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The site contains articles and information on topics related to health, the environment and animal welfare.
While the focus is on Hvar Island in Dalmatia, much of the information is relevant to the rest of Croatia, and some to Europe, the United States and the rest of the world.
The main language of the site is English, but articles in Croatian are being added as quickly as possible. Some of the Croatian articles are translations, some original. Book reviews are in the language of the publication being reviewed.
To see all the articles archived in each category, click on the category name which is given below the title of each article (Environment, Highlights, Notices etc).
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Climate crisis and overfishing contributed to loss of 95% of penguins in two breeding colonies in South Africa, research finds
More than 60,000 penguins in colonies off the coast of South Africa have starved to death as a result of disappearing sardines, a new paper has found.
More than 95% of the African penguins in two of the most important breeding colonies, on Dassen Island and Robben Island, died between 2004 and 2012. The breeding penguins probably starved to death during the moulting period, according to the paper, which said the climate crisis and overfishing were driving declines.
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‘Soilsmology’ aims to map world’s soils and help avert famine, says not-for-profit co-founded by George Monbiot
A groundbreaking soil-health measuring technique could help avert famine and drought, scientists have said.
At the moment, scientists have to dig lots of holes to study the soil, which is time-consuming and damages its structure, making the sampling less accurate.
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I knew that a revolution in our understanding of soil could change the world. Then came a eureka moment – and the birth of the Earth Rover Program
It felt like walking up a mountain during a temperature inversion. You struggle through fog so dense you can scarcely see where you’re going. Suddenly, you break through the top of the cloud, and the world is laid out before you. It was that rare and remarkable thing: a eureka moment.
For the past three years, I’d been struggling with a big and frustrating problem. In researching my book Regenesis, I’d been working closely with Iain Tolhurst (Tolly), a pioneering farmer who had pulled off something extraordinary. Almost everywhere, high-yield farming means major environmental harm, due to the amount of fertiliser, pesticides and (sometimes) irrigation water and deep ploughing required. Most farms with apparently small environmental impacts produce low yields. This, in reality, means high impacts, as more land is needed to produce a given amount of food. But Tolly has found the holy grail of agriculture: high and rising yields with minimal environmental harm.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Conservationists say changes, coupled with underfunding, will curb take-up and leave less land protected for nature
An ambitious scheme to restore England’s nature over coming decades has been undermined after the government inserted a clause allowing it to terminate contracts with only a year’s notice, conservationists have said.
The project was designed to fund landscape-scale restoration over thousands of hectares, whether on large estates or across farms and nature reserves. The idea was to create huge reserves for rare species to thrive – projects promoted as decades-long commitments to securing habitat for wildlife well into the future.
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RSPB says growing trend for honouring species that are in decline is not matched by action on conservation
Britain’s street names are being inspired by skylarks, lapwings and starlings, even as bird populations decline.
According to a report by the RSPB, names such as Skylark Lane and Swift Avenue are increasingly common. Using OS Open Names data from 2004 to 2024, the conservation charity found that road names featuring bird species had risen by 350% for skylarks, 156% for starlings and 104% for lapwings, despite populations of these having fallen in the wild.
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In this week’s newsletter: Coroners can’t agree on how to count heat fatalities – and the dismantling of climate investments is leaving fragile communities exposed
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Donald Trump’s decision to boycott Cop30, withdraw the US from the Paris agreement and illegally terminate a slew of investments in renewable energy will not change the reality of climate breakdown for Americans.
In what has become an annual reporting tradition, I found myself in Arizona reporting on heat-related deaths during yet another gruelling heatwave, when temperatures topped 43C (110F) on 13 out of 14 straight days in Phoenix. Before embarking on this trip, I spent weeks combing through hundreds of autopsy reports, which I obtained from two county medical examiners using the Freedom of Information Act. Each death report gave me a glimpse into the person’s life, and I used clues from the case notes to track down friends and loved ones in the hopes of better understanding why heat is killing people in the richest country in the world.
How cyclones and monsoon rains converged to devastate parts of Asia – visual guide
The environmental costs of corn: should the US change how it grows its dominant crop?
‘Those who eat Chilean salmon cannot imagine how much human blood it carries with it’
Americans are dying from extreme heat. Autopsy reports don’t show the full story
‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival
‘It happened so fast’: the shocking reality of indoor heat deaths in Arizona
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Australian eco community is a sanctuary for native animals and a showcase of sustainable living
Bill Smart has never heard the word “solarpunk”. But the softly spoken 77-year-old lights up when given the definition from Wikipedia: a literary, artistic and social movement that envisions and works towards actualising a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community.
Solar refers not just to renewable energy but to an optimistic, anti-dystopian vision of the future. Punk is an allusion to its countercultural, do-it-yourself ethic.
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Former Perth curator Mark Harvey is one of the few people on Earth to have described 1,000 new species, many of them arachnids. Colleagues say his legacy is ‘unquantifiable’
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For most people around the world, 16 August 1977 was memorable because it was the day Elvis Presley died.
“We turned the radio on when we got back in the car and that was the headline. Elvis was dead,” remembers Dr Mark Harvey.
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Designer Michael Schmidt’s 36-piece collection was made from the wool of rams who have shown same-sex attraction
When a ram tips its head back, curls its upper lip, and takes a deep breath – what is known in the world of animal husbandry as a “flehmen response” – it is often a sign of arousal. Sheep have a small sensory organ located above the roof of the mouth, and the flehmen response helps to flood it with any sex pheromones wafting about.
Usually, rams flehmen when they encounter ewes during the mating period, according to Michael Stücke, a farmer with 30 years of experience raising sheep in Westphalia, Germany. But on Stücke’s farm, the rams flehmen “all the time”.
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Plans that evolved over more than two decades are about to become reality as a 6km cycling, walking and nature corridor opens through Sydney’s inner west
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About 25 years ago, Bruce Ashley was walking beside the Hawthorne canal in Sydney’s inner west when he stopped to chat with two men planting native species next to the footpath.
Ashley, an environmental planning consultant, had been thinking about how to link paths and scraps of bush to create a “greenway” along the old goods line from Pyrmont to Dulwich Hill since the mid-1990s, when the state government had commissioned him to examine the potential for cycle rail trails throughout New South Wales.
Continue reading...Record number of patients in hospital in England with flu for this time of year, figures show.
England's chief medical officer says doctors do not appreciate risk of heart attack and stroke, as flu cases rise.
The health secretary says the aim is to tackle a rising demand for services and pressure on the NHS.
Kyle Sieniawski, from Pontypridd, died last month, after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in January.
William Chapman only found out he had a terminal diagnosis when his GP mentioned it in passing.
Shane Bevan and Laura Tongue say it is "cruel" for grieving families to be left waiting for answers.
Placed incorrectly, cosmetic dermal fillers can damage nearby ateries, leading to to skin loss and even blindness, experts warn.
Walkout in England begins on 17 December and will be 14th strike in pay dispute.
The government claims that parents who cannot or chose not to breastfeed could save £500 a year.
The deal follows threats of tariffs as high as 100% on branded drug imports.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.
