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The National Trust said it believed ongoing wildfires at Abergwesyn common in Powys had destroyed "the last remaining" local breeding habitat for golden plovers - considered one of the most beautiful birds of the British uplands.

In the Mournes, Mr Fisher said rove beetles and other insects "support the skylarks and the meadow pipits that come from the lowlands to nest up in the uplands during this time of year".

His hardy upland flock of Scotch Blackface and Welsh mountain sheep spend nine-and-a-half months of the year on the moor, where they are most vulnerable to theft.

It is a place of farms, crofts, forests and rugged hills, vast upland moors and mountains but few people.

Ancient maize genomes from the Ozark rockshelters indicated that maize entered eastern North America at least twice, tracing ancestry to both the upland US Southwest and southern Texas.