With hundreds of highly prized species, bird tourism is thriving in the country – and farmers are increasingly turning their land into nature reserves

When it came to dividing up his late father’s farm between five brothers, Vinicio Bacuilima says he drew the short straw. Maraksacha, on the main road out of Ecuador’s capital Quito, is a tiny patch of land on the edge of a steep ravine, making it very difficult to make a living from farming.

Then Bacuilima’s wife Anita Cajas had an idea: turn their paltry inheritance into a site to attract visiting birders. Creating the Maraksacha Reserve was a risky venture, but it paid off, with feeders attracting a host of colourful hummingbirds and tanagers.

Readers extol the benefits of sustainable gardening in response to a long read about the untapped potential of home gardens

Kate Bradbury’s article struck a very loud chord (Where the wild things are: the untapped potential of our gardens, parks and balconies, 28 May). I have been gardening for many moons, having caught the bug as a child, and have gone from the days of double digging and spraying anything that moves to the current advice to avoid digging and to plant for the climate. In all that time it barely occurred to me that what I was doing might be bad for the planet, but lately I have wondered if gardening itself might be a problem.

It’s not just the paving and plastic grass, but the constant desire to have the latest plants, the most up-to-date garden designs, and the need to buy ever more compost, chemicals, and equipment. All of this uses energy and natural resources, and comes with the need to dispose of the unfashionable, whether it be vegetation or planters or decking. It’s a huge industry, and shows like Chelsea add fuel to the fire with the annual catwalk of new ideas.

From crab monitoring and bear patrols to rescue operations, the watchmen are the official eyes and ears of indigenous communities

It’s Delaney Mack’s first time pulling crab traps and she is unsure what to do. Mack, the newest member of the Nuxalk Guardian Watchmen, has had months of training for the multifaceted job, which might on any given day include rescuing a kayaker, taking ocean samples or monitoring a logging operation. But winching crabs up 100ft from the sea floor was not in the manual.

Soon, however, the four-person operation is humming along. The crab survey is a vital part of their work as guardians of this Indigenous territory in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was started more than 15 years ago in response to heavy commercial crab fishing in an area where the federal government had done little independent monitoring to determine if a fishery was sustainable.

Gardens could be part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis. But what are we doing? Disappearing them beneath plastic and paving

In my 20s I lived in Manchester, on the sixth floor of a block of council flats just off the A57, or Mancunian (Mancy) Way. A short walk from Manchester Piccadilly station and the city centre, it was grey, noisy and built up. I loved every piece of it – my first stab at adulthood, at living on my own. I painted my bedroom silver and slept on a mattress on the floor, and I grew sweetcorn, tomatoes and courgettes in pots on the balcony. (I was 24 – of course I grew sweetcorn on the balcony.)

I worked and played in the bars and clubs of Manchester’s gay village, and I would walk home in the early hours, keys poking through my clenched fist to protect me from would-be attackers, and I would see hedgehogs.

Female pair are third litter born at Blair Drummond under endangered species breeding programme

A Scottish safari park has announced the birth of two female lemur pups native to Madagascar.

Nova and Evie, who are living at Blair Drummond safari and adventure park, near Stirling, were born on 14 April, and the park has now publicly announced their birth.

The state wasn’t the best place to get pregnant in the first place, with some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US

Louisiana is not a great place to get pregnant. If you need an abortion, a near-total ban means it’s almost impossible to get one, even in cases of rape or incest – anyone who provides an abortion deemed illegal can go to jail for 15 years. And if you plan on having the baby, you have to deal with some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US. Although, as Senator Bill Cassidy has helpfully noted, “if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear”. In other words, if you ignore Black people (a third of his constituents), things look a little better. So that’s OK then!

The M11 motorway: I started my experiment hoping to see farm animals, maybe pheasants – but all I could see was litter

We were going to take a flight from Stansted airport, and as we whizzed out of London I decided to conduct a kind of city boy’s experiment: what wildlife could I observe on the way? While we were still in London, buildings dominated the scenery and nature was nowhere to be found. I looked forward to the motorway, in the hope of spotting something on the green strips by the road.

