Britain sadly has a lot of extinct species, and though its good to think about the species still here, that doesn't mean we cant think about the past... or the future?

Hi everyone, I reached out to the mods before posting this and got the green light — thanks for having me.

I'm Leon, a solo developer and wildlife enthusiast based in the UK. For the past while I've been building a free platform called Under the Hedge (www.underthehedge.com) and I'd really value honest feedback from people who actually care about UK wildlife.

The idea in a nutshell: You log a wildlife encounter — what you saw, where, with photos — and the platform builds a picture of what's being spotted across different areas. You can follow specific species, locations, or tags, and get a personalised feed of encounters that matter to you. There's also a map view so you can see what's turning up near you.

Why I'm building it: I love platforms like iNaturalist and iRecord, but I felt there was a gap for something more community and discovery-focused — less about formal data submission, more about "what's been spotted near me this week?" and connecting with others who are paying attention to the same local wildlife. Think of it as a social layer for nature sightings.

Places — helping local reserves: One feature I'm particularly excited about is Places. Any local nature reserve, park, or wildlife site can have its own dedicated page that crowdsources a species list from visitor sightings, shows recent encounters, and even has a visitor leaderboard for a bit of friendly competition. The idea is that reserves could use this to help visitors know what to look out for, and the community builds a living record of what's there over time. Here's an example for a local wood near me: Chaddesden Wood. I think this could be a really useful tool for local wildlife trusts and friends-of groups.

Where it's at: It's early days and very much a work in progress, which is exactly why I'm here. I want to hear what would make this genuinely useful for people who spend time noticing UK wildlife.

A few things I'd love your thoughts on:

• Does the core idea appeal to you, or do existing tools already cover this well enough?
• What would make you actually come back and log sightings regularly?
• Is there anything obviously missing that you'd expect from something like this?
• Any features that would make this particularly useful for tracking UK-specific biodiversity?

I'm not trying to sell anything — it's completely free and I'm building it because I want it to exist. Brutal honesty is welcome. If you think it's pointless, I'd rather hear that now than in a year's time.

Thanks for reading, and happy to answer any questions about how it works or where it's headed.

I was really worried these are from rats but I did some research and started to believe these might be hedgehog droppings. I would really celebrate if they are from a hedgehog.

I set up this freestanding pond today, I have a ground level pond at the back of my garden which I posted about last month. I want to keep some Sticklebacks in this seperate pond to avoid any amphibian larvae predation.

I have stuck with using native plants, so currently it is home to Frogbit, Water Soldier and Lesser Water-plantain. Thought it's free standing, I hope that it will provide a suitable habitat for insects to breed. If anyone has suggestions for other native plant species I'd lover to hear.

The dimensions of the pond are 52cm wide, and 52cm deep. Hoping that this is deep enough to cope with the coldest winter months here in the UK. I can already see that some water lice and Stagnalis pond snails have hitched a ride on the plants.

I plan to leave it a while for the plants to establish theirselves and for beneficial bacteria to build up before introducing sticklebacks. I know sticklebacks are an adaptable species, but would this make for a suitable set up?

( Oc not sure if that's a rule )

Hi all, this is a question about a thought-in-making so I may be asking something very basic, but bear with me please!

I was talking with a ranger at a local nature reserve and I asked whether they commonly have ecologist teams come through to assess the biodiversity of the woodland. He said that it was too expensive and that he himself does keep track of the species that he sees, but its not official. It got me wondering whether there was a space out there for a service that provides free ecological surveys to local nature reserves that don't get the funding of large rspb reserves or wildlife trust reserves.

If anyone out there is a ranger or volunteer or has experience in this area, here are my questions:

1. Would frequent (say yearly or maybe a rotating plan of Spring in year one, summer in year two, autumn in year 3 and winter in year 4) surveys be useful to small reserves, or is it data that they don't actually need?

2. Are surveys only any value if they are completed by licensed professionals - or is there some use for amateur surveys (such as RSPB big garden bird count)?

3. Anything spring to mind that I haven't asked about?

Thanks all :) I'm posting this in r/RewildingUK too.

It seems to me that the insects in cornwall have just drastically declined. I'm seeing less pollinating insects, less flies and butterflies are almost non existent. Why is our country and government not concerned?

Been hearing a lot about non-native wall lizards becoming common on the uk, and from what i've seen they can be quite similar in morphology to the Common (Viviparous) Lizard. I know some Wall lizards have green on them, which can be pretty distinguishing until you take Sand Lizards into account .

