A taskforce of hardworking team of volunteers from the amphibian and reptile group network ARG-UK has just returned from a habitat-management taskforce to the Sefton Coast of Merseyside. The group, funded by a grant from ARG-UK's 100% Fund and conservation NGO Habitat Aid, carried out urgent scrub clearance to help save a sand lizard population from extinction.

The NewForest was among nine precious landscapes in Britain to receive £21 million in Heritage Lottery Fund money. The Hampshire bational park will receive an HLF grant of £2.9m, including £161,000 of development funding. Read more about it here in the NBN Trust Newsletter.

The most visited article on the CGO Ecology website is this one: "Ecology reports needed for all planning applications." It was written in August 2010, at a time when local authorities in Dorset were becoming more rigorous in their demands for ecological assessment prior to developments, however small.

We receive lots of letters and CVs from graduates looking for ecological consultancy jobs. In a competitive job market, your CV needs to stand out from the rest by having lots of practical experience, rather than just three years of theoretical classroom learning. Yesterday we tweeted some tips on making your CV stand out. Here is what we said.

CGO Ecology has teamed up with Bournemouth University to carry out a research project into the occurrence and possible impacts of a tiny invertebrate animal from the southern hemisphere. The Australian landhopper (Arcitalitrus dorrieni) is an amphipod crustacean, in the same family (Talitridae) as our freshwater shrimps. They live in leaf litter, usually beneath trees.