The Wildlife Trusts are hailing 2025 as a ‘bumper year’ for new arrivals and discoveries across their nature reserves, following multiple reports of species making a comeback despite their rarity nationwide.

The celebration includes the discovery in Kent of a population of Tiree twist moths, otherwise thought to be extinct in England, and a rare fungus – the willow blister - recorded for only the second time in England since 1876, in Rutland. In Yorkshire, naturalists celebrated the first naturally seeded lady’s slipper orchid. This gorgeous flower had dropped to just a single plant, but decades of intensive work to recover the species is paying off and there are now 1500 plants thriving in the Yorkshire Dales.