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Corridors of nectar-rich plants encourage pollination and brighten up city streets at the same time
Take a closer look at the colourful plants dotted along an initially unassuming Bristol alleyway and you’ll see them teeming with insects. Bumblebees, hoverflies and ladybirds throng around a mixture of catmint, yarrow, geraniums and anemones. “It’s buzzing with pollinators now,” Flora Beverley says.
Just over a year ago, the alley we are walking down was a dreary, litter-strewn dumping ground. Now, thanks to the pollinator pathways project, it is filled with nectar-rich plants and bee hotels. Colourful murals line the walls. A neighbour and her son passing by stop to tell Beverley they watered the plants yesterday. The local people who helped to transform the pathways continue to maintain them too.
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Data shows more than 1m hectares torched so far this year, with records also broken for CO2 and other air pollutants
Wildfires ravaging the EU have torched more than 1m hectares this year, marking 2025 as the worst year on record, a full month before the fire season ends.
Deadly infernos that have emptied out villages and forced farmers to become firefighters have engulfed four times as much land this year as the average for the same period over the past two decades, according to official data that was updated on Friday and may be revised further.
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Researchers ‘shocked’ to discover some species settling down for sleep 50 minutes later than rural counterparts
Urban birds stay up significantly later than their rural counterparts, according to research that highlights the impact of light pollution on wildlife.
The study, based on recordings submitted by bird enthusiasts to a popular species identification and mapping website, showed that light pollution caused birds to sing for an average of 50 minutes longer each day, with some species waking up an hour earlier and settling down for the evening an hour later.
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Manchester: The woodlice, worms, slugs and snails are all working hard to make the compost as good as possible
The fresh “forest floor” smell filled my nostrils as Mum twisted the lid off the compost bin. “Get a lungful,” she said, sticking her head over it and encouraging me to do so. It smelled fantastic – magical almost – raw nature broken down into dark, crumbly, nutrient rich compost; not pungent and wet like in winter.
We call it our black gold. We’ve been taking turns to stir it all year, rain or shine, mixing our compost “soup”. We add layers of kitchen waste – greens and browns – fruit skins, vegetable peelings and cardboard tubes. We chop them up so they break down more easily. We water our heap when it feels dry, with the rainwater that collects in our water butt and rolls down the drainpipe from Dad’s shed.
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Glenisla, Angus: Scottish thatchers are few and far between, so I’m lucky to be working on this roundhouse in a glen that’s rich in wildlife
As I drive north through Angus, birch and rowan begin to replace ash and oak, and by the time I reach the foot of the glen, the purple-streaked tops of the Cairngorms have come into view. Glenisla is the last lowland valley before the mountains begin, and it’s home to a rare sight on either side of the Highland line: a thatched roof.
The building is a lodge house on the Knockshannoch estate, and is believed to be the only remaining thatched roundhouse in Scotland. I’ve driven three hours north from the Scottish Borders to repair a hole in its roof (Scottish thatchers are few and far between, so travelling long distances is not unusual here).
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More than 300 dead after downpours in mountainous regions and several killed in Indian city of Mumbai
Heavy monsoon rains have continued to pummel the Indian subcontinent over the past week, bringing devastating flooding and landslides and leaving hundreds of people dead in what has already been one of the deadliest monsoon seasons in recent years.
Moist air surging inland from the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea was driven into Pakistan and north-west India late last week by strong southwesterly monsoon winds. Combined with developing areas of low pressure, this triggered a succession of torrential downpours.
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Leading researcher forecasts ‘beginning of the age of non-tourism’ despite industry returning to pre-pandemic highs
It was a prediction nobody wanted to hear. On the main stage of the world’s biggest tourism fair, Stefan Gössling, a leading researcher in sustainable transport, had just calmly announced the looming death of the holiday industry.
“We have already entered the beginning of the age of non-tourism,” said Gössling, to an uneasy audience of travel agencies, car rental companies, cruise operators and hoteliers.
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Opponents say communities weren’t consulted and health and environmental impacts are in question as approvals of waste-to-energy plants gather pace
On Melbourne’s suburban fringe, plans have been quietly taking shape that will change how Victoria deals with its rubbish. Last Wednesday, seven waste-to-energy plants were given the green light, in addition to four already approved – a total surpassing the rest of the country combined.
Together, the new projects will have a licence to burn through 2.35m tonnes of rubbish a year – more than double the 1m-tonne limit the Victorian parliament set when it first legislated the waste-to-energy scheme in 2022.
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Britain’s promises of a post-Brexit green revolution have unravelled, with protections for wildlife, water and air weaker now than at any point in recent decades
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Brexit has been terrible for environmental legislation in this country, since we left the EU in 2021. While the EU has strengthened its environmental protections, the UK has drifted away from those regulations, in some cases our politicians deciding to rip up EU environmental laws entirely.
I have been spending the past couple of years tracking this divergence, alongside some excellent analysts from the Institute for European Environmental Policy. And as we reported this week, it’s looked pretty bleak, with laws on important areas from air pollution to water quality weakened.
UK ‘used to be a leader on climate’, lament European lawmakers
‘High-risk sites’: where are the UK’s ‘forever chemical’ hotspots?
Labour using Brexit to weaken nature laws, MPs say
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