With the details of the Labour Government’s long anticipated Budget now unveiled, The Wildlife Trusts’ Senior Land Use Policy Manager Barnaby Coupe looks at the implications for Defra’s flagship environment schemes and support for nature-friendly farming.

Rachel Reeves’ announcement today confirmed that Defra’s annual budget for nature-friendly farming would be maintained at £2.4 billion. Considering the rumours of significant spending cuts in the build-up to the budget, you would be forgiven for thinking that Defra has dodged a bullet by securing the same amount of money going forward. Whilst this outcome is better than many expected and retains a significant budget for nature-friendly farming, the picture is far from rosy.

Notwithstanding that the farming budget hasn’t increased since 2007, meaning a real terms funding cut after inflation, the fact remains there is not enough money in the pot for Defra to do everything it needs to do. Independent analysis on behalf of The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and National Trust conducted earlier this year found that £3.1 billion needs to be spent on nature-friendly farming and land management annually in England to meet the UK Government’s own legally binding targets. Calls for a budget increase were echoed by farming groups.

Conservationists are calling on business and industry to help fund an ambitious project to restore the landscape of the Darent Valley in Kent.

They hope it will help protect current wildlife species, as well bring back others that have been virtually lost, such as wild brown trout.

Marc Crouch from Kent Wildlife Trust said: “A key aim of the project is habitat and river restoration - re-wetting and creation of wetland habitat, flood mitigation and addressing barriers to fish passage.”

The Autumnwatch team may have observed "the highest population of badgers anywhere ever recorded", presenter Chris Packham has said.

The animals were tracked in the dark during last night's episode broadcast from Wytham Great Wood near Oxford.

The team relied on thermal cameras that see the creatures' body heat.

Mr Packham said there were about 250 adult animals in about 20 social groups, with 1,000 holes to emerge on the wood's grounds.

Rare spiders are among 55 different species of athropods that have been found living at a nature reserve.

The British Arachnological Society, external, a charity dedicated exclusively to spiders and their relatives, conducted research at Orford Ness near Orford in Suffolk.

Of the 55 spider species, the National Trust site was found to be the home to 12 that are nationally rare or scarce.

A tree in the Scottish Highlands thought to be at least 1,000 years old and known as the Skipinnish Oak has been named UK Tree of the Year.

Native woodland experts had no idea the tree existed until a gathering in 2009.

The band Skipinnish, which had played at the event, knew of the tree and led the conservationists to where it was hidden in a non-native Sitka spruce plantation on Achnacarry Estate.

It has won a public vote against 11 other contenders in the Woodland Trust competition.

Wildlife on Orkney has begun a remarkable recovery - after the systematic wipeout of more than 6000 predatory stoats.

The native Orkney Vole and red-listed birds like Hen Harriers and Lapwings have all recorded encouraging numbers boosts since a major conservation project was launched five years ago. Central to the mission was the eradication of invasive species the stoat, first recorded on the island in 2010.

More than 6500 stoats have been eradicated from Orkney using humane lethal traps, the biggest project of its kind in the world. Conservation scientists monitoring wildlife on Orkney report there are now significant increases in successful nesting attempts of ground-nesting birds such as the Hen Harrier and rare waders.

The Wildlife Trusts have bought part of the Duke of Northumberland’s son’s estate in the largest land sale in England for 30 years.

Marketed by its estate agents as “a paradise for those with a penchant for sporting pursuits, from world-class fishing on the illustrious River Coquet to pheasant and grouse shooting”, Rothbury estate has now been bought by the federation of charities, which plans to restore it for nature.

The Wildlife Trusts are buying the land in an unusual two-phase deal: having already bought a “significant” chunk of the 3,850-hectare (9,500-acre) estate, they have been given two years to find the rest of the money, for which they are launching a fundraising appeal. The estate was previously used for intensive sheep farming and shooting.

It may have been a fairly awful summer for butterflies but Scotland continues to enjoy some pleasant lepidopteran surprises, thanks to global heating.

Its list of resident species increased by one this year when the gatekeeper, never officially recorded north of the border in the past century, was spotted in several locations. Meanwhile, the elusive white-letter hairstreak, which was only recorded for the first time close to the River Tweed in 2017, has now been found in Dundee, more than 60 miles farther north.

The gatekeeper – so-called because of its habitat of rough grassland beside hedges and gates – is one of England’s commonest butterflies. This year it was found at the Crook of Baldoon RSPB reserve near Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway, before George Thomson, the author of The Butterflies of Scotland, obtained the first photographic proof – a female in his garden.

Just 7% of England is currently protected for nature, the Government has said, as it set out rules to help meet a global goal to protect 30% of land by 2030.

Officials said protected landscapes such as national parks, will deliver the “backbone” of areas conserved for nature, though they currently do not count towards the total, and the target could also include areas of nature-friendly farming.

The UK has signed up to global commitments to protect 30% of its land and seas for nature by 2030, known as 30×30, as part of efforts to halt catastrophic declines in wildlife.

Rachel Reeves has been urged not to cut the government’s environment funding in the budget as analysis shows the department’s finances were slashed at twice the rate of other departments in the austerity years.

Between 2009/10 and 2018/19, the environment department budget declined by 35% in monetary terms and 45% in real terms, according to Guardian analysis of annual reports from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Environment Agency and Natural England. By comparison, the average cut across government departments during the Conservative austerity programme was about 20%. During the first five years of austerity, it was the most cut department.

The budget for the department rose in the years between 2018/19 and 2021/22, but this is because it was given many new roles after Brexit, including taking on the £2.4bn a year farming budget which once came from the EU, and hiring staff to go through the EU statute book to see which environmental laws should be replicated in the UK. This new money, analysts argue, did not fill the gap left by deep cuts made under austerity, because it was ringfenced for new functions Defra did not previously perform.

A free online skills development programme developed by the Scottish Wildlife Trust is now available to people and communities across Scotland.

Over the past two years, nearly 40 community leaders have taken part in the Nextdoor Nature Pioneers Programme, a training course which has equipped them with the knowledge, skills and confidence to organise positive action for nature and improve their neighbourhoods.

As of this week, the online modules from the programme are now freely accessible for anyone to sign up to. Subjects covered during the eight-week course range from basic wildlife ecology to how to secure funding for community projects, with a number of additional optional modules available once people have completed the course.

Planners have backed proposals to plant about 30,000 trees as part of the creation of a nature reserve on the Isle of Man.

Situated at Creg y Cowin Farm, in East Baldwin, the plans submitted by nature charity Manx Wildlife Trust are part of a wider £38m rainforest restoration scheme across the British Isles.

Some 25 different species of trees native to the island would be planted across the 105-acre site, formerly used for sheep grazing, for carbon sequestration.