The New Wild

In The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will be Nature’s Salvation, Fred Pearce argues that trying to keep out alien species looks increasingly flawed and that we should celebrate the dynamism of such species and the novel ecosystems they create.  Further, in an era of climate change and widespread ecological damage, we should be finding ways to help nature…

National Environmental Education Week

NEEF has announced that April 17 to 23 is National Environmental Education Week – at least in the USA which is where NEEF operates. This is NEEF’s 12th annual EEWeek, and this one is sponsored by Samsung. It is the USA’s “largest celebration of environmental education”, and NEEF invites environmental educators of all kinds, teaching…

Arkive finds two new species

Photographs on the Arkive website have helped naturalists identify two previously unrecorded species of magnolia. In 2010, Roberto Pedraza Ruiz gave Arkive a series of photos he had taken in a cloud forest within eastern Mexico’s Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve.  One was identified as being the magnolia, Magnolia dealbata, classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.  But…

What do you think of Canada geese?

Canada geese tend to get a bad press.  As Simon Barnes says in a column for a recent Spectator, “… they’re noisy, filthy and polluting and far too efficient at breeding.”  Barnes adds that he rather admires them for this.  After all, they are rather like us. For more on geese generally, and our relationship with…

More learning away

Learning Away, which promotes residentials, has secured a further two-years funding (£215,000) from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. This will be used to promote and champion residential learning and enable more young people to benefit from these experiences. The consortium says that the funding will enable it to: continue to make the case for and build…

March 1916

The Guardian website carried an evocative article last week that originally appeared in the Manchester Guardian in March 1916.  It begins, “The sun went down a huge ball almost blood-red in colour, and so vast that half the heaven in the west seemed to be covered. As it sank, all that remained of this ruddy twilight…