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A project on Dartmoor to reprofile the landscape aims to return the springy bog – and carbon store – to its natural condition
At one of the most remote spots in southern England, Al West skilfully tilts and rotates the bucket of a small digger, like a giant mechanical hand. He lifts turf, and pats it down gently on to the rich, dark brown peat beneath. Above him, the granite stack of Fur Tor looms above the vast, boggy, wild expanse of northern Dartmoor.
It is repetitive, delicate work, which West carries out with dexterity and care. Within a boundary of white flags, he takes from a borrow pit and fashions a peat embankment across each ditch and depression covering the land, to restore it to its natural smoothness and to stop the rainwater running off down the valley.
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Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway: Once nearly extinct in Scotland, they are now widespread, and these ones have such beautiful views to enjoy
Up on the old logging roads near Kirkennan estate, I saw some wild roe deer. They are one of only two deer species that are native to Scotland, as well as red deer. Back in the 1700s, they were almost extinct here, but they can now be found across the country.
When we were walking the air smelled like fresh rain and wood. The deer were about 100 metres up the hill from us, resting in long, wiry grass and shrubs. From below, we could see their short mahogany fur blending into the vegetation. As we went up the hill we came to their resting place – the deer had gone, but we could see their hazel fur caught in the shrubs and indentations in the grass where they had been lounging.
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Female named Rounder surrounded by family members when about to give birth to her second calf
Scientists have managed to film a sperm whale giving birth while other female whales worked together to support the mother and her newborn.
A team from Project Ceti, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, was in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on 8 July 2023.
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National Trust says one year after reintroduction they are enriching habitats and may be having kits this summer
They were released this time last year with fanfare, much hope and also, perhaps, a little trepidation.
Twelve months on, there have been ups and downs for the first beavers to be (officially) reintroduced into the wild in England since the semiaquatic mammals were hunted to extinction 400 years ago.
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Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate
When in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says.
The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads.
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Number fell 23% year on year in 2025 but waste companies say recycling systems still under strain from sheer volume
More than 6m vapes and vape pods are still being discarded every week in the UK, with waste management companies warning the sheer volume continues to strain recycling systems despite the ban on disposable e-cigarettes.
According to research by the recycling campaign group Material Focus, the 6.3m vapes and pods thrown away each week in 2025 represented a 23% reduction from the previous year.
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Lots of us aren’t very keen on bats. But the more we find out about them, the more amazing they turn out to be
Bats have a bad rep: in a recent survey by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), 46% of people expressed negative feelings about bats. But just look at them! Bat carer Liz Vinson, a volunteer with the BCT, calls them “little furry humans with huge jazz hands. They have individual characters: some are divas; some are bone idle.”
Shirley Thompson, BCT’s honorary education officer, has been championing bats since the 1980s. “I still think they’re magic,” she says. “The more you find out about them, the more you realise what amazing creatures they are.”
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Driving fast is in ‘the German DNA’, say lovers of the speed-limit free Autobahn, but support in the country for a restriction is growing
Death-defying thrills are not what draws Lutz Leif Linden to zip down the Autobahn faster than a plane taking off. Instead, the feeling of freedom and an appreciation of technological mastery play a part in his “almost loving relationship” with driving cars faster than most people can imagine.
The top speed he has reached on the road in Germany, the world’s only democracy without a blanket speed limit on motorways, is 400km/h (249mph). “It’s like an airplane,” said Linden, the president of the Automobile Club of Germany (AvD). “You are faster than an Airbus at start.”
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This labor-intensive way of eating isn’t for everyone – and I’m not sure it’s for me. It requires planning and flexibility
When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”
I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that.
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Rena Effendi’s film Searching for Satyrus began with a quest for the endangered insect that bears her family name. Before long, she was reckoning with secrets, lies and the mysterious life of her wayward dad
High in the Caucasus mountains, the photojournalist Rena Effendi is searching for the butterfly that bears the name of the father she hardly knew. It is rocky, bleak, beautiful – and impossible. The grass is fried yellow by the increasingly fierce summer sun, the butterfly’s food has been grazed by sheep and, if it exists at all, Satyrus effendi usually flies only as a single insect across a square kilometre of rock, scree and slope.
A butterfly hunt makes an unlikely subject for a prize-winning documentary, but Searching for Satyrus is a gripping quest that reveals a remarkable part of the world little known to western audiences while examining issues from war and nationalism to global heating and extinction. Ultimately, however, Effendi’s search for her father’s butterfly becomes a moving reckoning with the secrets and lies in her family and the life of her wayward father.
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