What did I see? An almost endless stream of litter. Plastic bags, cups, countless unidentifiable pieces of rubbish, even old tyres.

A football academy will be built on the site and campaigners say high court decision threatens other public parks

Public parks across London and beyond are being put at risk by a high court judgment in favour of Enfield council leasing a rewilded golf course to Tottenham Hotspur for a football academy, campaigners say.

The court has ruled that Enfield council is allowed to hand over more than half of the 97-hectare (240-acre) Whitewebbs Park to Spurs, which has submitted plans to the council to build a new women’s and girls’ academy on the green belt site.

Organisers expect 75% of identified bacterial pollution will be gone by the time the starting gun fires for the open water events

Beside a sign saying “No swimming”, Pierre Fuzeau defiantly pulled on his swimming cap, slipped into the green water of the Ourcq canal on Paris’s northern edge, and set off with a strong front-crawl.

The 66-year-old company director regularly joins his open-water swimming group for well-organised illegal dips, including in the River Seine, where swimming has been banned since 1923 largely as a result of the health risk from unclean water and bacteria from human waste.

Young children often love wildlife and nature but find them boring, uncool or ‘icky’ in their teens

From sniffing dandelions to prodding frogspawn and chasing butterflies, young children are often automatically and unashamedly drawn to nature. Then a chasm opens. During adolescence, many declare wildlife boring, “icky” or uncool, while the allure of social networks and fast fashion intensifies, alongside mounting pressures to conform to the norms of increasingly nature-blind communities.

In an era of climate breakdown and ecological collapse, the teenage slump in connection to wild nature is not just unfortunate, it is deeply perilous. Right now, we need to be nurturing fierce, clued-up generations of young adults, equipped and empowered to fight tooth and claw for the biosphere that supports all our lives. The rewilding movement, with its proactive, hope-infused ethos, offers inspiration and practical solutions to reconnect teenagers with nature and inspire them to demand a wilder, healthier future.

Agriculture is often seen as the enemy of biodiversity, but in an excerpt from her new book Sophie Yeo explains how techniques from the middle ages allow plants and animals to flourish

The Vile clings on to the edge of the Gower peninsula. Its fields are lined up like strips of carpet, together leading to the edge of the cliff that drops into the sea. Each one is tiny, around 1-2 acres. From the sky, they look like airport runways, although this comparison would have seemed nonsensical to those who tended them for most of their existence.

That is because the Vile is special: a working example of how much of Britain would have been farmed during the middle ages. Farmers have most likely been trying to tame this promontory since before the Norman conquest.

Conservationists say Barbara Creecy has failed to implement vital changes to stop fishing around colonies amid fears African penguins could be extinct by 2035

It’s 3.40pm on a Thursday and Penguin 999.000000007425712 has just returned to the Stony Point penguin colony in Betty’s Bay, South Africa, after a day of foraging. She glides elegantly through the turquoise waters before clambering comically up the rocks towards the nest where her partner is incubating two beige eggs. She doesn’t realise it, but a rudimentary knee-high fence has funnelled her towards a state-of-the-art weighbridge. When she left the colony at 6.45am this morning she weighed 2.7kg. Now, after a full day of hunting, she has gained only 285g.

Eleanor Weideman, a coastal seabird project manager for BirdLife South Africa, is concerned. “In a good year they come back with their stomachs bulging,” she says. Penguins can put on up to one-third of their body weight in a single day of foraging. “But there’s just no fish out there any more.”

Ever since this ‘killer’ species arrived in the UK in 2016, there have been horror stories about it – and they have picked up pace in recent months. So are these hornets nasty predators or just misunderstood?

Can a single insect reshape history? A queen hornet from the Vespa velutina species, which is believed to have stowed away in Chinese pottery, could make that claim. She was shipped to the port of Bordeaux in 2004. Having already mated with multiple males, she flew off into the sunshine of south-west France and built a nest. From that single nest, up to 500 new queens could have emerged. For a few years, her offspring quietly prospered. By the time the authorities paid attention to this predatory yellow-legged carnivore, known as the Asian hornet, it was too late. Twenty years on, France is home to an estimated 500,000 nests, while the hornet has cruised into Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands – and the UK.

