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Woodland Trust also finds significant north-south divide in tree cover, leaving many people at risk of poor health
Nigel Farage’s constituency of Clacton-on-Sea is a “tree desert”, leaving people more exposed to air pollution, poorer health, lower life expectancy and the impact of rising temperatures, according to a new report.
The Essex town is rated the worst-performing for equal access to trees in England, with the highest proportion of urban residents – 98.2% – living in neighbourhoods with critically low access to trees.
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If resolution is passed, governments will recognisetheir legal responsibility to cut greenhouse gas emissions
The UN’s willingness to tackle the climate crisis in a fair and legal way will be tested next week during a critical vote of the UN general assembly in New York.
Every member state is being asked to back a series of landmark findings on climate justice from the international court of justice (ICJ) as part of a new political resolution. If passed, it will mean governments recognise they have a legal responsibility to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, including tackling fossil fuels.
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King Arthur is said to have transformed into a chough when he died, its red feet and beak representing his bloody end
Decades after disappearing from the jagged cliffs around Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall, a bird with legendary connections to the area has returned.
The custodian of Tintagel, English Heritage, and local ornithologists have declared that choughs – charismatic corvids with red beaks and feet – are back.
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Greenpeace finds cocktail of pesticides including seven banned in EU may have been used on seven categories of vegetables and soft fruit
It is a beautiful early summer Sunday afternoon and you have stopped for a pub lunch. A waiter sets down a roast served with carrots, peas, parsnips, potatoes and onion gravy, and then for pudding, strawberries and cream. It feels like the perfect rustic meal to accompany a day in the country.
However, a report by Greenpeace, published on Thursday, has found that the ingredients of the traditional Sunday roast have potentially been treated with a cocktail of more than 100 pesticides. Data from the Fera pesticide usage survey for 2024, showed 102 – including seven banned in the EU – were used on seven vegetable and soft fruit categories.
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Scientists are focusing on improving apples’ resilience after stressors like wild temperature swings and drought
Terence Robinson still remembers the Valentine’s Day Massacre – of 2015, not 1929.
For the Cornell University horticulture professor, the term doesn’t conjure up Tommy guns and Al Capone’s Chicago. Instead of a gangster, the culprit in Robinson’s massacre was the weather. And its victims were the apple orchards of the north-eastern United States.
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A warm spell mitigated some of the effects of the strike but colder weather would have taken their own toll
May 1926 is remembered in Britain for the general strike, when the TUC called out millions of workers in support of miners who had been locked out while fighting a pay cut.
The strike, which lasted from 3 May to 12 May, took place during a spell of relatively mild weather with little rain. Transport was disrupted but fine conditions allowed many people to walk or cycle to work. There was a shortage of coal but this was mitigated because there was less need for heating. The TUC, fearing legal action and doubting the strike could be sustained, called it off after nine days.
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Maxey Cut, Cambridgeshire: There’s so much precious wildlife around this old flood-relief channel, including sea trout and eels. But I’ve come to hear the purr of the turtle dove
The morning air is moist and utterly still. Above the flood bank, dappled grey cirrocumulus parts to a clear blue. Birds sound from every side: the cuckoo’s insistent call over a chorus of warblers – the sedge warbler’s machine-gun rattle, the willow warbler’s falling cadence, and, piercing them all, the explosive eruptions of a Cetti’s warbler buried deep in cover.
But it is the turtle dove that I have come to hear: that low, tender purring, almost lost in the greater chorus. When it comes, my heart lifts. I find a lone bird on a telegraph wire, one of its favoured perches. Through the binoculars, I make out a pink-grey breast, a neat black-and-white collar, and rust‑red feathers on the back, each one finely marked with black.
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Ever fancied creating your own enormous effigy? One Cornish art collective has reinvigorated the practice – and now they want to draw on the public’s skills, too
This New Year’s Eve, environmentalist and author Lisa Schneidau did something she had never done before. She welcomed in 2026 with giants. “At a certain time of the evening, they started appearing from all over the town. Then everyone flooded out of their houses and congregated into a massive procession of giants and lights and drums and music. It was absolutely extraordinary.”
Schneidau’s fairytale experience happened in Lostwithiel, the Cornish home town of the art collective The Lost Giants (TLG), a group of craftspeople and artists reviving the British tradition of making giants and beasties and goliaths. The giants she celebrated with were made of wooden frames and cloth, papier-mache and card, but were full of life.
To apply for a giant, go to The Lost Giants website
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Pioneering environmentalist Charles Waterton enclosed his parkland and lake near Wakefield in the 1820s
Over four years in the 1820s, Charles Waterton built a 9ft-high, 3-mile-long wall around the parkland and lake of Walton Hall. The fox- and poacher-proof boundary enclosed what could be the world’s first nature reserve, completed in Yorkshire 200 years ago.
Waterton, an eccentric, controversial and pioneering environmentalist, built nest boxes, special banks for sand martins and innovative bird hides, and offered local people sixpence for every hedgehog they brought into his reserve.
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Matter Industries founder Adam Root has developed a filter to trap microfibres at home and on an industrial scale. But is it just a drop in the ocean?
The dinky device slots seamlessly into the modest space above my washing machine. A pipe snakes down from it, drawing in wastewater from my clothes washes. At the end of each wash cycle, the machine makes a polite whirring noise: that’s the sound of the groundbreaking bit of technology working, according to its inventor, Adam Root. That invention is a microplastics filter.
“The most common thing we hear [from customers] is: ‘I cannot believe how much material is coming out of the washing machine,’” says Root. “Somebody sent me [photos of] dinner-platefuls.”
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