Decade of conservation efforts wiped out in Arran wildfire
High up on an Arran hillside stands the green shoot of a single tree. The endangered whitebeam species, which is only found on the the Firth of Clyde island, is all that has survived one of the devastating wildfires that swept across Scotland earlier this month.
About 27,000 trees — including whitebeams — were destroyed when a blaze ripped through Glen Rosa, a conservation area, before Easter. Scientists also believe hundreds of reptiles and amphibians — adders, slow worms and frogs — died.
Kate Sampson, the National Trust for Scotland's senior ranger on Arran, said a decade of work to restore the valley had been wiped out. Apart from the solitary whitebeam sapling, which sits on a charred slope near the Blue Pools, one of
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
Fort Cumberland archaeological labs reopen after refit
The laboratories used to carry out research on some of the country's most significant heritage sites have reopened after a Fort Cumberland Laboratories in Portsmouth have been equipped with tools to help understand how artefacts are made and how best to preserve site has been central in projects ranging including the re-excavation of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire and studying human remains found at Hadrian's England said the site "plays a vital role in telling the stories of England's past". Specialist work has been carried out at Fort Cumberland for the past 75 team has helped conserve artefacts from the 18th Century Dutch warship the Rooswijk off the Kent coast and analysed human remains at Birdoswald Roman Fort Cemetery at Hadrian's Wall in refit of the laboratories has involved new heating and cooling equipment includes a scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometry system (Sem-Eds) for analysing historic allows for imaging of very small features such as nanocrystals, as well as mapping the chemical composition of a wide range of materials. The system can be used to analyse dental wear in archaeological remains, the causes of bone discolouration, insect remains and historic building Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: "The amazing work of our archaeologists and heritage scientists is helping to uncover the hidden stories that connect us to our distant past."This new investment in Fort Cumberland's laboratories will enhance our research and conservation work, and improve access to our expertise, equipment and collections, helping more people to enjoy and care for their heritage." You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
The Independent
16 hours ago
- The Independent
Gaps in genetic testing mean some patients not informed about cancer risk
A new study reveals inconsistencies in genetic testing for Lynch syndrome, potentially leaving cancer patients and their families unaware of their risk of developing other cancers. Lynch syndrome is a rare hereditary condition that elevates the risk of bowel, womb, and ovarian cancers due to a gene mutation affecting DNA error correction. The University of Edinburgh study examined data on 2,500 womb cancer patients and found that while 91 per cent of tumours were tested for Lynch syndrome markers, the results were not always communicated to clinical teams, hindering follow-up genetic counselling. Of the 181 eligible participants, only 64 per cent were referred for genetic counselling, and due to long waits and high dropout rates, only 48 per cent ultimately received the test. Dr. Neil Ryan from the University of Edinburgh emphasises the need for mainstream testing to be truly mainstream to ensure timely diagnosis and reduce cancer risk for patients and their relatives.
