A cacti-smuggling case with a prickly end: the novel way courts are making poachers pay
Two Italian cacti smugglers have been fined for illegally trading plants from Chile – and for the cost of restoring the environment. Conservationists hope more cases will follow
In pictures
The secret life of the Congo rainforest
Using high-definition camera traps on trails in Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki national park, Will Burrard-Lucas, a photographer for the Wildlife Conservation Society, has captured Africa’s most elusive and rarely seen animals
Investor-state dispute settlement
Why fear of billion-dollar lawsuits stops countries phasing out fossil fuels
Companies can sue governments for closing oilfields and mines – and the risk of huge damages is already stopping countries from passing green laws, ministers say
Allowing foreign firms to sue governments for lost profits is legal terrorism – it must end
Joseph Stiglitz
Investor-state dispute settlement
Fearing toxic waste, Greenland ended uranium mining. Now, they could be forced to restart - or pay $11bn
Investor-state dispute settlement
Revealed: how Wall Street is making millions betting against green laws
Easter Island
‘The last plant left’: can Rapa Nui’s extinct tree be resurrected?
UK
‘Our community deserves beauty’: one man’s mission to green a UK tree desert
Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.
Age of the panzootic: scientists warn of more devastating diseases jumping between species
Shrinking trees and tuskless elephants: the strange ways species are adapting to humans
Grey seals, minke whales and bluefin tuna: is the North Sea bouncing back to its glory days?
They lived through the ice age. Can the mighty musk ox survive the heat?
Blob-headed fish and amphibious mouse among 27 new species found in ‘thrilling’ Peru expedition
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Explainers
Explainer
Forgotten epidemic: with over 280 million birds dead how is the avian flu outbreak evolving?
The five biggest threats to our natural world … and how we can stop them
The biodiversity crisis in numbers - a visual guide
10 ways the climate crisis and nature loss are linked
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Wild world
Ghosts of the landscape: how folklore and songs are key to rewilding Finland’s reindeer
For ecologists restoring the vast bogs of remote Karelia, wild reindeer are not just part of the environment but entwined with the ancient culture of the boreal forests
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear?
Patches of wildflowers in cities can be just as good for insects as natural meadows – study
Crabs, cockatoos and ringtail possums: the wild things thriving in our cities
Penguins in the pond, kiwi in the back yard: how a city brought back its birds
Nature’s ghosts: how reviving medieval farming offers wildlife an unexpected haven
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Nature heroes
Colombia
‘I felt death in the flames’: how lighting a forest fire inspired one man to transform barren ranches into rainforest
Saimaa ringed seals
‘Like a giant bird box’: the volunteers building huge snowdrifts for Finland’s pregnant seals
I discovered the wreck of the Titanic – but seeing these vents in the sea floor was far more exciting
I discovered ...
Thousands of fossils after retiring. Now I’m nearly 80 and still going strong
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Watch, see and listen
It was a wildlife conservation triumph, then came the corpses – podcast
19:07
Guardians of the Gibbons: can India save its only ape species from extinction?
India's only ape species and are critically endangered. Two individuals from different worlds unite to protect a species on the brink.
A mystery in Finnish Lapland, and what it means for the climate crisis – podcast
Biodiversity and environment reporter Patrick Greenfield travels to Finnish Lapland to investigate the disappearance of its carbon sink
Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.
