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Fears for Britain's trees after Asian beetle discovered
Scientists are on the lookout for an Asian beetle that could ravage British trees after one was found last week, the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) said today.
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Fears for unique wildlife of Galapagos as UN drops islands' protected status
A panel of politicians has voted to remove the Galapagos Islands from the UN's list of World Heritage Sites in danger ? in spite of a firm recommendation from scientists and officials who visited the islands that they should keep their status.
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Pigs like mud (with the exception of Cinders, the muck-phobic little porker who escaped the sausage machine two summers ago after her owners took pity and fitted her with tiny gumboots). Hippopotamuses like mud, too. But then pigs and hippos are wired to wallow ? they don't sweat and mud keeps them cool. What's our excuse?
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Farmland bird numbers fall to record lows
Farmland bird numbers fell 5% last year to new record lows, official figures showed today.
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Gabon tour operator pulls plug on Africa's Eden after aviation row
As an untouched West African paradise where hippos play in the Atlantic surf and buffaloes and elephants parade on the beach, little-visited Gabon had been marked out as a rising eco-tourism star. But foreign visitors may have to leave Africa's last Eden after the country's largest tour operator said it was abandoning its business there following a simmering row with authorities in the oil-rich nation.
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Revealed: the birds who play away from home
Female birds paired for life in apparently monogamous relationships seek out sex with other males in order to boost the genetic fitness of their offspring, scientists have discovered in a pioneering experiment involving warblers living on an island in the Seychelles.
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Wild Britain: Week 2. The best of the Woodland Trust's sites
In centuries gone by, you had to be very wealthy to look on woods as we do now, and see them as only a place of pleasure. Instead, they would have been where you gathered firewood, nuts, and berries; let your pigs forage; collected herbs and plants for your medicines; feared to travel alone; and where, because you knew little of the wider world, you believed strange sprites and spirits lived and connived. Woods, which were much more common than now, defined many of your practical needs, and flights of darker imagination.
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Herpes outbreak endangers oysters
An outbreak of the herpes virus in oysters could be potentially "devastating" for stocks of the shellfish, experts have warned.
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Evil weed in Baltic Sea puts marine life at risk
Record summer temperatures, farm fertilisers and a lack of wind have created a gigantic carpet of evil-smelling weed covering large areas of the Baltic and threatening both marine life and seaside tourism, scientists warn.
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Rare leopards born at Paris zoo
Two rare South-east Asian clouded leopards have been born at a zoo in Paris. The female cubs, named Pati and Jaya, made their first public appearance at the Jardin des Plantes this week.
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Storms threaten BP oil spill clean-up
A tropical depression moving quickly toward the Gulf of Mexico last night raised pressure on BP and the US government to decide whether to evacuate dozens of ships at the site of the company's ruptured Macondo oil well.
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Evil weed in Baltic Sea puts marine life at risk
Record summer temperatures, farm fertilisers and a lack of wind have a gigantic carpet of evil-smelling weed covering large areas of the Baltic and threatening both marine life and seaside tourism, scientists warn.
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Public urged to record butterflies
A wildlife charity is urging the public to make a note of any butterflies they see this month. Butterfly Conservation hopes to build up a better picture of the country's butterflies.
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Damselflies in distress forced back to UK by climate change
Damselflies don't sound like they'd do anything as dramatic as invading anywhere, and the dainty damselfly sounds like it would do so least of all. But that's what's happening in southern England, as several species of these delicate, smaller relatives of the dragonflies cross over from the continent and start establishing populations here.
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Bird symbolising true love fading from the skies
It is the emblematic bird of sexual fidelity ? and just like sexual fidelity itself, it is rapidly on the wane.
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It is a mystery that has occupied ? if not quite the nation ? then, at least, the neighbourhood. In Brooklyn, New York, residents were left scratching their heads after the squawking, screeching inhabitants of Prospect Park suddenly vanished. Seemingly overnight, the local geese ? almost 400 of them ? went. But to where?
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Disease wiping out amphibians before they can be identified
The frog-killing disease which is sweeping parts of the world is now wiping out amphibian species before they have even been described, new research has shown.
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Kestrel population plunges by a third
One of the UK's most familiar birds of prey, the kestrel, has drastically declined in numbers, a survey of British birds reveals today. The latest Breeding Birds Survey shows that the number of kestrels, which are often seen hovering over roads looking for small rodents, plunged by 36 per cent between 2008 and 2009.
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Wild Britain: Week 1. The Best of the Wildlife Trust's sites
You might be excused ? if all you read of wildlife was the news pages of daily papers ? for thinking that every species is threatened, every habitat being spoiled, and we are managing to convey our flora and fauna to hell in the swiftest of handcarts. The conservation groups ? who otherwise do much good ? also do a brisk trade with journalism's perpetual pessimists by producing a succession of reports on the demise of this or the disappearance of that. "Populations of the lesser spotted knick-knack bird have declined more than 60 per cent since 1970," might go one of their gloomy surveys, "and unless drastic action is taken, this beautiful creature will be extinct in Britain by 2030." And, with a twist of hysteria added by the headline writers, this is what you will read.
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Goldfinches under threat from gangs of poachers
At 12cm long and weighing 14 grams, the goldfinch is a prime target for sparrowhawks and other predators in the avian world.
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Finches under threat from poaching gangs
At 12cm long and weighing 14 grams, the goldfinch is a prime target for sparrowhawks and other predators in the avian world.
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Happy (wet and windy) St Swithin's Day
Folklore says today's rain heralds 40 days of downpours - and forecasters have not dismissed the possibility.
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Hudson Bay polar bears 'could soon be extinct'
Polar bears in the Hudson Bay area of Canada are likely to die out in the next three decades, possibly sooner, as global warming melts more Arctic ice and thus reduces their hunting opportunities, according to Canadian biologists.
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60 miles of canal closed in drought
Almost half of Britain's longest canal is to be closed in the face of drought conditions, British Waterways announced today.
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Welsh Assembly badger cull order quashed
The controversial order to cull badgers in Wales was quashed by the Court of Appeal today.
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