The Guardian
18 hours ago
- The Guardian
Dead elephants and feral sea lions: how poisonous algal blooms harm the planet
Before the elephants collapsed, they walked in aimless circles. Some fell head first, dying where they stood moments earlier; their carcasses scattered near watering holes across the Okavango delta. The unexplained deaths in May 2020 alarmed conservationists. By July, at least 350 elephants had died and nobody knew why. 'The animals all had their tusks, so poaching was unlikely. A lot of them had obviously died relatively suddenly: they had dropped on to their sternums, which was indicating a sudden loss of muscle function or neural capacity,' says Niall McCann, director of the conservation group National Park Rescue. Nearly five years later, in November 2024, scientists finally published a paper indicating what they believe to be the reason behind the deaths: toxic water caused by an algal bloom. A sudden shift between dry and wet conditions in 2019 and 2020 created perfect conditions for cyanobacteria that release toxins lethal to the elephants, although the researchers could not make definitive conclusions as samples were not taken quickly enough in 2020 due to the pandemic. 'Blooms' are a rapid increase in the amount of algae, often occurring in shallow, slow-moving warm water. They can transform a sea, lake or river into a mass of green, yellow, brown or even red, sometimes for several weeks. Not all blooms are harmful – many sustain important fisheries. But sometimes algae forms such a thick layer that it blocks out sunlight in critical habitats; others can release harmful toxins. When the algae die, they rapidly deplete oxygen in water – often creating 'dead zones' where few fish can survive. As the Earth warms, harmful algal blooms are on the rise – even creeping into polar waters. They are driven by a mixture of pollution from agriculture, runoff from human waste and, increasingly, global heating – sometimes with dramatic consequences for wildlife and humans. As they spread, they are changing the colour of the world's lakes, rivers and oceans. Nearly two-thirds of all lakes have changed colour in the past 40 years, according to a recent study. A third are blue – but as temperatures warm, they are likely to turn a murky green or brown, other research has found. The planet's oceans are turning green as they warm, a result of absorbing more than 90% of excess heat from global warming. At sea, the size and frequency of blooms in coastal areas has risen by 13.2% and 59.2% respectively between 2003 and 2020, according to a 2024 study. In freshwater systems, blooms became 44% more frequent globally in the 2010s, according to a 2022 global assessment of 248,000 lakes. The rise was largely driven by places in Asia and Africa that remain reliant on agricultural fertiliser. While progress has been made in North America, Europe and Oceania to stabilise blooms, the climate crisis has driven their resurgence in some freshwater systems. The fertilisers that people use to grow plants – including reactive nitrogen and phosphates – also supercharge algal growth. As they are washed off fields and pour into water bodies around the world, they significantly alter how ecosystems function. 'Humans are today loading more reactive nitrogen into the biosphere than the natural cycle [is],' said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He was co-author of a 2023 assessment that found that humanity had now gone far beyond the planet's natural limits for nitrogen and phosphorus. 'We need to reduce the supply of reactive human nitrogen by over 75%. It's a dramatic change and there's a lot of scientific debate about this,' he says. 'Most agricultural scientists say that it is not possible because we cannot feed humanity. We have a contradiction here: is our first objective to keep the planet's freshwater systems, coastal zones, ecosystems and climate stable – or is it to feed humanity?' Others warn that it is not a simple choice between food and the environment. In northern Norway, repeated algal blooms have wiped out millions of farmed salmon and cod in recent years. A single bloom killed more than seven million salmon in 2019. This year, another has wiped out up to a million more fish. As has just happened in South Australia, where it spanned 8,800 sq km (3,400 sq miles), scores of fish and dead sea life wash up on beaches once a huge algal bloom spreads. Deep-water sharks, crabs, lobsters and prawns are among those found dead as a result of the toxic blanket created by Karenia mikimotoi algae, with the ocean 2.5C (4.5F) hotter than usual for the season. In March, a teenager was attacked by a 'feral' sea lion off the coast of southern California, where there has been an increase in aggressive behaviour from the animals linked to a large algal bloom, which can poison and induce seizures in the mammals due to the domoic acid neurotoxin it produces. While there are signs that the bloom is waning, it was the fourth consecutive year that California had experienced a significant outbreak. However, not everything dies in a dead zone. Once the putrid expanse of algae has dispersed and those that can swim away have left, aquatic species better adapted to low levels of oxygen, or hypoxia, move in. This has led to a boom in jellyfish numbers in many parts of the world. Denise Breitburg, of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, has studied Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the US to experience algal blooms, for decades, says: 'The jellyfish we have here are way more tolerant of low oxygen in the water than species they would be competing with for food. They become more efficient predators and can utilise habitat that fin fish are excluded from.' As the world heats, the disruptions that algal blooms cause to ecosystems will be hard to stop, experts warn. Prof Donald Boesch, who helped first identify the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which last year reached 17,000 sq km, the 12th largest in 38 years of records, says the process will get worse if the world does not prevent rising temperatures. 'As the liquid heats up, its ability to dissolve gases is reduced, so it holds less oxygen. Warmer surface waters can increase the stratification of layers in the ocean. It means that the warmer waters at the surface are less dense than the bottom waters, so they don't get mixed up. 'It's going to get worse,' says Boesch. Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
