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Nottinghamshire tree, one of Europe’s oldest and largest, fails to produce leaves after being stressed by series of hot, dry summers
The Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees, has died.
The huge tree, which has grown in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, for at least 1,000 years, failed to produce any leaves this year, after becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers.
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt
Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.
Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.
Manuscript on parchment from the Circa instans. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library
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We are told the natural world is ‘breaking down’. But forests don’t work like aeroplanes or human hearts
The Amazon rainforest, according to a 2021 study, is losing its capacity as a carbon sink and now emits more than it absorbs. In the tropics, marine scientists are reporting that coral reefs are in decline, threatening fish stocks. Equally concerning is research into the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that helps regulate the climate and is at risk of collapsing this century. The entire global ecosystem appears to be losing its ability to function.
We find this view in newspapers, magazines, technical reports and the journals of learned societies. But thinking about the environment in terms of its functions is also how many of us tend to understand the world. We may think that forests exist to produce oxygen, wetlands to filter water and bees to pollinate our crops.
Of special interest to humanity is the relationship of biodiversity to the variety of services provided by ecosystems and, in particular, to the stability of the flow of those services, such as the maintenance of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, preservation of soils, recycling of nutrients and provision of food from the sea.
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Warmer winters and springs are drying out wetlands and the birds are missing out on an abundance of insects to eat
When we think of spring migrant birds, it is easy to focus on songbirds such as warblers, flycatchers and swallows. Yet during late spring, many are waders – passing through Britain on their way north to breed in the high Arctic from their winter quarters in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s regular migration blog, it has been a good year for waders: including more common species such as ringed and grey plovers, bar-tailed godwit, sanderling and knot.
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Blackwater Estuary, Essex: Near a vast sweep of flats and creeks, one small pool has become a destination for both me and a parade of shore birds
I saw in this summer with the brief stays of Arctic-bound birds. Waders from the south came in such number and variety to my local patch near Tollesbury that for one week in May I went down to the marsh every dawn and dusk. I went to watch and feel the motion of it all at the turn of tide and time. Everything was change.
They kept coming, new species every day, ready to leave even as they arrived at this pool in the north-east corner of a field by the vast sweep of flats and creeks that give Essex more coastline than any other county in England.
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Sudden shifts from wet to dry weather, or vice versa, may foil typical drought- and flood-prevention measures
Rising temperatures may trigger a dangerous increase in “hydroclimatic whiplash” in rivers that would make traditional approaches to flood and drought planning insufficient, a study has found.
As temperatures rise owing to the worsening climate crisis, rivers will experience increasingly rapid transitions between heavy downpours and long dry spells – called hydroclimatic whiplash events – because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, intensifying rainfall extremes.
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London Tree Ring project aims to create corridors of plant and animal life around the city to strengthen its biodiversity
Harry Ewing is heaping branches and foliage from the forest floor on to a dead hedge, reinforcing the protective circle around his newly planted trees in Hadley Wood, north London. He is in a glade created by a fallen oak that was previously overrun with thick bramble.
“I feel very happy – the trees are growing already. It’s really nice seeing it when it starts,” says Ewing.
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Many small-scale landowners now include conservation measures alongside everyday farming. But progress is precarious, and the threat of guerrilla violence and poverty remain whichever candidate wins
Like most people settling in the area, Pablo Peña was seeking to escape violence and make a living from a patch of land when he moved to Guaviare in central Colombia. While his life has been strongly marked by conflict and deforestation, more than 30 years on he now focuses on community work and conservation.
Peña first visited Guaviare during his mandatory military service. Years later, in 1994, he settled down to farm in Guaviare’s Calamar, a town in a remote corner of the Amazon.
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Sea ice is melting fast, worsening the climate crisis, but a bold attempt to rethicken it is showing early signs of success
‘This would have been a wild dream a year ago,” says Andrea Ceccolini, standing on Arctic sea ice just a 4-mile snowmobile ride from the Inuit town of Cambridge Bay, northern Canada. To his left are sky blue ponds of meltwater created in the last few days by a sun that no longer sets in the high north summer. To his right, the sea ice is still a brilliant white, the light dusting of snow on top continuing to sparkle.
“It’s incredibly different, the boundary – I mean, you can point to it,” he says. The difference is the result of a bold geoengineering experiment being conducted by Ceccolini’s company, Real Ice, funded by the UK government.
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The short-tailed roundleaf bat was feared extinct until scientist Iroro Tanshi found one in Afi sanctuary in Nigeria, and set out to protect the only confirmed roosting colony
Just after sunrise, a cacophony of whoops and chatter can be heard over the verdant forests of the Afi mountain wildlife sanctuary. Nestled within the Cross River rainforest in south-east Nigeria, and spanning an area about the size of central Paris, the steep sanctuary is a haven for endangered gorillas, drill monkeys, the grey-necked rockfowl – and the short-tailed roundleaf bat.
The Nigerian biologist Iroro Tanshi remembers the moment she first spotted the endangered bat in 2016, during a field expedition for her PhD research. “We were trapping near a roost that night, so we caught a lot of bats,” says Tanshi. But, she adds: “This looked very, very different. Big-eared.” She promptly turned to her identification guide, which revealed that the tiny furry creature she was holding between her fingers was Hipposideros curtus, better known as the short-tailed roundleaf bat, last recorded in the wild in the 1970s.
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