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Nature Watch

Nature Watch

Highlighting Bees

Published in Nature Watch

Herbal medicine has a long tradition in Croatia and is still much in use today. A new detailed handbook aims to promote awareness of the natural resources which can benefit human health.   

From the handbook: bee treatment.
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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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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Rethinking Economics, the movement changing how the subject is taught

    Born of student disquiet after the 2008 crash, the group says it is reshaping economists’ education

    As the fallout from the 2008 global financial crash reverberated around the world, a group of students at Harvard University in the US walked out of their introductory economics class complaining it was teaching a “specific and limited view” that perpetuated “a problematic and inefficient system of economic inequality”.

    A few weeks later, on the other side of the Atlantic, economics students at Manchester University in the UK, unhappy that the rigid mathematical formulas they were being taught in the classroom bore little relation to the tumultuous economic fallout they were living through, set up a “post-crash economics society”.

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  • Birdwatch: Rain, water, wings – a winter’s gift at Cheddar reservoir

    Vast flocks of birds return to Somerset and a rare grebe turns an ordinary walk into something special

    After weeks of heavy rain, Cheddar reservoir in Somerset is finally full again – of water, and of birds. Thousands of coots, hundreds of gulls and ducks, and dozens of great crested grebes crowd the surface, some already moulting into their smart breeding plumage, crests and all.

    They feed almost constantly, building up energy reserves for the breeding season. Among the throng are some less familiar visitors: a flock of scaup, the males bulkier than the nearby tufted ducks, with pale grey backs that catch the light. Flocks of goosanders dive frequently for food, the colourful males looking like a cormorant in extravagant drag.

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  • Country diary: Echoes of Iona at this tiny, precious church | Merryn Glover

    Kincraig, Badenoch: The Loch Insh Old Kirk is a compelling place, and yet, like the copious wildlife here, it is on the edge of existence

    The snow has retreated to the tops of the Cairngorms and the last fragments of ice are crumbling at the edges of Loch Insh. In a muddy landscape, an old white church rises on a knoll on the northern shore. The simple stone building with its bell tower and arched windows dates to 1792, though the site was established by early monks from Iona, probably as far back as the seventh century. Indeed, some sources claim this as the site of longest continuous Christian worship in Scotland.

    Those early monks would have built a stone cell here as a dwelling and a base for evangelising. A later chapel was dedicated to St Adamnan – the ninth abbot of Iona and Columba’s biographer – and a rough granite font remains from that time. The monks rang a bell to announce worship and the kirk still holds a bronze bell dating to AD900, one of only five left in Scotland. Resonant with legends, the bell was believed to have the power of healing and was once stolen and carried to Scone Palace – but it flew home, tolling the chapel’s name all the way over the Drumochter Pass.

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  • Iran’s shadow fleet of old tankers a ticking bomb for sea life, say experts

    Exclusive: Analysts say there will be oil spill catastrophe that could be far bigger than Exxon Valdez disaster

    Decrepit oil tankers in Iran’s sanctions-busting shadow fleet are a “ticking time bomb”, and it is only a matter of time before there is a catastrophic environmental disaster, maritime intelligence analysts have warned.

    Such an oil spill could be far bigger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that released 37,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea, they said.

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  • ‘We feel kinda bad when a solo bird shows up’: Canada sees its first European robin – but how did it get there?

    Birdwatchers flock to Montréal for rare sighting of ‘vagrant’ bird that has made its home during a bitterly cold winter

    On a quiet Montréal street of low-rise brick apartment buildings on one side and cement barrier wall on the other, a crowd has gathered, binoculars around their necks and cameras at the ready. A European robin has taken up residence in the neighbourhood, which is sandwiched between two industrial areas with warehouses and railway lines and, a few blocks away, port facilities on the St Lawrence River.

    Ron Vandebeek from Ottawa, Ontario, is here on a frigid February morning hoping to see the rare bird, which was first spotted at the beginning of January.

