Wild Things columnist Eric Brown takes readers on a refresher course of holiday nature stories including warnings for sensitive Greenwich University students, the artistic raven, wild items on restaurant menus and the wildlife to be found in your pockets this year.

Many nature stories are overlooked during chaotic Christmas and New Year preparations so here is a selection of important, humorous and just plain daft tales from the wildlife world which may have escaped readers' attention.

Wild Things: Save our fast disappearing marshland

As I predicted in this column, Therese Coffey's tenure as environment secretary didn't last long. Yet she made five foreign trips in five months covering nearly 40,000 carbon-chugging miles. Brazil, Egypt, Canada, the US and Panama were all on the Coffey itinerary and the greenhouse gas impact of her flights has been estimated at around 19 tons of carbon dioxide. Her department was 24 per cent behind an official target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All this jetting about left Coffey little time to tackle such issues as scrapping badger culls and river pollution by agricultural run-off and water company discharges. She even blamed floods in East Anglia on rain which "fell the wrong way". Square peg, round hole.

Her successor Steve Barclay seems a jack-of-all-trades but master of none with nine senior government jobs on his CV including two stabs at health secretary. Another example of jobs for the boys or a real fillip for wildlife? Time will tell.

Meanwhile Thames Water admitted dumping at least 72 billion litres of sewage in the Thames since 2020. The company, fined £3.3 million for sewage dumping in two rivers near Gatwick, then hatched plans for consumers to pay for a clean-up ! You couldn't make it up.

Somehow, a lucky beaver pair found enough clean London water to produce the first wild beavers born in London for 400 years, near Enfield. But hazel dormouse numbers in Britain suffered a catastrophic decline of 70 per cent since 2000 due mainly to poor woodland and hedgerow management. They are now extinct in Northumberland and Hertfordshire but a reintroduction scheme has begun.

Also being reintroduced is the turtle some 5,000 years after they became extinct in Britain. The European pond turtle can help tackle pollution by eating dead fish, dispersing rare plant species and reducing stagnancy by disrupting sediment.

Punters have paid up to £15 for abstract art produced by a raven called Odin painting with her beak at Sheffield's Tropical Butterfly Park.

Wild Things: Wildlife facing an uncertain future

Watch out for unusual menu items in restaurants this year. A restaurant booking platform predicts chefs will respond to demand for exotic eats by including sea urchin, grey squirrel and pigeon on menus.

University of Greenwich officials are warning faint-hearted students to prepare for "descriptions of spiders and other insects" when reading Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Perhaps those students will summon enough courage to face bees, Atlantic salmon, red squirrel and hazel dormouse they might find in their pockets soon. All will be featured on new coins by the end of this year.

Happy New Year.