West Bridgford Library

Alex Hyde has visited sites across our local area including Sherwood Forest, Maun Valley and Spa Ponds to open our eyes to the wonders of fungi.

Fungi are remarkable organisms that form a diverse kingdom comprising approximately 144,000 known species. They play essential roles in ecosystems, from decomposing organic matter to forming symbiotic relationships with plants.

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When a severe drought hit the Indian city of Kozhikode, also known as Calicut, in 2016, residents including student Swapnil Shrivastav had access to a limited amount of water each day.

“We were rationed to two buckets of water a day, which we collected from water tanks,” he says.

While he says it’s not uncommon for water supply issues to impact parts of India, it was a tough month for Mr Shrivastav and others in the region. “It was a very humid area; it was unmanageable.”

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Tens of thousands of demonstrators have been marching through London, joining more than 350 charities, businesses and direct action groups on the Restore Nature Now march.

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To reduce its emissions in line with national and global targets, the UK must overhaul how it produces, uses and distributes electricity.

Millions of heat pumps, electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels are planned in the UK. These can reduce emissions and lower household bills. However, they will also substantially raise the amount of power neighbourhoods need over coming decades, particularly during peak demand periods like early evening. At other times, when the Sun is shining and electricity use is low, solar panels on homes and businesses could allow neighbourhoods to export electricity to the network.

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A group of volunteers are helping to refresh the Old Market Square by placing 500 plants across the space.

Local businesses and eco-friendly charities have donated more than £1000 to purchase the plants and make the area greener.

People started planting at the Green Hustle event earlier this month, and planted another batch of shrubs this week.

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Over the last century, nearly all of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been destroyed by expanding farms, towns and cities. This loss of habitat has driven nature’s decline, according to research led by birds and nature conservation charity the RSPB.

As meadows and other wild spaces have disappeared in the UK and further afield, massive population crashes have followed: Europe has lost over 600 million birds since 1980, while insects have seen a 76% decline.

If you have a lawn, then you have a chance to help reverse this trend. No Mow May, a campaign led by plant conservation charity Plantlife, asks people to refrain from mowing the grass during May. With over 20 million gardens, the UK has an enormous resource with which to benefit wildlife.

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A small woodland and grassland reserve at the side of the busy Mansfield Road.

The Keeping it Wild team carry out conservation maintenance work on the reserve.

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Surveys show that most of us are really worried about climate change and we want something to be done. But what?

This series, we've explored many ways in which nature is changing in response to human activity and the dangers posed to people and planet as a result.

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A more sustainable future lies within reach. One where human societies are powered by wind and solar energy, leaving behind dirty, climate-changing fossil fuels in the past. Sounds good right?

But with many tonnes of rare earth metals needed to manufacture just one wind turbine, switching to this greener way of life likely means more mining – and lots of it – at least in the short term. But where and how could we get these metals while causing the least possible harm to people and planet?

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The European Court of Human Rights has issued a groundbreaking ruling in a case between a group of Swiss women and their government. It found that Switzerland is in violation of the European convention on human rights for failing in its duties to combat climate change. The court also set out a path for organisations to bring further cases.

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As one of our Conservation Volunteers you will be working closely with our Ranger Team to create and maintain different habitats across our parks and open spaces for wildlife.

There are a wide range of activities and tasks throughout the year depending on the season, summer tasks can include controlling invasive species such as Himalayan Balsam, planting or cutting wildflower meadows to make hay and in winter tasks can include hedge planting, coppicing trees.

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One stormy evening in February 2024, I heard the sickening sound of trees breaking just beyond my garden in the town of Hastings on England’s south coast. Heading outside to investigate, I soon found cracks opening up in the ground near our property’s border with the Old Roar Gill – a narrow valley containing ancient woodlands, a stream and much wildlife, plants and trees.

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A new study published in Nature Communications has revealed that the interplay between meandering ocean currents and the ocean floor induces upwelling velocity, transporting warm water to shallower depths. This mechanism contributes substantially to the melting of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica. These ice shelves are destabilizing rapidly and contributing to sea level rise.

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A scientific review has found almost no research studying the interconnections across three major threats to planetary health, despite UN assessments suggesting one million species are at risk of extinction, a global pandemic that resulted in over six million excess deaths, and a record-breaking year of global temperatures.

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Record-breaking rain over the past few months has left fields of crops under water and livestock's health at risk, adding to pressures on food producers.

The flooding and extreme weather linked to climate change will undermine UK food production unless farmers get more help, the National Farmers Union said.

The NFU is calling on the government to do more to compensate flooded farmers and support domestic food production.

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Europe is at the centre of an illegal wildlife trade operation worth billions of pounds.

Gangs are thought to be smuggling up to 350 million live eels from Europe and shipping them to Asia every single year. Once at their destination, the young eels are farmed to full size and redistributed across the world. But why is the European eel such a valuable commodity? Why has the trade of glass eels been made illegal? And what effect is this having on the species?

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What’s brainless, heartless, eyeless and thrives in a warming ocean? Hint: it’s wobbly and it could be coming to a dinner plate near you.

Tori & Khalil investigate the effects of rising sea temperatures, from changing food sources to the perilous state of coral reefs – home to one quarter of all marine species.

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Electric cars might seem like a no-brainer on a warming planet, but there are plenty of people who remain sceptical about everything from their battery life to their carbon impact and the environmental and human rights costs of their parts. Madeleine Finlay consults Auke Hoekstra, known as the internet’s ‘EV debunker in chief’, to unpick the myths, realities and grey areas surrounding electric cars

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Find the best UK wildlife podcasts and immerse yourself in the great outdoors. From elusive birds to urban wildlife, the secret lives of trees and what plants and animals to look out for this season - we've got it all covered!

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Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have concluded that the methane uptake in dry landscapes exceeds methane emissions from wet areas across the ice-free part of Greenland.

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Trees are struggling to sequester heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) in warmer, drier climates, meaning that they may no longer serve as a solution for offsetting humanity’s carbon footprint as the planet continues to warm, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers.

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The moment scientists had been dreading arrived late last year, when H5N1, or bird flu, was found for the first time in the Antarctic. Last week a king penguin on the island of South Georgia became the first in the region to be suspected to have died from the disease. The Guardian’s biodiversity reporter, Phoebe Weston, tells Ian Sample why researchers have said the spread of bird flu through the Antarctic’s penguin colonies could signal ‘one of the largest ecological disasters of modern times’.

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The National Trust plans to create vast new areas of temperate rainforest in the south-west of England.

More than 100,000 trees will be planted in north Devon to create swathes of humid woodland that will be home to plants facing extinction.

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