With countries fighting wars and natural calamities sweeping away civilisations, it seems a global collapse might be a spark away. But the possibility of entire humanity vanishing off the face of Earth seems a little less plausible with the years of effort we have spent preparing solutions for such situations. However, not everyone can be…
The Burmese python has become a symbol of two completely different conservation battles. In Florida, wildlife managers search for and remove the giant snake because its introduced population is threatening native wildlife in the Everglades. Thousands of kilometres away in Bangladesh, researchers are putting radio transmitters on the same species to understand where it moves,…
PC: Harris & Ewing/Wikipedia In 1921, a 14-year-old boy working in an Idaho potato field imagined something almost impossible: sending pictures through the air in the same way radio carried sound. His name was Philo Farnsworth, and the vision he had would eventually lead him towards electronic television. Farnsworth believed pictures could be transmitted as…
One of the world’s most difficult plastics to recycle could soon have a far more valuable second life. Scientists at Virginia Tech have developed a chemical method that converts polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, into polyalphaolefin, an important material used in high-performance lubricants including engine oil. The approach tackles a longstanding problem with PVC, which is…
Pine martens are making a remarkable return to south-west England after disappearing from Exmoor for more than a century, with conservationists capturing the first confirmed evidence that the reintroduced animals are breeding in the wild. A remote trail camera recorded a female pine marten with four kits on Exmoor, signalling that an ambitious effort to…
damselflyRepresenative image from Canva For much of the 20th century, the Santa Cruz River that winds through Tucson, Arizona, existed more as a memory than a living waterway. Groundwater pumping, drought and urban growth drained the riverbed, leaving long stretches of dry sand and scattered pools. Then, in a quiet but transformative experiment, treated wastewater,…
Centuries after people forced a Cumbrian river into a straight, artificial channel, nature has reclaimed its original course in the Lake District, bringing endangered wild fish back to historic spawning grounds almost immediately. In the summer of 2016, conservationists restored a 1.1-kilometre stretch of Swindale Beck near Haweswater by putting its natural bends back into…
View of the Ohanapecosh River and predated Northwestern Salamanders (Ambrystoma gracile) eaten by introduced trout. Mount Rainier’s glaciers and snowfields feed a magnificent system of icy streams and mountain lakes. On the surface, these waters look pristine, scattered pools in one of America’s most iconic landscapes. But beneath the surface, scientists are looking at a…
The Amazon River is one of the world’s largest and most powerful river systems, carrying an extraordinary volume of freshwater across South America before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. Its immense flow is closely connected to the vast Amazon basin, which receives water from rainfall, tributaries and sources in the Andes. The river carries approximately…
Image: Left/Wikipedia/Right/Gaby Barathiue, Ocean Image Bank The world’s oceans cover most of the planet, yet vast areas remain difficult to protect, monitor and manage. In June 2026, Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic organisation announced a fresh $260 million commitment to expand the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative, bringing its total support for ocean conservation to $635 million. The investment…