Nature's emergency: Where we are in five graphics

By Helen Briggs, Becky Dale and Nassos Stylianou BBC News

5 May 2019

The felling of forests, the plundering of seas and soils, and the pollution of air and water are together pushing the natural world to the brink.

That's the warning more than 500 experts in 50 countries are expected to give in a major UN-backed report, due to be published on Monday.

The assessment will highlight the losses that have hit the natural world over the past 50 years and how the future is looking bleak for tens to hundreds of thousands of species.

The document, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), is also expected to set out an urgent rescue plan for nature.

So what do we know about the health of the planet in terms of biodiversity (the variety of living things on Earth and the ecosystems they belong to)?

1. The world's biodiversity is vanishing fast

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a critical measure of our impact on nature.

Almost 100,000 species have been assessed so far for this inventory of endangered species. Of these, more than a quarter are threatened with extinction, ranging from Madagascar's lemurs to amphibians like frogs and salamanders, and plants such as conifers and orchids.

The assessments aren't yet complete, and we don't even know exactly how many animals, fungi and plants are on the planet. Estimates range from about two million species to approximately one trillion, but most experts go for around 11 million species or fewer.

Scientists believe the Earth is being driven towards a "mass extinction event" - only the sixth in the last half-billion years.

"There is now overwhelming evidence that we are losing the planet's species at an alarming speed," Prof Alexandre Antonelli, the director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, told BBC News.

The last time we had a similar situation was about 66 million years ago, which was caused by an asteroid hitting Earth, he said, though this time, "humans are the ones to blame".

Current extinction rates are about 1,000 times higher than before humans came along, and future rates are likely to about 10,000 times higher, according to estimates.

Read on

'It's given the children a love of wildlife': the schools letting nature in

In school fields and communities, pupils are learning about the fragility of nature – and restoring depleted environments

Emma Sheppard

Sat 17 Feb 2018 09.00 GMTLast modified on Sat 17 Feb 2018 12.13 GMT

After the long slog of winter, pupils at Evelyn Community primary school in Merseyside are getting outside with a mission in mind: to count and record the number of different bird species in the school grounds. The challenge is part of the Big School’s Bird Watch, an event which last year involved 73,000 school children and their teachers.

But the children have been taking an active interest in the wildlife at their school for a while. Since creating a garden in an unused corner of their field more than two years ago, the pupils have attracted a variety of birds. They’ve planted wildflower seeds, created a vegetable plot, made bird nests, and learned about biodiversity. The school has a wicker bird hide and has bought binoculars to encourage bird spotting all year round.

The school’s headteacher, Carole Arnold, says the impact of the children’s work on biodiversity in the garden has been significant. A group of 12 children spend time in the garden each week, for a full term, before giving a new group their turn. “Our school field had absolutely no birds at all [before]. It’s really given the children a love of wildlife,” she says. “We use it with some vulnerable children as well who sometimes need help to be calm.”

Read more 

Badger or Bulbasaur - have children lost touch with nature?

Studies show that children are better at identifying Pokémon characters than real animals and plants. Robert Macfarlane on his quest to reconnect young readers with the natural world

Robert Macfarlane

Saturday 30 September 2017 10.00 BST

In August 1913 the children’s writer Eleanor Farjeon visited the poet Edward Thomas and his family at their home near the South Downs. On their first walk together, Thomas’s 11-year-old daughter Bronwen realised that the city-dwelling Farjeon knew few of the names of the wild flowers that flourished in the surrounding landscape. “My ignorance,” Farjeon recalled later, “horrified her.”

Remedial work was promptly set. Bronwen gathered a hundred different flowers and plants, taught Farjeon their names (“agrimony, mouse-eared-hawkweed, bird’s-foot trefoil … ”), and the next day sat her down “to a neatly ruled examination paper, with the numbered specimens laid out in precise order on the table”. Farjeon was given an hour to complete the test: “60 for a Pass, 70 for Honours.” Her memory was sharp and she topped 90: “Bronwen was proud of me.” Those flower names would later blossom in Farjeon’s books for children, which are twined through with natural lore, notably her chalkland fairy fable, Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep (1937) and her Martin Pippin stories.

Read on  

The Solar Eclipse Had a Spooky Effect on Nature

By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | August 22, 2017 06:20pm ET

From flowers spontaneously shutting their petals to hundreds of thousands of salmon washing ashore, the eclipse yesterday (Aug. 21) had a downright spooky impact on nature, according scientists observing the effects.

Several experimental projects were aimed at recording the responses of animals to the eclipse, including the iNaturalist app, which encouraged people to record observations during and after totality, said Rebecca Johnson, citizen science research director at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Johnson, along with colleagues, helped spearhead the effort to gather these observations and sift through them, once the sun had returned.

It turned out that the solar eclipse didn't just make humans go crazy and indulge in odd behavior; it also had a wide range of effects on animals and plants throughout the natural world. From spooked horses to hungry fish, here are some of the most interesting impacts of the eclipse on nature. 

Continued

Children's knowledge of nature is dwindling, study finds

By Agency

12:31PM BST 28 Apr 2015

Britain's knowledge of nature is dwindling to worrying new levels with younger generations now less clued up than ever, according to a new study.

Nearly double the number of parents aged over 51 (49 per cent) said nature was one of the most important things to teach children, compared to just one in three aged under 30.

And the naivety of younger adults revealed just six in ten (58 per cent) 25 to 30 year olds knew a vixen was a female fox - a fact nearly all parents over 51 (96 per cent) knew.

In fact, one in six (17 per cent) of the younger generation of parents believed female foxes were called "sows" - the name for a female pig.

