An unprecedented stocktake of UK wildlife has revealed that most species are struggling and that one in three have halved in number in the past half century. The unique report, based on scientific analysis of tens of millions of observations from volunteers, shows that from woodland to farmland and from freshwater streams to the sea, many animals, birds, insects, fish and plants are in trouble. The causes include the intensification of farming, with the consequent loss of meadows, hedgerows and ponds and increased pesticide use, as well as building development, overfishing and climate change. Three in every five of the 3,148 species analysed for the report have declined in the last 50 years and one in 10 are at risk of extinction.

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Three insecticides blamed for killing huge numbers of bees and endangering food crops throughout the world will be partially banned by the EU.
Ireland voted against the ban last month following intense lobbying by industry, but changed position slightly and abstained from the vote in Brussels yesterday.

The majority of countries voted for the ban, but there were not enough votes to enforce it. This left it open to the European Commission to take action and it decided to impose temporary new rules.

As a result, three neonicotinoid, containing nicotine similar to that found in cigarettes, insecticides will be banned from being used to coat seeds, used in the soil and sprayed on leaves from December next for two years.

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A new census found this winter’s population of North American monarch butterflies in Mexico was at the lowest level ever measured. Insect ecologist Orley Taylor talks to Yale Environment 360 about how the planting of genetically modified crops and the resulting use of herbicides has contributed to the monarchs’ decline.

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The UK environment secretary, Owen Paterson, must end his department’s “extraordinary complacency” and suspend the use of pesticides linked to serious harm in bees, according to a damning report from an influential cross–party committee of MPs. The UK is blocking attempts to introduce a Europe-wide ban on the world’s most widely used insecticides, neonicotinoids. But MPs on parliament’s green watchdog, the environmental audit committee (EAC), said the government was relying on “fundamentally flawed” studies and failing to uphold its own precautionary principle.

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They’ve been dubbed ‘Asbo Bambis’, ‘killer deer’ and even ‘doe–eyed destroyers’ – and this tiny menace is spreading across Northern Ireland. The voracious muntjac deer from China is hard to spot but is living and breeding under our noses. And experts are warning if this invader isn’t halted now when its numbers are low, we could face annual bills of hundreds of thousands of pounds in the future.

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Colonies of American honeybees are declining at an alarming rate, from the loss of about a third of bees seven years ago to as many as a half of all commercial hives.

The decline has prompted further research into the use of insecticides that appear to damage the homing systems of worker bees, making them lose their way home to hives from pollen–gathering sorties.A phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder is causing concern as farmers require bees to pollinate fruit and vegetables, among them almonds, cranberries and avocados, on farms across t he United States. 

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Experts are urging all–out war on deer, which could see close to a million animals being shot each year in the UK. Culling on a massive scale is necessary just to keep the exploding deer population at its current level, they say. The call to arms was made after new research showed that only by killing 50% to 60% of deer can their numbers be kept under reasonable control. This is slaughter on a far greater scale than the 20% to 30% culling rates recommended before. With total deer numbers conservatively estimated at about 1.5 million, it could result in more than 750,000 animals being shot every year.

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A fight to protect polar bears from Arctic hunters has led cold war foes the US and Russia to unite against Canada ahead of a key international vote this week. The bitter row is over the 600 or so of the polar species killed each year by Canadian hunters, most of which are exported as bear skin rugs, fangs or paws. Diplomatic relations became even frostier on Tuesday, when the European Union attempted to block the US proposal which is strongly supported by
Russia, to outlaw the export trade.

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The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two–thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory, a landmark new study revealed on Tuesday. The research was released at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok where the eight key ivory–trading nations, including the host nation Thailand and biggest market China, have been put on notice of sweeping trade sanctions if they fail to crack down on the trade. “The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction – potentially within the next decade – of the forest elephant,” said Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of 60 scientists on the research team.

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The “gang of eight” nations at the heart of an unprecedented surge in African elephant killing must be hit with heavy trade sanctions, according to the world’s top illegal ivory official. The countries, including Kenya, Thailand and China, could be banned from all wildlife trade, including hugely lucrative orchid and crocodile skin exports. Tom Milliken, who runs the official global project that tracks illegal ivory, said every report his group, the Elephant Trade Information System, had made since it started in 1998 had identified the eight nations as the major players in the trade, but to no effect. “There has been no discernible impact from previous Cites measures,” he said at the 178–nation summit of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Bangkok. “Unless Cites scales up and takes this seriously, we are not going to win this thing.” This Cites meeting should be the time sanctions should be used, he said.