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  • Country diary: Ding ding! Round 2 for the brawling badgers | Ed Douglas

    Abbeydale, Sheffield: I’m genuinely scared when I wake at 2am to the sound of screaming. Then I see two male badgers in an almighty scrap

    Fast asleep, my dreamworld takes an unexpected swerve as raucous screaming erupts outside the open bedroom window. For a moment, I assume this is imagined, some emotional outburst from my subconscious. Then I realise that I’m awake. This is real. I check the time: 2am. The screaming continues. In fact, it’s now louder and somehow more intense. The back of the house is woodland, and noises off are common enough. A fox barking. Robin song that eases those anxious, wakeful stretches of the night. But this is something else altogether. This is violence.

    My heart is racing now. I fear someone is being attacked, and from the pitch of the screaming, a woman. Mercifully, I soon discount this. My startled mind then suggests a catfight, but the sound I’m hearing is too big for that. So, despite the freezing cold beyond the duvet, I hop out of bed, pull back a curtain and stick my head outside.

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  • The EU is working on a blanket ban of ‘forever chemicals’. Why isn't Britain? | Pippa Neill

    In Lancashire, I met people living with dangerous levels of Pfas, including in their food. The government is failing them

    Last week, on the morning the government published its Pfas action plan, I got a worried phone call from a woman called Sam who lives next door to a chemical factory in Lancashire. Sam had just been hand-delivered a letter from her local council informing her that after testing, it had been confirmed that her ducks’ eggs, reared in her garden in Thornton-Cleveleys, near Blackpool, are contaminated with Pfas.

    Pfas – per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment – are a family of thousands of chemicals, and I have been reporting on them for years. Some, including those found in the eggs Sam and her family have been eating, have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers.

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  • ‘The normal should be darkness’: why one Belgian national park is turning off ‘pointless’ streetlights

    The radical project is an attempt to preserve wildlife in one of Europe’s most light-polluted countries, but can they persuade local people they will still feel safe?

    Two yellowing street lamps cast a pool of light on the dark road winding into the woods outside Mazée village. This scene is typical for narrow countryside roads in Wallonia in the south of Belgium. “Having lights here is logical,” says André Detournay, 77, who has lived in the village for four decades. “I walk here with my dog and it makes me feel safe and gives me some protection from theft.”

    Belgium glows like a Christmas decoration at night, as witnessed from space. It is one of the most light-polluted countries in Europe, with the Milky Way scarcely visible except in the most remote areas.

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  • ‘The trend is irreversible’: has Romania shattered the link between economic growth and high emissions?

    Emissions have plunged 75% since communist times in the birthplace of big oil – but for some the transition has been brutal

    Once the frozen fields outside Bucharest have thawed, workers will assemble the largest solar farm in Europe: one million photovoltaic panels backed by batteries to power homes after sunset. But the 760MW project in southern Romania will not hold the title for long. In the north-west, authorities have approved a bigger plant that will boast a capacity of 1GW.

    The sun-lit plots of silicon and glass will join a slew of projects that have rendered the Romanian economy unrecognisable from its polluted state when communism ended. They include an onshore windfarm near the Black Sea that for several years was Europe’s biggest, a nuclear power plant by the Danube whose lifetime is being extended by 30 years, and a fast-spreading patchwork of solar panels topping homes and shops across the country.

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  • More pollution and higher energy costs: critics condemn Trump’s anti-environment agenda

    US courts, scholars and Democrats are pushing back against the president’s aggressive drive to boost fossil fuels

    Donald Trump’s aggressive drive to boost fossil fuels, including dirty coal, coupled with his administration’s moves to roll back wind and solar power, face mounting fire from courts, scholars and Democrats for raising the cost of electricity and worsening the climate crisis.

    Four judges, including a Trump appointee, in recent weeks have issued temporary injunctions against interior department moves to halt work on five offshore wind projects in Virginia, New York and New England, which have cost billions of dollars and are far along in development.

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