Bison, beavers and bog moss: eight new species to look out for in the UK in 2022

As rewilding projects restore habitats and ecosystems, we list the plants and animals staging a comeback across Britain

• World must rewild on massive scale to heal nature and climate, says UN
• Read more in our series Biodiversity: what happened next

Rewilding has been one of the big environmental stories of 2021, with successful species reintroductions and the return of wildlife previously thought extinct or critically endangered thanks to efforts to restore ecosystems across the world.

In Argentina, just as plans to reintroduce sea otters to the Ibera wetlands were advancing, a giant river otter popped up nearby. A red wolf reintroduction programme returned to prominence in North Carolina in the US, and white rhinos arrived in Rwanda for the first time, while in the UK support for the return of the lynx grew. Scientists even announced plans to bring back the woolly mammoth.