Ever since the first Asian hornet turned up in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, in 2016, there have been horror stories about this “killer”, a “nasty” predator that decimates much-loved honeybees and may threaten human livelihoods and health. The stories have reached fever pitch recently: “UK Asian hornet hotspots mapped as killer species invades Britain” warned the Express on Tuesday. We love a good villain, especially a “foreign” one. But is this media scaremongering? How destructive is this recent European arrival? And will it become a permanent British resident this summer?

Five nature reserves will be created each year for next five years to celebrate coronation of King Charles

A temperate rainforest in the Lake District has been declared a national nature reserve in a move that will protect the rare ancient habitat for future generations.

The Borrowdale rainforest is one of the few surviving examples of a “mysterious and untouched” landscape that covers less than 1% of the UK.

The No Mow May campaign has persuaded local authorities to protect biodiversity. But bigger changes are needed

This time last year, residents of the council estate where I live in Greenwich were left in tears after local authority contractors mowed down scores of newly planted purple alliums on our shared lawn just days after they’d bloomed. In minutes, one man with a strimmer had reduced the flowers that my neighbours, many of whom do not have private gardens, had grown over months to mere mulch.

Shamefaced, this year the council sought to make amends by sowing a biodiversity meadow near where the alliums had met their fate. The new wildflowers were doing well – on track to compensate for the previous year’s blunder – until, to the consternation of residents, they were yet again mown down by council contractors. Even the local authorities’ own efforts to improve the biodiversity of the borough proved no match for its trigger-happy lawnmower men.

Phineas Harper is a writer and curator

Department of Conservation fines 50-year-old after seeing footage of stunt on social media, and described his behaviour as ‘a blatant example of stupidity’

The actions of a New Zealand man filmed jumping off a boat in what appears to be an attempt to “body slam” an orca have been described as “shocking” and “idiotic” by the country’s Department of Conservation.

In a video shared to Instagram in February, a man can be seen jumping off the edge of a boat into the sea off the coast of Devonport in Auckland, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to touch or “body slam” the orca, the department said. He leaps into the water very close to a male orca, as a calf swims nearby, while someone on board the boat films it. Others can be heard laughing and swearing in the background.

High temperatures in Mexico have been linked to dozens and perhaps hundreds of deaths of howler monkeys

It’s so hot in Mexico that howler monkeys are falling dead from the trees.

At least 83 of the midsize primates, who are known for their roaring vocal calls, were found dead in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Others were rescued by residents, including five that were rushed to a local veterinarian who battled to save them.

The well-preserved huia bird feather was expected to fetch up to NZD$3,000 but ended up selling for more than NZD$46,000

A rare and highly prized feather from the extinct New Zealand huia bird has sold for NZD$46,521 (US$28,365), making it by far the world’s most expensive feather ever sold at auction.

The hammer price far exceeded initial estimates of between $2,000-$3,000, and blew the previous record-holder’s price out of the water. Until Monday’s sale, the previous record sale was another huia feather that sold in 2010 for $8,400.

‘Catastrophic’ global decline due to dams, mining, diverting water and pollution threatens humans and ecosystems, study warns

Migratory fish populations have crashed by more than 80% since 1970, new findings show.

Populations are declining in all regions of the world, but it is happening fastest in South America and the Caribbean, where abundance of these species has dropped by 91% over the past 50 years.

Right now, across much of the midwestern and eastern US, trillions of cicadas are crawling out from the soil. And this year is extra special, because two broods are erupting from the ground at once. The first brood hasn’t been seen for 13 years, the other for 17 years and the last time they emerged together Thomas Jefferson was president. Ian Sample speaks to entomologist Dr Gene Kritsky to find out what’s going on, why periodical cicadas emerge in cycles of prime numbers and how they keep time underground

Clips: CBN News

Everything you need to know about the US cicada-geddon

Vulnerable birds deviating from migratory routes by up to 155 miles, which could affect breeding

Eagles that have migratory routes through Ukraine have shifted their flight paths to avoid areas affected by the conflict, researchers have found.

