Sue McIntyre
It’s painfully clear nature is buckling under the weight of farming’s demands. There’s another way – but it involves accepting nature’s limits.
Sri Lanka/Unsplash
The coconut – an icon of unspoiled tropical idylls – causes more environmental harm than many people realise.
A brown Mediterranean grouper. We don’t see it on the picture, but it hosts many parasites!
Parent Géry/Wikimédia
Mediterranean groupers are not alone: they are home to a wide variety of parasites.
Angelo Carconi/EPA
Human encroachment on the environment is increasing the threat of diseases like COVID-19, but spending more time in nature could also be part of the solution to this pandemic.
Specimens like these at Dublin’s Natural History Museum contain valuable information about the evolution of pathogens and host organisms.
Kieran Guckian/Flickr
Genetic information that could help finger the next infectious threat is stored in museums around the world.
Shutterstock/Toms Auzins
Scientists still report species as being ‘discovered’, even if they’ve been used by local populations for years.
Forests around the world are changing, affecting unique biodiversity.
Malkolm Boothroyd
New findings show how changes in land use have complex effects on animal and plant species.
Badgers are hunted down as ‘harmful’ species.
Pixabay
All animals plays a role in nature, and in times of biodiversity loss and climate change, hunting “common” species such as foxes and badgers is irresponsible .
Woman selling baobab fibre mats in Zimbabwe.
Rachel Wynberg
As the world deals with COVID-19, the sustainable use of wild species is a critical coping and resilience strategy.
The Cendrawasih, commonly known as the Bird of Paradise, is facing extinction.
Getty Images
By identifying the roots of global ills such as climate change and biodiversity, there’s an opportunity for coordinated action as countries lay new pathways for a post-COVID world.
Oceans are teeming with life and are connected to society through history and culture, shipping and economic activity, geopolitics and recreation.
(Shutterstock)
International law does not meaningfully address biodiversity conservation in the high seas. We risk losing marine species before we have a chance to identify and understand them.
Erik Mandre/Shutterstock.com
A decade of no grazing has demonstrated positive effects on the richness of bird species.
Flickr
Australia has been identified as a hotspot for emerging diseases, which occurs when human activities collide with a richness of animal species.
A school of convict tang (Acanthurus triostegus ) swim on Kiritimati’s dead reefs after the 2015–16 marine heatwave.
(Kevin Bruce)
Reef fish vanish during marine heat waves, but may bounce back quickly on reefs that have few other environmental stressors.
© Magnus Elander
The Baltic crusades had a long term impact on the local environment – 700 years later, the details of this are clear.
The pangolin, one of the most poached animals in the world, could have served as an intermediate host in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to humans.
Wahyudi/AFP
Covid-19, like other major epidemics, is not unrelated to the biodiversity and climate crisis we are experiencing.
A barn swallow scoops an insect from the pond’s surface.
Richard Seeley/Shutterstock
Ponds create ‘insect chimneys’ which are a boon for hungry farmland birds.
Herd of Przewalski horses inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Ukraine). September 2016.
Luke Massey (www.lmasseyimages.com)
Wild horses native to the steppes of Asia live now in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Ukraine), with an expanding population, 34 years after the nuclear accident.
A Rosalia longicorn – the chosen insect of 2019 in Hungary by the Hungarian Entomological Society.
EPA-EFE/Peter Komka
The largest study of insect declines to date gives us the best indication of how species all over the world are faring.
Seismic exploration lines cut through boreal forest near Fort McMurray, Alta.
(Scott E. Nielsen)
New research identifies areas where species may take refuge as the climate changes and finds they’re largely unprotected.