Contributors

‘The decline of photogenic parrots and seabirds has been well documented, but it’s the disappearance of “everyday” birds that reveals the scale of the avian crisis,’ says Mark Rowe ( page 16). ‘Sparrows, starlings are all under pressure. We don’t pay attention when we see two rather than three robins in the garden, it’s only when we don’t see them at all that we notice they’re not there.’

‘In a place associated too often with fighting there is something about riding a bicycle that breaks through to the heart of a people and the geography of a painful conflict,’ says Julian Sayarer ( page

56). Palestinians and Israeli cyclists talked to me about riding past military checkpoints and settlement-building, but also past olive groves – as if to show the world we’ve got, but also the one we could have.’

‘To understand the risks of diving for gold in the Philippines, I followed the miners with equally sparse gear to a depth of about 15 metres,’ says Claudio Sieber ( page 26). ‘Not surprisingly I ended up drinking a fair lot of sea water, ascending way too fast and bleeding out of my nose. The miners won my respect for defeating this daily challenge, all to maintain the wellbeing of their families.’