual nests were checked weekly across 16 study plots around the Bempton Cliffs, Flamborough and Filey seabird colony.

The Kittiwake study is part of a wider programme of monitoring productivity rates for Gannets, Guillemots, Razorbills, Herring Gulls, Shags and Fulmars, supported by Natural England and the renewable energy company Orsted. Bempton’s Puffins are trickier to monitor, as they nest in burrows in the cliff face, and the Pufflings fledge at night to avoid predators, and so it’s very difficult to know how many of their chicks are fledging.

The research is part of the National Honey Monitoring Scheme, which began in 2018.

Working with beekeepers across the country, the project has built up a honey archive to monitor long-term patterns and trends.

Dr Lindsay Newbold, a molecular microbial ecologist at UKCEH, said bees were "amazing".

"They're sort of like our remote samplers," she said.

"They go out, they explore the environment, they go and actually look for all the plants... then they bring it back to the hive and they make honey."

The honey is then analysed for pollen grains to help scientists build a picture of plant species present around the hives, which change with the environmental conditions.

UK Fungus Day is an annual celebration of our fungal world, offering something for everyone. Alongside the many UK-based groups, museums, universities and research centres offering a chance to join fungus walks, view fungi collections and visit exhibitions of the latest fungal science and technology, UK Fungus Day invites everyone to join in, delve deeper and learn more about fungi through art and performance, crafts and creations, online talks, quizzes and competitions.

As 90 per cent of the habitats that waxcaps thrive in have been destroyed over the past 70 years, The Yorkshire Post finds out why an area in Calderdale is akin to the Amazon for these ancient fungi.

It’s a little known fact, but Yorkshire is one of the best places in the world for some of the world’s rarest mushrooms, and October 5 is UK Fungus Day, the National Trust is taking the opportunity to shout about those which can be found at its site at Hardcastle Crags in Calderdale.

Around 120 species of ancient grassland fungi, often known as waxcaps, can be found in pastures around West Yorkshire.