FiledIMAGE/Shutterstock Australia contains some of the world’s most biologically diverse and carbon-dense native forests. Eucalypts in wet temperate forests are the tallest flowering plants in the world and home to an array of unique tree-dwelling marsupials, rare birds, insects, mosses, fungi and lichen, many of which have not even been catalogued by scientists. Yet our country remains in the top ten list globally for tree cover loss, with almost half of the original forested areas in eastern Australia cleared. This loss has been devastating for Australia’s native plants and animals and contr ..read more

Analysing the environmental DNA of rivers could transform our understanding of what lives in them. Juice Flair/Shutterstock Freshwater ecosystems are the lifeblood of the natural world, yet they are facing a silent crisis. A 2022 report by the World Wildlife Fund revealed a staggering 83% decline in global freshwater vertebrate populations since 1970, a rate far exceeding that of any other habitat. The level of degradation to nature is alarming, but ecosystems are complicated, as are the effects of human activity. So, the story is often more nuanced. Our research shows how analysing environmen ..read more

Will Hawkes, CC BY-ND In 1950, ornithologists Elizabeth and David Lack were watching birds migrate through a Pyrenean mountain pass on the border between France and Spain when they stumbled across something extraordinary – uncountable numbers of migrating insects. The Lacks were the first people to record fly migration in Europe. Despite only being in the pass for a single day, they labelled these insects “the most remarkable migrants of all”. Seventy years on, I’ve been calculating the numbers of insects migrating through this same 30m-wide mountain pass of Bujaruelo, 2,500m above sea level ..read more

Rachael Gallagher More than 52 million hectares of land across Australia is degraded. Degraded land lacks biodiversity and the natural balance of healthy ecosystems, making it unfit for wildlife or cultivation. This means we are losing the benefits that healthy ecosystems provide for nature and people. To counter this threat, Australia signed the Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, pledging to ensure 30% of degraded ecosystems are “under effective restoration” by 2030. That’s roughly 15.6 million hectares of land across the nation. To kick-start ecosystem recovery, governments, environment ..read more

Shutterstock Earth is facing a human-driven climate crisis, which demands a rapid transition to low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar power. But we’re also living through a mass extinction event. Never before in human history have there been such high such rates of species loss and ecosystem collapse. The biodiversity crisis is not just distressing, it’s a major threat to the global economy. More than half of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) directly depends on nature. The World Economic Forum rates biodiversity loss in the top risks to the global economy over the next decade, a ..read more

Black-crowned night herons perch on rocks in the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles. Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images The Earth is losing animals, plants and other living things so fast that some scientists believe the planet is entering its sixth mass extinction. But there’s some surprising good news: Urban areas may be key to slowing down or even reversing this crisis. This idea may seem counterintuitive, since studies show that urbanization is a big driver of biodiversity loss. Cities alter the environment with artificial lighting and noise pollution, which affect many species ..read more

Last week, the Albanese government introduced legislation to create a new statutory body called Environment Information Australia. The bill is due for debate in parliament today. The government clearly expects the bill will pass, because the new body has already been allocated A$54 million over four years in the May budget. Why do we need it? Australia’s natural world is in steep decline – based on what we know. But there’s much we don’t know. Australia has a fairly poor track record of effectively monitoring biodiversity. It’s hard to care for and restore nature if we don’t know how we are tr ..read more

As curator at Manchester Museum for 18 years, I’ve helped create a new exhibition, Wild, that showcases some incredible projects that are bringing plants and animals back from the brink of extinction, healing the land and restoring hope. Often, the story of wildlife loss and climate change can seem overwhelming, so I’m excited about highlighting solutions that tackle some of the negative ways people influence nature. From June 5 2024 to June 1 2025, this exhibition brings these stories to life, through a rich selection of plants and animals from the near-extinct purple emperor butterfly that t ..read more

Catherine Yule, Author provided When I lived in Kalimantan in Indonesia in the 1990s and later in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, I would often wake to toxic, smoke-filled skies. The air would be filled with the distinctive smell of burning peat, as farmers cleared tropical peat swamp forests to make way for oil palm plantations. Airports and schools would close, and hospitals would fill with people in respiratory distress – myself included. Global greenhouse gas emissions would spike because peatlands are the planet’s most carbon rich ecosystems. Throughout the world – from the subarctic peat bogs ..read more

Zoologist Elizabeth Morrison receives the Jamaican giant galliwasp from Mike Rutherford, a curator at the University of Glasgow, on April 22, 2024. Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images Museums often celebrate new acquisitions, especially something rare or historic. In April 2024, scientists from the Natural History Museum of Jamaica and The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus accepted a very rare and historic specimen: a 16-inch lizard called the Jamaican giant galliwasp (Celestus occiduus). It had previously been stored in the Hunterian museum at the University of Glasgow in Scotland ..read more