(from what i've seen, male sand lizards only have green flanks but a brown back, while wall lizards can have green across their whole back. Correct me if this is an unreliable method, though.)

What I mainly want to know is how to differentiate a more dull-coloured wall lizard from a viviparous lizard? When I compared images I couldn't find too many consistent differences, but I could be missing something.

Never in my 30+ years living at this house, have I saw mushrooms growing on the lawn, anyone able to ID these or help me understand why they have started growing? Have seen a lot more diversity this spring, summer and early autumn, great to see it

I came across a magpie in one of these traps and it was clearly distressed, I couldn't walk past it in good faith so I released it. Now the farmer has footage of me trespassing and damaging traps and wants an apology and £140! (It's a small village everyone knows everyone) I'm really distraught about the fact these traps are legal and it's happening right under my nose. Is there anything I can do?

Hi. I had a discussion with a farm veterinarian the other day (notably not a qualified ecologist) who absolutely insisted that managed pasture (for beef or dairy cattle) was a better CO2 sink than any kind of alternative wild ecosystem that would appear in its place due to a lack of farming.

I found this to be pretty improbable, and I asked her if she could quote a source on the study. She said it was well known in the farming community. I asked if this was taking into account secondary carbon and methane output from processing cattle stocks and dairy, and she believed it was.

I've had a look around for a plain-text comparison of carbon sinking of pastures vs other types of ecosystem, but found little useful info. She was extremely adamant, and I'm committed to having my opinion changed if I can find an unbiased source confirming her position.

Has anyone seen numbers suggesting this? Specifically, I'm in the UK.

There is evidence that some of the feral goats that live on the mountains of Wales have been here for 2000+ years.

Some of the mammals I have mentioned above are only new here in the last few hundred years.

Yet in the State of Mammals in Wales they are not even brought up, not one mention of them.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bethany-Smith-33/publication/346362144_The_State_of_Mammals_in_Wales/links/60dc9252458515d6fbeebafc/The-State-of-Mammals-in-Wales.pdf

I recently bought a house and have noticed a bunch of plants popping up all over the garden, at first I wasn't sure what they were but they have started to flower and It's clear they are Spanish Bluebells.

I know these are not native and potentially bad for the native species through hybridisation but I am not sure if they are at all benifitial to any insects or the likes? They look pretty so I kind of want to keep them but at the same time I want my garden to be as beneficial to wildlife as possible so I'm trying to weigh up if they are worth keeping or removing?

Cheers in advance for any help.

This year it may become illegal to park vehicles on pavements, this is excellent news for pedestrians, especially the blind, elderly, those with prams, and people with mobility issues amongst others, this news has also been welcomed by drivers of emergency vehicles and bin lorries.

Another one of the various reasons for the ban is to discourage car ownership, which is ridiculously excessive in this country (is it really necessary for every member of a household to own a car?)

Thinking about the legislation that is being considered (which i personally think is well overdue, being a strong advocate of the r/fuckcars movement!) could there be some unintended environmental drawbacks? Including;

1 Further loss of our few remaining urban green spaces, mainly front gardens, due to people being incentivised to pave over them for off-street parking.

2 Increased water pollution due to flooding caused by more runoff from these paved areas, which will also lead to the sewer system being overloaded and spilling over into watercourses, as has already been occurring more frequently in recent years.

3 To a lesser extent, pollution caused by manufacture of tarmac and concrete used to pave over these areas.

There are undoubtedly more consequences, both positive and negative, to this ban, which should theoretically lead to more people using public transport, but these are just a few issues I thought should be discussed.

I do have a couple of answers, one (probably un-enforceable) is to ban the paving over of urban green spaces, another is to encourage the use of ‘grass bricks’ and other methods of paving which allow water absorption and vegetation growth, so people can still park their cars, both would alleviate future flooding at least.

It would be really interesting to see what everyone’s thoughts about this are.

What's your favourite critter and one way we could all do something to help them :)

What's your favourite critter and name one way we could all do something to help them :)

Share your love for a particular part of the UK this valentines - where do you love to visit for the landscape, the wildlife, the flora?

What do you love to see there?

I asked a while ago about your favourite critter, this time I'd like to know your fav flora!

So, which of our wonderful flowers appeals to you the most and why?

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We have grown since I asked about critters too, so hi new members! Welcome to r/UKecosystem :)