‘Nature wins’ for 2024

This year has secured some “major nature wins”, from spoonbill breeding success to an impressive comeback for one of the UK’s largest spiders, conservationists said.

Other wins for nature in 2024 include closing of sandeel fisheries which has thrown seabirds such as puffins a “lifeline”, to saving one of the world’s rarest birds with the help of a species of wasp, and international efforts to reverse declines for an antelope in Kazakhstan, the RSPB said.

The charity is highlighting some of the successes secured in 2024 to show what can be achieved with conservation efforts – even as it warns of the challenges nature faces.

Spoon-shaped

With climate change, habitat loss and development hitting wildlife – and with just five years to meet legal targets to conserve nature – the RSPB is calling on the UK Government to urgently invest in action to save species and habitats.

RSPB chief executive Beccy Speight urged ministers to increase the UK agricultural budget to help farmers deliver nature-friendly farming, and to ensure energy infrastructure development and house building support nature and do not take place where it is already thriving.

The RSPB has highlighted some of the successes it has secured this year at its reserves and further afield.

They include spoonbills, which were driven to extinction in the UK hundreds of years ago by hunting and draining of wetlands, but are making a comeback here thanks to an increase in numbers in Europe following conservation efforts to conserve its habitat, the RSPB said.

The wetland birds with their distinctive spoon-shaped bill nested at the RSPB’s Ouse Washes reserve in East Anglia for the first time since the 17th century, and also saw breeding numbers increase at Havergate Island, Suffolk, and Fairburn Ings, West Yorkshire.

Lifeline

Another species making a comeback in the UK is the fen raft spider, one of the UK’s largest spiders which hunts its prey on the water’s surface, and which has been helped by introductions to new sites and managing grazing marshes to suit the very rare arachnids.

The RSPB said there are now potentially 3,750 females at Mid Yare nature reserve on the Norfolk Broads, where the spider was first introduced in 2012.

The charity also said it has been campaigning for the closure of sandeel fisheries since 1996, as the industrial catching of the small fish threatened the survival of seabirds such as puffins and kittiwakes, and in January the fisheries were closed in the English North Sea and all Scottish waters.

But the EU has challenged the decision by the UK Government over the fish, which are targeted by European vessels for their oil and use in feed for livestock and farmed salmon, prompting conservationists to campaign to ensure there is no rollback on the “hard-won victory”.

Ms Speight said: “The closure of industrial sandeel fisheries has provided a lifeline to under-pressure seabird species such as puffins and kittiwakes that depend on sandeels for food.