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They’ve been slowly invading Northern Ireland for around a decade.And now the stunning little egret has finally sealed the deal, with wildlife experts discovering the first breeding birds. Three pairs were found nesting in tall trees on the western shore of Strangford Lough late last summer – although it has only just been made public as the National Trust asks people to keep their eyes peeled for other pairs.

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Conservation group WWF has announced plans to deploy surveillance drones to aid its efforts to protect species in the wild, as the South African government revealed that 82 rhinos had been poached there since the new year. The green group says that by the end of the year, it will have deployed “eyes in the sky” in one country in Africa or Asia, with a second country following in 2014 as part of a $5m hi–tech push to combat the illegal wildlife trade.

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Scores of bird–watchers descended on Donegal last week after news spread of only the second sighting of a bittern since it became extinct in Ireland more than 150 years ago.

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The once common sight of hedgehogs in gardens could become a thing of the past, with the spiny species having suffered a dramatic decline in recent years on a par with the loss of starlings, red squirrels and other British wildlife. Ecologists this week published figures suggesting hedgehog numbers declined by over a third between 2003 and 2012.

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Widely used pesticides can kill frogs within an hour, new research has revealed, suggesting the chemicals are playing a significant and previously unknown role in the catastrophic global decline of amphibians. The scientists behind the study said it was both “astonishing” and “alarming” that common pesticides could be so toxic at the doses approved by regulatory authorities, adding to growing criticism of how pesticides are tested.

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The safety of the world’s most widely used insecticide has been questioned by a parliamentary inquiry, with MPs accusing regulators of “turning a blind eye” to the risk for bees. A growing body of scientific evidence has linked the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides on crops to a serious decline in the bees and other pollinators, which are vital in producing a third of all food. The inquiry has uncovered evidence, apparently ignored by regulators, that the toxic insecticide can build up in soil to levels likely to be lethal to most insects, including the bees that overwinter in soil.

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It was disheartening to read Caroline Davies’s article about the decline in British birds (Report, 19 November) without any comment on the possible cause. The Dutch toxicologist Dr Henk Tennekes, author of The Systemic Insecticides: A Disaster in the Making, blames the use of neonicotinoid insecticides. These insecticides are put inside seeds and, being water soluble, permeate the whole plant, binding irreversibly to critical receptors in the central nervous systems of insects. Bees and butterflies collecting pollen or nectar from treated crops are poisoned, and neonicotinoids have been implicated in the mass die–off of bee populations. Germany has banned seed treatment with neonicotinoids after bee colonies suffered a severe decline linked to the use of the insecticide clothianidin.

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The Department of Agriculture is taking up to 6,000 satellite images per year of farmers’ land to see if fields are being properly farmed.

If there is rush cover, the farmer is not eligible for a single farm payment for the land. Farm payments are based more and more on strictly “working” farmland — lands completely covered with rock and furze and rushes are not eligible unless they are cleared. 

A senior official said land was not being deducted for rushes where cows were grazing grass, but only where the land was obviously not being farmed and rushes had completely taken over.

Kerry county councillor Danny Healy–Rae said there was intense focus on farmers in Kerry and West Cork.

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 VOLUNTEERS ACTING as “citizen scientists” have discovered rare honeycomb worm reefs, lush beds of protected Zostera seagrass and even the remains of a huge leatherback turtle during Coastwatch Ireland’s 25th anniversary survey. 

The coastline survey was officially brought to a conclusion at the weekend by Minister for Heritage Jimmy Deenihan on a piece of muddy shore in Tralee bay, within sight of the 20m–high lookout tower of the new Tralee Bay Wetlands Centre. Brent geese were grazing at one end of a huge seagrass meadow, dotted with cockles and lugworms and fringed by mussels and a wild native oyster bed – “an amazing complex of marine habitats”, according to Coastwatch co–ordinator Karin Dubsky.

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Great apes, such as gorillas, chimps and bonobos, are running out of places to live, say scientists. They have recorded a dramatic decline in the amount of habitat suitable for great apes, according to the first such survey across the African continent. Eastern gorillas, the largest living primate, have lost more than half their habitat since the early 1990s. Cross River gorillas, chimps and bonobos have also suffered significant losses, according to the study. Details are published in the journal Diversity and Distributions.

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