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After her sister died, Victoria Bennett left Cumbria for the remote Scottish archipelago, where she learned to go with the ebb and flow of life
It was during her first winter in Orkney that the nature writer Victoria Bennett experienced the joy of baying into the sea during a storm. “There’s something very physically releasing about howling,” she says. “It’s quite animalistic and powerful.” On a stormy beach, when waves are crashing on the rocks, “you can really let rip”, she says. “The sound just disappears.”
Until that moment, Bennett had been struggling with her decision to move to the remote archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. “I was beginning to feel like I was in a fight against the sea, and against the weather.”
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Prendwick, Northumberland:On a crisp, cold walk, I’m reminded that winter still clings on, and that familiar constellations are far from alone
The red sun rising over the radar station on Alnwick Moor picks out the tall shape of a hare at our end of the meadow. It lopes forward a little way – forever appearing, as hares always do, to be on the brink of a forward roll – and then pauses, sits up and shakes the dew from its front paws.
A nearby pheasant lets rip a choked cock-crow. Both of these animals are game, here in England (as is the red-legged partridge, toiling tortoise-like through the weeds at the meadow bottom).
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Researchers find ‘alarming’ effect on fertility across global species from simultaneous exposures
Simultaneous exposure to toxic chemicals and climate change’s impacts likely generates an additive or synergistic effect that increases reproductive harm, and may contribute to the broad global drop in fertility, new peer-reviewed research finds.
The review of scientific literature considers how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, often found in plastic, coupled with climate change’s effects, such as heat stress, are each linked to reductions in fertility and fecundity across global species – including in humans, wildlife and invertebrates.
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Exclusive: As countries meet at key climate crisis meetings, Australia’s Chris Bowen says war underlines need to move away from fossil fuels
The fallout from the Iran war is driving countries to boost homegrown energy reliability and opens an opportunity for progress on clean generation at the next UN climate summit, says the lead negotiator at the talks.
Chris Bowen, the Australian climate change minister and new president of negotiations at the Cop31 conference in Turkey in November, said the energy market disruption should be seen as a global fossil fuel crisis – the second in four years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – and it was having an acute impact in Asia.
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Early birds were like ‘T rex reincarnated’, says scientist who believes avian skulls offer insight into dinosaurs’ behaviour
T rex is often depicted as more brawn than brains, but now scientists are hoping to probe just what was going on inside its head, drawing on findings from another kind of dinosaur: birds.
Scientists have previously found some species of bird not only make and use tools, but are able to plan ahead and show basic forms of empathy – with laboratory tests suggesting emus can recognise other birds might have different experiences to themselves.
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Study of 1,300 campaigners finds arrests, fines and jail terms increase determination of activists to take direct action
The criminalisation of direct action climate protests in the UK is counterproductive and increases the determination of activists to undertake disruptive demonstrations, according to a study of 1,300 campaigners.
New findings suggest arrests, fines and lengthy prison sentences given to nonviolent climate protesters who have blocked roads or damaged buildings may actually radicalise them. The repression of protest could even be one driver of recent covert actions such as the cutting of internet cables, they said.
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Dartmoor: We went for a family walk on the moor, and I ended up seeing something really rare and special
It was a bright spring morning, and I had gone up to Dartmoor with my mum, my brother and my grandma for a walk in the fresh sunshine. My mum suggested that we go off the path to look at some bluebells and everyone agreed. It was beautiful. I could hear the birds singing and see the granite rocks sparkling.
My grandma and my brother walked away from us, and I went in the opposite direction towards some brambles by a slab of concrete that was catching the sun. And then I saw it – a large, black snake rearing up at me. We looked at each other for a second – it had black scales and faint zigzag patterns on its body.
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In 2024 seven solar and windfarms and seven storage projects – totalling 3,202 megawatts – had been approved. Then came the LNP government
For all involved, it felt like Queensland’s transition away from coal-fired power was happening at speeds never seen before.
It was 2024, and the rubber was hitting the road hard on the Labor government’s plans to get the power grid almost entirely off coal by 2035.
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A new knowledge-sharing project aims to ensure the survival of the migratory short-tailed shearwater
Short-tailed shearwaters used to blacken the skies on the south-west coast of Australia, so abundant were they in their coastal homes each Djilba season – the time in the calendar of the Noongar peoples between August and September, when days shift from blustery cold and wet winds to warmer weather.
In Wudjari Noongar, the language of the traditional owners of this place, they call Kepa Kurl, but which, since colonisation, has been called Esperance, the birds are called yowli. To other cultures, they are muttonbirds.
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The court sided with a Canadian hiker who deliberately challenged the order imposed to curb spread of wildfires
As wildfires raged across Nova Scotia last summer, the Canadian province made a simple plea to residents: stay away from the woods.
As the situation deteriorated, authorities turned the request into a prohibition: anyone caught hiking under the shade of the forest canopy faced a C$25,000 fine – a figure more than half the average worker’s yearly salary.
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