Previously unrecorded hazel dormice have been found at a Southern Water site in Brede, East Sussex.

The Environment Agency, working as part of the Crane Valley Partnership to restore the river’s vitality following major sewage spills in 2011 and 2013, released 2000 chub, 2000 dace, 2000 roach and 1500 barbel into the river last week.

Environment Agency maintenance teams are more than half way through a 6-week programme, removing the invasive non-native species (INNS) Floating Pennywort to try to stop it spreading further.

The world is on track to meet a 2020 target on the expansion of protected areas, but more work is still needed, according to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature is warning that despite increasing recognition of the biodiversity crisis and its impacts on human well-being, the scale of the government response is “far from commensurate with the magnitude of the calamity.”

The European Union has adopted new legislation that will tackle the rapidly growing threat to biodiversity from invasive species.

Three years on from the last Eurobarometer survey, the latest one shows  that, despite the economic crisis, Europeans’ concern about the environment has not diminished.