This year has secured some “major victories for nature”, from spoonbill breeding success to the impressive return of one of Britain’s largest spiders, conservationists have said.
Other victories for nature in 2024 include shutting down sand snake fisheries that rely on seabirds like puffins as their “lifeline”, saving one of the world’s rarest birds with the help of a species of wasp, and an international push to reverse trophic declines. There is effort. Kazakhstan, RSPB said.
The charity is highlighting some of the successes it has secured in 2024 to demonstrate what can be achieved with conservation efforts, while warning of the challenges facing nature.
spoon shape
Climate change, habitat loss and development are taking their toll on wildlife, with just five years left to meet statutory conservation targets. The RSPB is calling on the UK Government to urgently invest in measures to protect species and habitats.
Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive, said the UK’s agricultural budget should be increased to enable farmers to provide nature-friendly farming, and that energy infrastructure development and house-building would support nature and support nature where it is already thriving. He urged ministers to prevent this from happening.
The RSPB has highlighted some of the successes it has secured this year across reserves and further afield.
This includes the spoonbill, which became extinct in Britain hundreds of years ago due to hunting and wetland drainage, but is making a comeback thanks to increased populations in Europe following conservation efforts to preserve its habitat, the RSPB said.
Marsh birds with their distinctive spoon-shaped beaks have nested at the RSPB’s Ouse Washes reserve in East Anglia for the first time since the 17th century, while breeding numbers have also increased on Havergate Island, Suffolk and Fairburn Ings in West Yorkshire.
lifeline
Another species making a comeback in the UK is the fen raft spider, one of the UK’s largest spiders that hunts for prey on the water’s surface. The spiders have been helped by introducing new sites and managing grazing wetlands to suit these very rare arachnids.
The RSPB said there were now potentially 3,750 females at Mid Yare Nature Reserve on the Norfolk Broads, where the spiders were first introduced in 2012.
The charity also said it had been campaigning for the closure of the sandeel fishery since 1996 as industrial harvesting of small fish threatened the survival of seabirds such as puffins and kittywokes and the closure of the fishery in the UK North Sea and elsewhere in January . Scottish sea.
But the EU has challenged the UK government’s decision to stop fish from being taken by European ships for oil purposes and used as feed for livestock and farmed salmon, while conservationists have “campaigned to ensure that hard-earned fish are not left behind”. It was revealed. victory”.
Mr Speight said: “The closure of the industrial sand snake fishery has provided a lifeline for seabird species under pressure, such as puffins and kittywacks that prey on sand snakes.
