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Nature Watch

Nature Watch

Jelsa's Trees and History

Published in Nature Watch

The trees which adorn Jelsa have marked significant changes in Jelsan culture and attitudes to the environment over time. Vito Gospodnetić is a dedicated protector of Jelsa's precious natural resources alongside its cultural and historical heritage.

Former times, Jelsa's greenery seen from the air.
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Rue: a Paradox Plant

Published in Nature Watch

A plant family full of amazing magical promises!

Ruta graveolens, Humac on Hvar Island, flowering in June 2023
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Precious Birds: Saving Owls

Published in Nature Watch

The Scops Owl is a welcome visitor to Hvar Island every summer. Arriving between the middle of March or beginning of April its persistent single-note call is the hallmark of the warm season. 

Floof ready to fly...
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Birdwatching report Hvar Island: May - October 2024.

Published in Nature Watch

Reading Steve Jones' report earlier this year, keen birdwatcher Tomislav Sjekloća was inspired to check out the Dračevica pond and other parts of Hvar, and we are delighted he has shared his sightings with us.

Blue Rock Thrush near Fortica in Hvar Town
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Hvar birds, September 2024

Published in Nature Watch

In early September 2024 a birdwatching couple visited Hvar and we are delighted to report that their trip was reasonably fruitful!.

European Turtle Dove
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BATS: know, cherish and protect them!

Published in Nature Watch

In 2023 the honour of celebrating International Bat Night, which aims to raise people's awareness of the vital importance in our ecosystem, fell to the Krka National Park,which organised a superbly imaginative programme beside its exquisite Skradinski Buk Waterfall.

BATS: know, cherish and protect them!
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Orchids need care

Published in Nature Watch

Highlighting Croatia's wild orchids and the need to treat them with love and respect, the highly active and successful BIOM ASSOCIATION published an article in the spring of 2024 with a plea to pay attention to these fascinating and invaluable plants.

Orchis italica
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Orchids: Humble, Amazing, Delightful!

Published in Nature Watch

In 2023 on Hvar there were two special orchid finds by visiting experts from Zagreb, who located the endemic Ophrys pharia and the Himantoglossum robertianum.

Ophrys pharia, 'Forka'
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Re-wilding in Rovinj: success and failure

Published in Nature Watch

A visitor to Rovinj in June 2024 found much to admire in the eco-friendly Grand Park Hotel - alongside a major cause for concern.

Re-wilding in Rovinj: success and failure
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Eco Environment News feeds

  • This year’s Christmas could be Britain’s greenest yet, energy operator says

    System operator Neso predicts lowest carbon intensity ever on Christmas Day after new wind and solar power come online

    Britain’s energy system operator has predicted that this year’s Christmas Day could be the greenest yet.

    If the weather remains mild and windy for the rest of December, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) has said it could record the lowest carbon intensity – the measure of how much carbon dioxide is released to produce electricity – recorded on the network for 25 December.

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  • Country diary: There’s more to mistletoe than Christmas kisses | Kate Blincoe

    Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: Wildlife seems to like it as much as we do, and if you’re patient, you can make like a mistle thrush and spread it around

    Stripped of their leaves, the trees are sculptural against the grey sky, revealing what is usually obscured. Trunks thick with ivy offer roosting sites for wrens and robins. Messy rook nests sway precariously in the breeze. And of course great balls of mistletoe, suspended among the bare branches as if put up for the festive season, although there all year round. Some trees have so many of the evergreen orbs in them that they appear to be in spring leaf.

    For a parasite, mistletoe has a unique position in our hearts: from Greek mythologies, where it offered a gateway to the underworld, to the druids’ ceremonial links with fertility, which probably seeded our modern-day kisses under the mistletoe.

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  • Food becoming more calorific but less nutritious due to rising carbon dioxide

    Researchers noticed ‘dramatic’ changes in nutrients in crops, including drop in zinc and rise in lead

    More carbon dioxide in the environment is making food more calorific but less nutritious – and also potentially more toxic, a study has found.

    Sterre ter Haar, a lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and other researchers at the institution created a method to compare multiple studies on plants’ responses to increased CO2levels. The results, she said, were a shock: although crop yields increase, they become less nutrient-dense. While zinc levels in particular drop, lead levels increase.