The research, by collectible toy company Sylvanian Families, revealed some startling insight into the nation's poor grasp of outdoor life.

Nine in ten over 51s (92 per cent) identified the fact male rabbits were called a "buck", which just over half (53 per cent) of 25 to 30 year olds knew.

Continued ...

Nature inspires drones of the future

Date:

May 23, 2014

Source:

Institute of Physics

Summary:

Researchers have been taking tips from nature to build the next generation of flying robots. Based on the mechanisms adopted by birds, bats, insects and snakes, scientists have developed solutions to some of the common problems that drones could be faced with when navigating through an urban environment and performing novel tasks for the benefit of society.

Continued

New islands: how life colonises them

Islands formed from volcanic eruptions, such as the recent one off the coast of Japan, are harsh environments. But as the 50-year-old island of Surtsey near Iceland shows, nature will take hold anywhere

The recent appearance of a new island off the coast of Japan, following an undersea volcanic eruption, was well timed. It was 50 years ago that another island was born: Surtsey. Named after a "fire giant" from Norse mythology, it appeared off the southernmost tip of Iceland on 14 November 1963, just as the Beatles were riding high in the charts and President Kennedy was planning that fateful visit to Dallas.

Continued

Surprising Diversity in Aging Revealed in Nature

Dec. 8, 2013 — In our youth we are strong and healthy and then we weaken and die -- that's probably how most would describe what aging is all about. But, in nature, the phenomenon of aging shows an unexpected diversity of patterns and is altogether rather strange, conclude researchers from The University of Southern Denmark.

Not all species weaken and become more likely to die as they age. Some species get stronger and less likely to die with age, while others are not affected by age at all. Increasing weakness with age is not a law of nature.

Read on

Just one in five children connected to nature, says study

Large numbers of children in Britain are missing out on the natural world, a study from the RSPB suggests.

The three-year project found that only 21% of children aged 8-12 were "connected to nature".

Girls were much more likely than boys to be exposed to the great outdoors, while children in Wales had the lowest score across the UK.

The RSPB says that a perception among some adults that nature is dangerous or dirty could be holding children back.

There has been an increasing amount of research in recent years underlining the lack of contact and experience with nature among modern children.

Some have argued that this is having a negative impact on their health, education and behaviour.

In 2012, the National Trust published a report on the phenomenon of "nature deficit disorder", though it is not recognised as a medical condition.

Gender difference

The RSPB says its new study is the first to quantify the scale of British children's exposure, or lack of it, to the natural world.

They came up with a definition of what "connected to nature" actually means and then developed a questionnaire with 16 statements designed to assess the level of connection among children.

Continued

RSPB rebrands itself to help nature

The RSPB has responded to the news that 60 per cent of British species have declined by rebranding itself and launching a new campaign to provide homes for wildlife.

The rebrand, announced privately to the organisation's volunteers only two months ago, involves a slightly redrawn logo and a new slogan: 'Giving Nature A Home'. The RSPB estimates the cost of refreshing their graphic appearance in the low hundreds of thousands of pounds, but intends to introduce the changes in a cost effective way, easing the new in as the old runs out rather than recalling all their stationery and reserve livery in one go.

The charity hasn't changed its logo for nearly a quarter of a century, though slogans have come and gone recently. The latest replaces 'step up for nature', 'nature's voice', 'a million voices for nature' and 'for birds, for people, forever' in turn, and is intended to make members and public feel like they can do something close to home and feel a part of conservation, rather than apart from it. It is the result of substantial market research performed on a random selection of thousands of staff, members and public. In fact, the biggest appetite for change was reported to be among staff. 

Despite initial fears to the contrary, changing the organisation's name was deemed too great a risk. However, the fact that this was considered at all is an indication of the RSPB's internal perception that it might be 'trapped in the bird cage' when wider conservation and ecological issues are at stake. The organisation has long sought to impress upon the public that all nature is connected and that what is good for birds is good for all nature.

The rebrand is their latest attempt to bring that point home, and will involve continuing to work with other national and international conservation charities and governments, in particular revealing some of the inner workings of their campaigns and projects with different partners, and also demonstrating the workings and effects of their business links (for example, projects on Crossrail and Wallasey on The Wirral, Cheshire). 

Read on: http://www.birdwatch.co.uk/channel/newsitem.asp?c=11&cate=__14537

Fareham youngster earns an RSPB award

GREEN-fingered Jacob Stokes is now the proud recipient of an award from the RSPB after creating a pond in his garden.

The conservation charity presented the eight-year-old, from Fareham, with the Gold Wildlife Action award after being so impressed with his efforts.

Jacob submerged a vegetable trough into the soil and surrounded it with stones to create a rockery.

He wanted to encourage newts to hibernate and he included a sunken ceramic flowerpot as refuge for frogs.

The wildlife enthusiast, who is a member of his local RSPB Wildlife Explorers group, even wrote a letter to 10 Downing Street expressing his thoughts about proposals to cull buzzards.

He said: ‘I’ve enjoyed encouraging wildlife and helping them.’

Jacob’s mum Richenda Stokes said: ‘We’re really proud of Jacob. He has loved working towards this award and is already planning his next wildlife project.’

The awards were introduced in 1995 and more than 10,000 youngsters have taken part. More than 100 ponds and more than 200 wildlife gardens have been created as part of the awards, as well as 4,500 nestboxes.

Around 2,000 children have written to their MPs on issues from protecting the marine environment to recycling waste.

Continued:  http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/environment/fareham-youngster-earns-an-rspb-award-1-4388265