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Key tourist route closed and residents rallying round as battle against wildfire expected to go on for several days
The battle to contain a large wildfire spreading across the New Forest will go on for several days, experts have said, as wind changes and a desiccated landscape fuel the flames.
Smoke billowed above the deserted A31 road, the main tourist route into the New Forest national park where tens of thousands of families are on holiday, late on Tuesday while a helicopter flew above the blaze. Firefighters at the scene said they were trying to contain several hotspots across the more than 100 hectares (247 acres) of dried heathland as winds swirled over the area.
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Tenacious and confounding, the horseshoe crab pre-dates dinosaurs and has copper-based blood vital to vaccine safety
They pre-date dinosaurs, eat food using their legs and contain blue blood that we use to keep us healthy. Horseshoe crabs are the supreme, if offbeat, survivors of the invertebrate world.
Often called “living fossils” for visually obvious reasons – horseshoe crabs resemble a sort of prehistoric helmet (their Japanese name translates as “helmet crab”) – these animals have barely changed appearance along a lineage that stretches back 445m years.
It’s invertebrate of the year again! From 3-12 August, every day we will profile one of the thousands of amazing invertebrates that our readers have nominated. And then, when you’ve heard about all of them, we’ll open the voting so you can choose your favourites. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with thoughts and ideas: email us at [email protected] with Invertebrate in the subject line.
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The wild capture and release of a female big cat into a nature reserve is the first step towards reintroducing a population that hasn’t been seen for 70 years
On 31 July, “Umit” – which means hope in Kazakh – was released into a nature reserve on the edge of Lake Balkhash after more than a decade of careful planning to return the caspian tiger to the region. With this release, Kazakhstan became the first country to restore its tiger range after they had been thought extinct, with the last reliable sighting in the country recorded more than 70 years ago.
Umit – a wild-caught female tiger transported from the Russian far east – will be joined by more big cats in the coming years, with plans to establish a self-sustaining population of about 50. A wild-caught male flown from Russia is still being monitored by authorities and will be released when he is judged fit to survive alone. Two wild tiger cubs are also being reared on the reserve in special enclosures, with as little human contact as possible, and are likely to be released into the marshlands next year, to feast on boar, deer and kulans, a type of wild donkey.
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Reporters Jillian Ambrose and Damian Carrington discussed their story on oil firms’ profits amid the war in Iran and the climate crisis and answered your related questions
PCMcGarry asks: Given the facts that we live on a collection of islands and that tides are predictable, what serious efforts have been made to harness sea power and with what success?
Damian:
The UK is actually home to the world’s most powerful tidal stream turbine, operated by Orbital Marine Power, off Orkney and, the company says now moving into commercial deployment. But the device produces 2MW of power, the same as a small wind turbine. So there is a huge scale up needed to make a difference, and putting electric equipment in moving salty water is tough.
There are big tidal plants in France, South Korea and China, but a large tidal lagoon project for Swansea a decade ago was cancelled by ministers in 2018 who said it was too expensive compared with alternatives such as offshore wind farms and nuclear power.
The climate crisis is causing winter rainfall in the UK to increase, as the Met Office states:
“The winter half-year (October to March) for the most recent decade, 2016–2025, has been 3% wetter than 1991–2020, and 13% wetter than 1961–1990.”
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Amid world pressure from heatwaves and fertiliser shortages, billionaire’s business has invested in circular farming and biomethane
There is a distinctive smell of cow manure in the air at the Duke of Westminster’s dairy farm near Chester. It is a world away from the collection of grand West End properties controlled by the duke that form the backbone of his near £10bn fortune, a decade on from becoming Britain’s youngest billionaire.
As part of his 349-year-old Grosvenor empire, Lea Manor Farm on the duke’s Eaton Estate in north-west England has fared better than most dairy farms in recent years.
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Devons Road estate residents describe months-long ordeal of not being able to wash, clean or cook for much of the day
Christmas Day in east London. Beatrice Asante empties a bag of potatoes into her kitchen sink and turns on the tap. Nothing. She turns it off and on again. Still nothing. What now?
Asante rushes out to the only shop that is open, the local Nisa convenience store. She buys several big plastic bottles of water. Enough, she thinks, to make dinner and to last until the taps start running again.
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Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire:The tradition of well dressing is strong in the Peaks, and this year, I found one featuring a certain 100-year-old naturalist
I could already hear the noises of appreciation as I walked up the lane towards St Martin’s church. “Oh yes,” I heard a woman say. “That’s lovely.” Turning before the lych gate, I spotted a small knot of people standing in front of a small and apparently ancient stone basin on which rested the white frame of this year’s well dressing.
The tradition of well dressing, strong in the Peak District, gives thanks for a community’s supply of safe water and is currently celebrated in more than a dozen villages across Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Given how the drought has left pastures surrounding Stoney Middleton brown and exhausted, this annual event seems more pertinent than ever.
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Eilish Rothney’s first instinct was to get rid of the wasps entering her converted shipping container in Norfolk. Now she enjoys their constant hum
When wasps began streaming through a rusted gap in her office door one June morning, Eilish Rothney’s first instinct was the same most people would have: get rid of them. The reserve manager for the Trinity Broads, part of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, had discovered a wasp colony taking up residence in her office, a converted shipping container.
“They just built the nest inside my door,” she says. “My first thought was: ‘Oh no, I have to get rid of that now.’ But then I realised: ‘Wait, why? Why do I have to do that?’”
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Volunteers are on the lookout for sick birds as outbreak shatters ‘fairytale belief’ that disease would not reach Australia
Bird enthusiast Jean Turner hoped avian flu would never arrive at her doorstep.
At her home on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, bossy fairy wrens chirp at her from the deck, grey currawongs clumsily fall into her bird bath, and fluffy, hooded plover chicks emerge from speckled eggs in front of her binoculars.
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Conservationists have created a ‘coastal corridor’ of ocean-based projects designed to preserve and nourish vulnerable marine life
From disappearing manatees to bleached coral reefs, gender-changing turtles and oyster beds destroyed by hurricanes, no other state’s marine life faces the magnitude of climate-related challenges that Florida’s does.
Now, wildlife authorities are attempting to bring some cohesion to tackling the diverse slate of issues by borrowing from a playbook that has already proved successful on land.
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