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  • Week in wildlife: honeymooning owls, an otter on the razz and a magical frog

    This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

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  • ‘Radiator rattling’ earthquake hits Lancashire village for second time in two weeks

    People of Silverdale report rattling and shaking as 2.5 magnitude earthquake strikes in probable aftershock

    A village in Lancashire has been hit by a “radiator rattling” earthquake for the second time in little over two weeks.

    Residents of Silverdale, a small coastal village located five miles south of the Cumbria border, reported the now strangely familiar feeling of rattling and shaking in their homes at 5.03am as a 2.5-magnitude earthquake hit the area with its epicentre 1.6 miles (2.6km) off the coast.

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  • Country diary: Postcard from a pier, where brent geese are the main attraction | Lev Parikian

    Ryde, Isle of Wight: Lots of commotion here among the hovercraft and herring gulls, but it’s the wonderful, tubby geese that make my winter

    There’s a hovercraft on the sand, skirts deflated, dumped like a beached whale. Behind it, the pier stretches into the Solent. The air has the dull taste of off-season resort, with background notes of seaweed and vinegar. Welcome to Ryde.

    We eat fish and chips, fending off the attention of a hungry herring gull. The clicks and whistles of 20 starlings float towards our ears from over the road. A pied wagtail, manic wind-up toy, scurries beside us. Stop, start, whirr.

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  • They survived wildfires. But something else is killing Greece’s iconic fir forests

    In the Peloponnese mountains, the usually hardy trees are turning brown even where fires haven’t reached. Experts are raising the alarm on a complex crisis

    In the southern Peloponnese, the Greek fir is a towering presence. The deep green, slow-growing conifers have long defined the region’s high-altitude forests, thriving in the mountains and rocky soils. For generations they have been one of the country’s hardier species, unusually capable of withstanding drought, insects and the wildfires that periodically sweep through Mediterranean ecosystems. These Greek forests have lived with fire for as long as anyone can remember.

    So when Dimitrios Avtzis, a senior researcher at the Forest Research Institute (FRI) of Elgo-Dimitra, was dispatched to document the aftermath of a spring blaze in the region, nothing about the assignment seemed exceptional. He had walked into countless burnt landscapes, tracking the expected pockets of mortality, as well as the trees that survived their scorching.

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  • ‘The biggest transformation in a century’: how California remade itself as a clean energy powerhouse

    The Golden State’s clean energy use hit new highs in 2025. As the Trump administration abandons US climate initiatives, can California fill the void?

    As officials from around the world met in Brazil for the Cop30 climate summit last month, the US president was nowhere to be found, nor were any members of his cabinet. Instead, the most prominent American voice in Belém was that of the California governor, Gavin Newsom.

    During the five days he spent in Brazil, Newsom described Donald Trump as an “invasive species” and condemned his rollback of policies aimed at reducing emissions and expanding renewable energy. Newsom, long considered a presidential hopeful, argued that, as the US retreated, California would step up in its place as a “stable, reliable” climate leader and partner.

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  • Was 2025 the year that business retreated from net zero?

    From retailers to banks, carmakers to councils, the bold pledges for carbon-neutral economies are being watered down or scrapped

    Almost a year since Donald Trump returned to the White House with a rallying cry to the fossil fuel industry to “drill baby, drill”, a backlash against net zero appears to be gathering momentum.

    More companies have retreated from, or watered down, their pledges to cut carbon emissions, instead prioritising shareholder returns over climate action.

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  • ‘I can’t think of a place more pristine’: 133,000 hectares of Chilean Patagonia preserved after local fundraising

    Exclusive: Ancient forests and turquoise rivers of the Cochamó Valley protected from logging, damming and development

    A wild valley in Chilean Patagonia has been preserved for future generations and protected from logging, damming and unbridled development after a remarkable fundraising effort by local groups, the Guardian can reveal.

    The 133,000 hectares (328,000 acres) of pristine wilderness in the Cochamó Valley was bought for $63m (£47m) after a grassroots campaign led by the NGO Puelo Patagonia, and the title to the wildlands was officially handed over to the Chilean nonprofit Fundación Conserva Puchegüín on 9 December.

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