Human activity disturbs nesting of puffins and rare roseate terns at Coquet Island in NorthumberlandA bird sanctuary island in Northumberland, home to Britain’s rarest nesting seabird, is being threatened by an influx of “rogue” paddleboarders and kaya…
Young country diary: the puffins had their lunch, then I had mine
Lundy, Devon: From the ferry we saw a festival of seabirds, but the puffins were the luckiest spot of allAboard the MS Oldenburg to Lundy, I sat next to Jamie, an ornithologist studying the island’s sparrow population. Jamie helped me spot and identify…
Planting a vision: why the secret to rewilding success is about people, not trees
How do you persuade farmers and the local community to join one of Scotland’s biggest land restoration projects? Call in a psychologistA hunter, conservationist and psychologist are working on a rewilding project. It sounds like the start of a joke, th…
Race to the bottom: the disastrous blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea
One of the largest mining operations ever seen on Earth aims to despoil an ocean we are only barely beginning to understandA short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean…
Wild boar on streets of Rome are being used against me, says mayor
With just over a week until the city goes to the polls the animals may help to unseat Virginia RaggiA group of wild boar strutting along a traffic-filled road in Rome has catapulted the issue of the Italian capital’s state of decay to the top of the de…
The bear truth: why happy pandas can’t be bothered to find a partner
Researchers now think pandas’ notoriously low libido is because they are too comfortable to make the effort to search for a mateName: Panda sex.Age: 18m years old. Continue reading…
Dancing, starry dwarf and narrow-mouthed: new species make India a frog paradise
Dozens of discoveries in recent years have shown the country to be a treasure trove of amphibiansIt is barely the size of a thumbnail, so it may not come as a surprise that it took so long to spot the starry dwarf frog. It was discovered sitting next t…
Scientists investigate hundreds of guillemot deaths on UK coastline
Seabird carcasses discovered along Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Scottish shores, with many more found emaciatedSeveral hundred seabirds have been found dead along the coasts of north-east England and Scotland, while many have been discovered ema…
Horror at the Faroes dolphin slaughter is only human – but it risks hypocrisy | Philip Hoare
Our response to a mass cetacean hunt reveals man’s duplicitous attitudes to animalsWitnessing the mass movement of wild animals can seem to be a rebuttal of the disastrous news we hear, daily, of our natural environment. We know they are threatened, in…
A flying great white shark: Chris Fallows’ best photograph
‘Adolescent great whites lurk in the depths waiting for seals. Then they launch themselves at the surface – and their sheer power takes them clear of the water’There is no more iconic species on the planet than the great white shark. Everybody knows wh…