05/10/2026
Happy ! 🌿🦫✨🦉🌊
Here are our highlights from September:
🏔️ The Rothbury Estate has raised more than £26m towards a major nature recovery project. The £30m appeal is helping secure the 9,500-acre Northumberland estate for nature, with plans to restore peatlands, rivers, wetlands and woodland and create a landscape where people, farming and nature can thrive alongside one another.
🌱 7,500 acres of Northumberland is set for landscape restoration. The newly acquired Emblehope Estate is being taken forward as a major nature recovery project, with plans to re-wet degraded peatland, restore lost botany and increase vegetation diversity.
✨ Glowworms are shining again in North Yorkshire after more than a century. At Nosterfield nature reserve, a volunteer-led reintroduction project has seen glowing female glowworms return after larvae were bred and released at the site. It’s a brilliant example of what can happen when restored habitats are given the chance to support species once again.
🌾 Fulford Ings nature reserve has expanded by five acres. A new 30-year lease means another five acres can now be managed as part of the wider nature conservation project at Fulford Ings, helping protect this important riverside habitat just south of York.
🦬 The UK’s first bison bridges have doubled the habitat available to a wild herd. Two new bridges in Kent have opened up another 50 hectares of woodland to the free-roaming bison, allowing them to move through a much larger area and use their natural behaviours to create a more varied habitat for other species too.
🌊 A former golf course has become a thriving coastal nature reserve. At Sandilands on the Lincolnshire coast, a six-year restoration project has transformed the old course into a 30-hectare mosaic of wetlands, grassland, coastal scrub, lagoons and reedbeds, creating new habitat for wildlife and migratory birds.
🦪 Lost oyster beds have been rediscovered off Scotland’s west coast. Scientists used Gaelic and Scots place names to track down historic oyster habitats, finding a previously undocumented oyster bed and identifying other areas where native oysters may once have thrived. The discoveries could help inform future oyster restoration.
🌊 Eco-moorings are helping damaged seagrass meadows recover. Research in Dorset’s Studland Bay found that areas damaged by traditional boat anchoring had shrunk by more than 90% after eco-moorings were introduced, showing how quickly seagrass can recover when physical disturbance is removed.
More good news for nature, one month at a time. 💚
