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Her research popularised the idea of the wood wide web, but the scientific backlash was brutal. As the author of The Mother Tree returns to the forest in a new book, she discusses her battle to reimagine our relationship with nature
In 2018, the ecologist and writer Suzanne Simard was conducting research in the forested Caribou Mountains of western Canada when a thunderstorm rolled in. She was with her two teenage daughters and her close friend and colleague, Jean Roach. They saw flashes of lightning, heard a loud rumble and then they smelled smoke. They were forced to run the half kilometre back to Simard’s truck as the trees behind them caught alight and the air grew thick. As they ran, animals burst out of the forest: a deer, a rabbit, a grey wolf. They reached the truck with no time to spare, all four of them covered in soot and dirt. Overhead, helicopters began circling the orange-black air, dropping water on the flames below.
Wildfires have become an ever bigger problem in Canada. The 2018 wildfires were the biggest in British Columbia’s history, but this record was broken in 2021, and then again in 2023, when fires consumed an area three times the size of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and the smoke travelled as far as New York City. The cause is not only global heating, which has brought hotter, dryer summers, but also the changing makeup of the forest. When logging companies clear forest, they replant it with fast-growing conifer species, but these trees are much more flammable than Canada’s diverse, native forest.
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Exclusive: Lough Neagh, which supplies drinking water for 40% of NI, contains genes resistant to last-resort antibiotics
Genes capable of creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs have been detected in the UK’s largest lake, which supplies drinking water to about 40% of Northern Ireland.
Testing of water from Lough Neagh, which has a surface area 26 times bigger than Windermere, found genes resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, including carbapenems – drugs reserved for life-threatening infections when all other treatments have failed.
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Ruabon grouse moor, Wrexham: Mating season is upon us. Will I be lucky enough to spot a courtship lek?
I’m shooting grouse on the moor today. There are two kinds here: red grouse, a gamebird reared and shot in its thousands; and its larger, rarer cousin, the black grouse. The latter is supposedly spared by a ban that remains voluntary despite catastrophic declines in recent decades. As it’s not shooting season, which runs from August to mid-December, I shoulder a camera, not a shotgun, hoping to snap one of these increasingly rare birds.
Springtime is when black grouse start to breed, so I arrive before dawn, which is when they lek – a courtship dance where they fan their tails, peck and scuffle with their rivals.
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Carmaker’s decision to drop NissanConnect EV app on relatively recent cars fuels warnings from experts
Owners of some Nissan Leaf electric vehicles are angry after the carmaker announced it would shut down an app that lets them remotely control battery charging and other functions.
Drivers of Leaf cars made before May 2019 and the e-NV200 van (produced until 2022) have been told that the NissanConnect EV app linked to their vehicles will “cease operation” from 30 March. This means they will lose remote services, including turning on the heating, and some map features.
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With anger stoked by Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business, we look at what has happened to some of the main players
Water companies have been in the public eye for the wrong reasons again recently. South West Water was in the dock pleading guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption, while the regulator fined South East Water £22.5m for repeated supply failures that affected more than 280,000 people over three years.
As the full scale of the sewage pollution scandal has been revealed to the public over the past six years, key figures working for the regulators and the privatised companies have been heavily criticised. Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business has focused attention on individuals at the heart of the scandal.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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As energy prices tripled in the 1970s due to Middle Eastern wars, Scandinavia, France and the Netherlands sped up green transition
When Middle Eastern wars sparked an oil crisis in the 1970s, tripling energy prices and throwing economies into chaos, some countries looked beyond short-term solutions. The French made nuclear the pillar of their power system. Scandinavians insulated buildings and funnelled waste heat into homes. The Dutch built bike lanes where others wanted motorways. The Danes developed wind turbines.
Such steps cleaned filthy air and cut imports from autocrats but took a back seat when Russia invaded Ukraine half a century later. Europe raced to buy gas from the US and Middle East. Policies to roll out renewables by cutting red tape helped reduce dependence, but calls to use less energy and reduce waste were muted. Industry lobbying and populist backlash have since sabotaged efforts to phase out petrol cars and fossil boilers.
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As the QuitGPT movement gains momentum, should people concerned about the environmental impacts of AI consider opting out?
Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com
It’s only a few years on from the release of ChatGPT but the race to plug artificial intelligence into everything has sparked a surge in datacentres, with escalating environmental costs.
Globally, datacentre power demand is growing four times faster than all other sectors, according to the International Energy Agency, and is on track to exceed Japan’s electricity use by 2030.
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In this week’s newsletter: In the wake of the DHS secretary’s firing, staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency share how her tenure has left the US less able to the respond to the climate crisis
Donald Trump made his first cabinet-level firing last week when he expelled Kristi Noem. In her one year leading the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Noem sparked widespread criticism for overseeing inhumane immigration policies and avoiding questions about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ shooting of protesters in Minneapolis. She even earned the nickname Ice Barbie.
“Good riddance,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey wrote on social media about her ousting.
Bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn
‘A sobering preview’: extreme heat now affects one in three people globally, study finds
Reaching net zero by 2050 ‘cheaper for UK than one fossil fuel crisis’
Good riddance to Kristi Noem. Her replacement won’t be an improvement | Moira Donegan
How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits
‘The perfect storm’: Trump has left the US less prepared for natural disasters, experts say
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We do not generally get epic tornadoes, sandstorms or avalanches, but we may get splashed by a bus on the road
Puddles, small and temporary pools of water typically formed by rainfall, hold a special place in British culture. They are the embodiment of the national weather’s tendency to produce mild inconvenience rather than drama. We do not generally get epic tornadoes, sandstorms or avalanches, but we do get wet feet, or splashed by a bus driving through a puddle.
The story of Walter Raleigh spreading his velvet cloak over a puddle so Queen Elizabeth I could cross while keeping her fine shoes dry is probably apocryphal. But Raleigh’s gallant if pointless gesture is typical of the low-stakes difficulty presented by puddles.
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