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Investors in Emblehope Moor will get their financial returns – and then it will be given to community or charity owners
It is difficult to find the most remote place in England. There is no public transport, no roads and no sign of any human habitation. Online route finders mistakenly direct cars up a grassy track. But miles along gravel forest roads in the far north of Northumberland is the largest contiguous rewilding site under single ownership in the country.
The vast glacial bowl of 7,500-acre Emblehope Moor has been bought for £8.5m by Restore, a nature restoration company that works with landowners across Britain.
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Torrential rain causes widespread damage; while north-west South Africa hit by thunderstorms and central-southern US faces oppressive heat
Typhoon Saudel brought days of torrential rain to Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong provinces in south-east China last week. The city of Putian, in Fujian province, recorded 416.5mm of rain in a 24-hour period between Thursday and Friday, with surrounding villages recording more than 500mm in the same period. In Fujian, authorities estimate that almost 600,000 people were evacuated from high-risk, flood-prone areas. A further 128,000 people in 53 counties were also affected across Jiangxi, with emergency evacuations affecting 9,000 people.
Flooding, landslips and infrastructure damage were reported widely in the region. More than 2,500 teachers and students were trapped in a school compound in the Zhejiang city of Wenzhou on Wednesday after extreme rainfall caused flash floods in low-lying areas. At least 1,260 people reportedly had to be rescued in Putian after a river embankment collapsed on Thursday, flattening 100 homes. On Saturday, a landslip in a village of Suichuan county, in Jiangxi province, killed three people and nine others remaining missing.
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Gabna community fear their traditional herding routes will be sacrificed as far-right rhetoric ramps up against them
For the Swedish-Sami politician Åsa Larsson Blind, it was something of a watershed moment in the national conversation around Indigenous rights.
In late April and May, as the country geared up for this month’s elections, the deputy prime minister and energy minister, Ebba Busch, gave a series of speeches and articles publicly attacking the Sami’s rights to graze reindeer herds on their ancestral lands. Reindeer husbandry, Busch said at one press conference, “is an industry that affects very large areas, but has limited economic significance”.
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Lynchat, Spey Valley: So many stories fill the iron age Raitts Cave, from wild legend to the more quotidian truth of its history
The word “cave” is full of possibility. It speaks of darkness, secrets, treasures and escapees, all of which can be found in the stories of Raitts Cave, which lies in a field near the hamlet of Lynchat, Inverness-shire.
Its Gaelic name is An Uaimh Mhor, “the great cave”, and one legend claims it was built by giants, the females hollowing out the earth and carrying the soil in their aprons to dump in the River Spey, while the males cut its massive stone slabs from the hills above. Because, in fact, it is not a natural cave, but a subterranean passage, shaped like a horseshoe and lined with stone.
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Global AC demand will inevitably accelerate as the world continues to warm amid the climate crisis
The greenest campaigners against climate change have long suffered from a crippling shortcoming: they too often frame the challenge as a problem of excess consumption. This motivates calls to “degrow” the economy and to curb the population. The claim is that humans consume too many resources, which in the context of climate change means too much energy.
Nowhere has the tension between this proposition and reality become more palpable during this sweltering summer than in the conversation over air conditioning.
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Experts say invasive species are creating ‘pollinator deserts’ and could have serious impact on food security
British beekeepers have called for a national awareness campaign about the impact of Asian hornets as they warned the invasive species was creating “pollinator deserts” and threatening food security.
Native to south-east Asia, the yellow-legged hornet is thought to have arrived in Europe in 2004 and has continued to spread ever since, its numbers probably boosted by increasingly warm springs and summers.
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Isle of Lismore, Argyll: They skim over the surface like stones, making such a hullabaloo you could hear them a mile away
I hear them before I see them: a wailing, or something more like ululation. High-pitched, repeated vocalisations that are neither man nor cat, but somewhere in between. I throw open the cabin door, unsure what to look for, and for a moment see nothing new: only the rocky strand and the sweep of dark wrack high above the shoreline.
The strange, warbling sound comes again. Ai-ai-ai-ai.Not quite screaming, not quite howling, not quite trilling, but all of those things at once.
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Epic plankton blooms make filming in the North Sea notoriously difficult. But a new documentary gives a rare glimpse of the kaleidoscopic life – seals, sharks, tuna, orcas and shorthorn sculpins – lurking beneath its waves
The North Sea, as even its greatest admirers will concede, often glowers an unappetising grey or brown. And we assume that its dull exterior is matched by sediment-filled waters where little life dwells. For years, the friends and family of Peter van Rodijnen wondered why the Dutch cinematographer and diving fanatic spent so much time exploring “this murky bowl of soup”. But, inspired by a childhood of watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures in rather more enticingly temperate waters, Van Rodijnen’s dedication to North Sea diving gradually revealed its hidden wonders.
Over 20 years, as camera technology improved, Van Rodijnen obtained more and more amazing footage of marine life near his home on the Netherlands coast. Nearly a decade ago, he teamed up with director Mark Verkerk. “We started with the idea,” says Van Rodijnen, “that if somebody can make a movie about the North Sea, it’s got to be us.”
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Jasmin Graham, a shark scientist and science communicator, also makes time in her day to practice her hobbies and play music bingo with friends
“Sharks are not monsters, they just need better PR,” writes Jasmin Graham. And she should know: Graham is a shark scientist and science communicator.
Here’s what a day in Graham’s life in Sarasota, Florida looks like.
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Microbats and wombats among the most common species found in buildings, with some discovered in letterboxes or air conditioning systems
Possums in the roof, bats in the curtains and ducks on the balcony: new research has revealed how native animals are making themselves at home in our houses.
Researchers have analysed a decade of wildlife rescue reports and found brushtail and ringtail possums make up half of all cases of animals in buildings, followed by microbats and bare-nosed wombats.
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