-
Charity advises replacing seed and nut feeders, where birds gather, with small amounts of mealworms, fat balls or suet
Garden birds should not be fed seeds and nuts over the summer months, the RSPB has said, in an attempt to reduce the spread of avian diseases.
Bird lovers are being urged to take down their bird feeders between May and October to help birds such as the greenfinch, whose numbers have plummeted after the spread of trichomonosis, a parasitic disease transmitted more easily when birds cluster around feeders in the warmer months.
Continue reading...
-
In a village in Norway, humans representing flora and fauna of all kinds meet to reimagine ‘nature-centric governance’
“My ask of humans is quite large,” says the northern bat to a room of reindeer, wolf lichen, bog, and other beings. “It’s a shift of consciousness, and an understanding that … we are a relation.”
The scene could come from a sci-fi novel imagining a more-than-human uprising. In fact, it’s from a recent “interspecies council” in Oppdal, Norway, in which non-humans – spoken for by humans – convened to discuss the region’s future.
Continue reading...
-
New study describes what may be the first case of a unified community of chimps, in Uganda, turning on itself
On a June day in 2015, primatologist Aaron Sandel was quietly observing a small cluster of the Ngogo chimpanzee group in Uganda’s Kibale national park when he noticed something strange. As other members of the chimpanzees’ wider group moved closer through the forest, the chimpanzees in front of him began to display nervous behaviour. They grimaced and touched each other for reassurance, acting more like they were about to meet strangers than close companions.
In hindsight, Sandel said, that moment was the first sign of what would become a years-long bloody conflict between a once close-knit group of chimps.
Continue reading...
-
Residents of Fleetwood say continuous foul smell from Transwaste site is causing illness and making life hell
In the week that many families went to the coast for the fresh sea air or the tang of fish and chips, visitors to one Lancashire resort inhaled a rather more unpleasant aroma.
“Welcome to Fleetwood,” read the local newspaper headline. “The town that smells of bin juice.”
Continue reading...
-
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
Continue reading...
-
Langstone, Hampshire: Solitary bees, albeit hundreds of them, are hovering low to the ground, hoping to mate before nightfall
One of the 68 UK-recorded species of mining bee in the genus Andrena, the ashy mining bee (Andrena cineraria) is classified as solitary. Yet on the narrow, balding strip of turf in front of my neighbours’ garage, they appear anything but.
The ground shimmers with movement, as several hundred bees hover low in the spring sunshine. While each female maintains her own burrow – a neat, pencil-eraser-sized hole excavated in the bare, sun-warmed soil – they’ve gathered here in a dense aggregation, turning this modest patch into a bustling settlement.
Continue reading...
-
Housing corporations are adopting rainwater storage in garden fences, reducing pressure during downpours and preserving water for times of drought
Good fences make good neighbours – but rain fences could make even better ones.
That is the hope of housing corporations in the Netherlands, which are adopting rainwater storage in their garden fences.
Continue reading...
-
Javier Milei’s reforms to the law will open up high-altitude areas to mining and risk water reserves already strained by the climate crisis, say activists
Saul Zeballos was born and raised in Jáchal, a community tucked into the foothills of the Andes in Argentina, drinking water from the river that bears the town’s name. That changed in 2005, when the Veladero gold and silver mine started operating in San Juan province.
A decade later, a major cyanide spill from the mine polluted the rivers in the San Juan region, raising fears it could affect waterways downstream in the Jáchal basin, although further studies have shown that cyanide levels remained at safe levels. Two further spills were reported in 2016 and 2017 and are still under investigation.
Continue reading...
-
In this week’s newsletter: Once close to extinction, the species is rebounding due to years of conservation work
• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
I will never forget the moment I first saw a mountain gorilla. It was early on Mount Muhabura in Uganda, and I had spent the morning stumbling up the slopes of the inactive volcano in the Virunga range, which also spans Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Just when I thought my lungs could not take it any more, I noticed the silhouette of a creature picking leaves off a branch in a forest clearing. It was not alone. Nine mountain gorillas – all members of the Nyakagezi family – were having their breakfast around me.
I was with Ugandan park rangers and veterinarians from the NGO Gorilla Doctors, who have helped oversee one of the most remarkable turnarounds in the fortunes of an endangered species in the past century – and I was excited to learn more about how they did it.
As Iran war exposes global dependence on fossil fuels, the biggest emitters are reaping the rewards
‘A surrender to special interests’: alarm as Utah shields fossil-fuel companies
‘All we can do now is pray they continue’: Maasai welcome the first rains but know that drought is far from over
Continue reading...
-
Fifty years ago this month people were enjoying highs of 21C but stifling heat and water rationing were on the way
The weather in April 1976 was unusually pleasant. The Easter weekend, which fell in the middle of the month, coincided with a warm spell as an area of high pressure drifted towards the UK. Conditions in Scotland were unsettled but the rest of the country enjoyed sunshine and highs of 21C.
There was very little rainfall in what is traditionally a showery month, with Plymouth receiving a record low of just 4mm. The 12-month period to April 1976 was the driest ever recorded.
Continue reading...
