Multiple failures from the Environment Agency, a lack interest from police and a ‘woeful lack of successful convictions’. That’s what a House of Lords committee has found in its inquiry into ‘waste crime’. The inquiry from the cross party Environment and Climate Change Committee, says more than 38 million tonnes of illegal waste is being dumped each year often by organised crime groups involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery, and posing a serious environmental risk.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK around 400 years ago. But since 2009 they have have been slowly reappearing in UK, re-introduced by wildlife and conservation charities. In Scotland, Forestry and Land Scotland and the charity Trees for Life, have just relocated seven beavers into the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve.

All week we're looking at invasive species. Zebra mussels grow to about the size of a fingernail and love to attach themselves to surfaces below the waterline, where they can do significant damage to things such as our water networks. We hear how South West Water is trying to stop them spreading through the waterways in Cornwall.

Presenter = Caz Graham