Ingham’s W RLD
LOVE of the greenwood is deep-rooted in the British soul. The romance floats back to Robin Hood and his Merry Men in Sherwood Forest and carries on through Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy, all celebrating this refuge for birdsong, decency and lovers, a haven from life’s turmoil. Tramping through muddy woods on the North Downs the other day, with fieldfare pouring in from Scandinavia, a marsh tit calling and deer crashing through the undergrowth, it was easy to forget drab old London and its endless Brexit debates even though they were just 20 miles away.
There is another reason to love our woods and want more oak, beech and birch. Plants can help fight climate change.
Planting on just two per cent of the UK’s land would absorb the emissions of every vehicle in the country, says a study by Plantlife and eco-friendly cleaning products firm Seventh Generation.
Given Doomsday warnings this week of soaring carbon dioxide emissions and Greenland ice sheets melting at unprecedented rates, it is nice to know that part of the solution lies in gardening.
The Woodland Trust throws in other perks, such as trees slowing flows of floodwater and providing shelter for crops as well as new homes for our dwindling wildlife. Forestry needs to flourish.
To tackle climate change properly, we need to plant more trees worldwide but in the UK we can only do what we can do.
So let’s go to the heart of the country, to 200sqm of forest planted over the past 25 years across Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire.
The National Forest is transforming old, heavy industrial sites including long-gone coal mines and turning black to green.
It hasn’t made up for the 10,000 lost coal-mining jobs but 5,000 now work in tourism in the forest, says chief executive John Everitt.
In our increasingly obese world, where exercise for children is often nothing more strenuous than gazing at a mobile phone, it is introducing tens of thousands to the wonders of nature with its Forest for Learning project.
Then there is the wildlife. Otters have returned to every river catchment in the forest, adders are on the increase despite declining elsewhere and noctule bats are breeding at old industrial sites.
The white-letter hairstreak butterfly, struggling nationally due to the loss of elms, is recovering in the forest, and a beautiful summer visitor, the redstart, is nesting in special boxes put up for it.
We need more trees. They will help mitigate climate change, help our wildlife and help us. They are a win-win. THE Commonwealth War Graves Commission is trying to find the owner of a First World War medal found at the Tyne Cot Cemetery near Ypres, Belgium, last month.
Inscribed with the name Able Seaman William Andrew Murphy, it may have been dropped by a relative during centenary events.
For information contact media@ cwgc.org
PLASTIC can get into the food chain in just six hours, say Plymouth University researchers.
That’s how long it took scallops to absorb billions of microscopic plastic particles in the lab, reports Environmental Science and Technology.
The scallops were then transferred to clean water but traces of plastic were found weeks later.
GREEN TIP: Plasticised and glittery wrapping paper is hard to recycle. Use simpler sheets. LONESOME George the giant Galápagos tortoise finally croaked aged about 102 in 2012. It was all in the genes.
The giant tortoises have gene variants linked to DNA repair, immune response and cancer suppression not found in shorterlived vertebrates, reports Nature Ecology & Evolution.
GECKOS run on water by slapping their feet, says Oxford University’s Jasmine Nirody. The mouse-sized lizards use their tails to propel themselves across water at 3ft per second.
They then stay afloat by creating air pockets by slapping and stroking the surface with their feet, says Current Biology.
IN the High Arctic on Norwegian Svalbard this summer, I watched barnacle geese raising their goslings. These striking birds are on the up, recovering from a few hundred on the archipelago in the 1940s to 40,000 today. The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust made the case for their legal protection and they winter at its Caerlaverock reserve near Dumfries. But last week they nearly paid the price of success. Norway tried to persuade regulators to allow more hunting. But the barnacles can breathe easy. The plan was thrown out by experts meeting in Strasbourg.