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National Trust says one year after reintroduction they are enriching habitats and may be having kits this summer
They were released this time last year with fanfare, much hope and also, perhaps, a little trepidation.
Twelve months on, there have been ups and downs for the first beavers to be (officially) reintroduced into the wild in England since the semiaquatic mammals were hunted to extinction 400 years ago.
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Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate
When in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says.
The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads.
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Number fell 23% year on year in 2025 but waste companies say recycling systems still under strain from sheer volume
More than 6m vapes and vape pods are still being discarded every week in the UK, with waste management companies warning the sheer volume continues to strain recycling systems despite the ban on disposable e-cigarettes.
According to research by the recycling campaign group Material Focus, the 6.3m vapes and pods thrown away each week in 2025 represented a 23% reduction from the previous year.
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Lots of us aren’t very keen on bats. But the more we find out about them, the more amazing they turn out to be
Bats have a bad rep: in a recent survey by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), 46% of people expressed negative feelings about bats. But just look at them! Bat carer Liz Vinson, a volunteer with the BCT, calls them “little furry humans with huge jazz hands. They have individual characters: some are divas; some are bone idle.”
Shirley Thompson, BCT’s honorary education officer, has been championing bats since the 1980s. “I still think they’re magic,” she says. “The more you find out about them, the more you realise what amazing creatures they are.”
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Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke
Black rain fell in Iran earlier this month, a grim phenomenon seen previously in other war zones.
Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel. Unlike the clean controlled combustion inside an engine, uncontrolled burning leaves many particles of unburned fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke over affected areas.
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Deerness Valley, County Durham: Rushes were matches before matches were invented, vital to the rural poor for a little light in the dark. Time to give them a try myself
From a distance, with a little imagination, they look like a prickle of porcupines. Closer, they are spiky clumps of soft-rush Juncus effusus: prolific seed-setters, invaders with relentlessly spreading rhizomes, which seem to creep further across this pasture with every passing year. A native plant revelling in our new climate, after another mild, wet winter tips the struggle for domination of waterlogged grazing land even further in its favour.
Superficially, this is one of the least charismatic members of our native flora, with its bundles of long, olive green, quill-like leaves, but splitting these open reveals hidden beauty. Inside lies pith packed with tiny silver star-shaped cells, with their rays joined at their tips, forming a three-dimensional lattice: Stellate parenchyma in botanical parlance.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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This labor-intensive way of eating isn’t for everyone – and I’m not sure it’s for me. It requires planning and flexibility
When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”
I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that.
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Rena Effendi’s film Searching for Satyrus began with a quest for the endangered insect that bears her family name. Before long, she was reckoning with secrets, lies and the mysterious life of her wayward dad
High in the Caucasus mountains, the photojournalist Rena Effendi is searching for the butterfly that bears the name of the father she hardly knew. It is rocky, bleak, beautiful – and impossible. The grass is fried yellow by the increasingly fierce summer sun, the butterfly’s food has been grazed by sheep and, if it exists at all, Satyrus effendi usually flies only as a single insect across a square kilometre of rock, scree and slope.
A butterfly hunt makes an unlikely subject for a prize-winning documentary, but Searching for Satyrus is a gripping quest that reveals a remarkable part of the world little known to western audiences while examining issues from war and nationalism to global heating and extinction. Ultimately, however, Effendi’s search for her father’s butterfly becomes a moving reckoning with the secrets and lies in her family and the life of her wayward father.
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Jono Ridler has battled loneliness and fatigue as he aims to break the record for the longest unassisted staged swim – and raise awareness about fragile marine life
First he hears a faint chatter coming from the ocean depths, then clicks and squeaks as the creatures draw closer. From the murky edges of his goggles they appear, swift and agile, darting within 10cm of his bare outstretched arms and following him for a time, as he swims hundreds of metres off the coast of New Zealand.
Jono Ridler, an ultra-distance swimmer who is 1,254km (779 miles) into his world record attempt for the longest-ever unassisted staged swim, has learned to hear dolphins more than 15 minutes before they reach him and long before his support boats can see them.
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pub. Bowtie Press, UK, 2005
pub. Souvenir Press, London, 2002
First published by Henston Ltd, 1988, new edition 1994. Later edition published by Interpret Publishing, Dorking, Surrey UK.
pub. Henston, Guildford UK, 1985, revised 1987, 1988, 1994.
pub. Crossing Press CA 1994
