“Conservationists have celebrated breeding one of England’s rarest insects in captivity for the first time,” reports the BBC:
The Species Recovery Trust led the project to successfully breed the endangered heath tiger beetle at a special artificial habitat at Sparsholt College, near Winchester.
The trust and college hope to eventually reintroduce the insects back into their heathland homes.
The striking beetles are easily identifiable by their charcoal wing cases, with pale yellow markings….
The beetles have been badly affected by the loss of lowland heathland.
They are only found at a few sites in southern England and face a high risk of extinction in the wild…the team captured a pair of beetles in Surrey before moving them to their base. The team hopes to increase the captive population and eventually start to release them back into suitable sites in Surrey and Dorset.
In 2023, carnivorous plants were reintroduced to English wetlands.
A rare sticky plant is making a comeback in Scotland. “Numbers of one of Scotland’s rarest plants have more than trebled on a hill in central Scotland following restoration work,” reports the BBC.
In 2023, a baby beaver was born in London, the first beaver birth there in 400 years.
In Europe, wolverines, bears, jackals, wolves, and lynx have multiplied in recent years. There are now 150,000 golden jackals, mostly in southern Europe, an increase of 46% since 2016. “There are now about 20,500 brown bears in Europe, a rise of 17% since 2016, while there are 9,400 Eurasian lynx, a 12% increase.”