GPS data has revealed that greater spotted eagles not only made large detours after the invasion began, but also curtailed pitstops to rest and refuel, or avoided making them altogether.

These spaces are crucial for our wellbeing, but cash-strapped councils are being forced to treat them as revenue earners

My local green space, Brockwell Park in Brixton and Herne Hill, south London, is an oasis of calm in the busy city. Friends catch up in the walled garden, where wisteria trails over pillars and roses and bluebells explode from the earth. In the community garden, local people work together to grow vegetables and run sessions to connect nature-deprived children to the land.

In the centre of the sometimes crushing metropolis, this park means everything to me – it keeps me sane, and it gives me hope. But this green lifeline is, every summer, taken away, as I await the arrival of the park’s music festival season with dread. As huge metal walls go up, dividing us from the green, and HGVs begin flattening the grass and soil, I feel a genuine sense of horror. A large part of the park is cut off for weeks, and our community’s heart is pulled out as people stream into events whose expensive tickets most people living round here could never afford. And the same is happening in shared green spaces all over the UK.

Rebecca Tamás is a writer of environmental nonfiction and a poet. Her most recent book is Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman

Five years after her last companion died and the aquarium’s owner pledged to free her, Bella still languishes in a tiny tank amid shops

In the heart of Seoul, amid the luxury shops at the foot of the world’s sixth-tallest skyscraper, a lone beluga whale named Bella swims aimlessly in a tiny, lifeless tank, where she has been trapped for a decade.

Her plight is urgent, with campaigners racing to rescue her from the bare tank in a glitzy shopping centre in South Korea’s capital before it is too late.

Scottish government accused of missing deadlines to take action on overfishing and effects of climate breakdown

Fragile and damaged marine life around Scotland’s coasts is not being properly protected because ministers in Edinburgh have broken their promises, environment campaigners have warned.

Prominent charities including the Marine Conservation Society and the National Trust for Scotland accuse the Scottish government of repeatedly missing its deadlines to protect vulnerable marine life from overfishing and the effects of climate breakdown.

Pigeons are friendly, acrobatic and affordable, and these days they are winning the hearts of more and more youthful pigeoneers

When Boris the fantail arrived in Callum Percy’s life in 2020, the 29-year-old trainee teacher was immediately smitten. Boris had been discovered by a family friend in a dishevelled state after what looked like a run-in with a sparrow hawk, its blond-white tail as fluffy as a cumulus cloud.
“We called him Boris after the prime minister as his feathers were all over the place when we found him,” Callum laughs as his 13-strong flock of fantails, frillbacks and capuchines coo in the aviary behind him. He and his girlfriend, Serena Mihaila, 24, also a trainee teacher, installed the 6ft by 4ft wooden and mesh aviary and nesting area in the garden of their Derby home earlier this year.

For now, Callum and Serena are fancy birders – they keep their frilled, coloured and crested feathered friends for the sheer pleasure of appreciating their looks. But next year, when the couple buy their own home, they would like to start exhibiting at shows. That means upstaging Boris and co with some purer-breed pigeons, such as frillbacks with more erect frills or capuchines with elaborate, super-fluffy head crests. At show, these headturners will be assessed for their appearance, good breeding and how they sit in their handlers’ hands.

A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London includes ‘tragic’ tales of species wiped out from their natural habitats

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.

Scientist discovers a cast of recurring characters using burrows in the aftermath of bushfire, after sifting through more than 700,000 images

First came a picture of an inquisitive red-necked wallaby, then an image of a bare-nosed wombat, followed by a couple of shots of the wombat’s burrow with nothing else in the frame.

By the time research scientist Grant Linley had looked through a further 746,670 images, he had seen 48 different species visiting the 28 wombat burrows that he had trained his cameras on.