By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent

Ten years after work to save endangered wildlife began, UK conservationists say they have achieved some notable successes.

The species recovery programme (SRP) started in 1991 with attempts to save 13 threatened plants and animals - it is now involved with more than 400 species and has identified 250 others as needing help.

The dormouse has made an excellent recovery

But many threats to the UK's familiar countryside residents still remain potent.

The body responsible for the SRP is English Nature (EN), the government's official wildlife watchdog, and it says the programme embodies a new approach to conservation.

The old method involved trying to maintain species by legal protection, and by managing the places where they lived. But the SRP builds on that by looking at the actual needs of different plants and animals, and then actively working to re-establish them.

EN says: "The SRP has not only halted the decline of many species but has also enabled some, such as the dormouse, to thrive in both their original sites and further afield."

The chair of English Nature, Sir Martin Doughty, said: "The species recovery programme has stimulated a fresh and dynamic approach to plant and animal conservation.

Lady's slipper orchid: Now found at 10 sites thanks to the SRP

"With our friends and partners we have made a great contribution to looking after and improving England's wealth of wildlife - its biodiversity.

"These special animals and plants are every bit as threatened as tree frogs, leopards and giant pandas, and the places where they live are as special as the rainforests of South America or the great plains of Africa."

Among the successes the SRP has recorded are:

• the dormouse, helped by captive breeding and a re-introduction programme to return to six counties where it had become extinct. The animals are breeding and expanding in both numbers and range;
• the red kite, which persecution had wiped out but which now has 420 breeding pairs in the UK;
• the large blue butterfly. It became extinct in 1979, but has been reintroduced (using insects from Sweden) to nine sites in its former range;
• the ladybird spider, up from a remnant of 19 individuals to a flourishing population of more than 500 spiders;
• the starfruit, which has recovered from one plant in a Surrey pond to recolonise 13 known sites.

The ladybird spider: Now numbers more than 500

But for all the celebration, real cause for concern persists over the future of many species.

Farming, transport, industry and housing continue to press relentlessly on the places they need for breeding and living, reducing the total area available and breaking it up into ever smaller and less viable parcels.

Pollution and the disappearance of traditional ways of husbandry which encouraged wildlife to thrive are further threats.

Critics of the programme say EN concentrates on the rare and photogenic species but ignores the commonplace ones, which face just the same pressures.

They want it to work to protect all the country's wildlife, even when that means tackling those powerful enough to cause serious damage.