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Telegraph
03-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Britain's birds are dying – here's what we'll lose
The poet Ted Hughes once memorably described the challenge facing any writer in describing an airborne crow. There are no words, he argued, to 'capture the infinite depth of crowiness in a crow's flight'. No phrase, no matter how well-chosen, could begin to do justice to the bird. Or, as Hughes bluntly put it, 'a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying'. It's a cautionary tale to which few modern-day nature writers seem willing to pay heed. As sure as the swallows arriving each spring, there'll come a fresh wave of books attempting to capture birds' essence. Given the sheer proliferation of these avian volumes, in fact, one can't help but wonder whether they're intended to test, rather than convey, Britain's enduring love affair with birds. Jon Gower's Birdland (★★☆☆☆) shows the perils of navigating this increasingly congested field. Gower, it's fair to say, is no arriviste to ornithology. As a teenager in the 1970s, he would regularly escape his claustrophobic family home in south Wales, cycling through old ash pits and marshes to lose himself in birdwatching. This book thus represents something of a culmination of that lifelong love affair: it sees Gower travel across Britain in pursuit of species from urban peregrines to the great bustards of Salisbury Plain. You can't fault his dedication. Studying corncrakes on the Hebridean isle of Coll, he finds himself furiously pedalling his rented bike to keep up with a group of eminent ornithologists in a Land Rover. Each chapter is interspersed with interviews with conservationists attempting to protect Britain's birds against a backdrop of decades of decline. Yet his paths feel too well trodden. The case studies he highlights will be familiar to anyone with more than a passing interest in Britain's birds: the RSPB's Operation Turtle Dove, the kittiwakes on Newcastle's Quayside, Oxford 's Wytham Woods – famously one of the most studied tracts of woodland in the world – and, nearby, the swift colony on the roof of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Gower abridges these stories into individual, loosely connected chapters, and in the process he offers little more than a bird's-eye view. Oddly, at the same time, his research gets lost in the thickets of modern-day nature writing, meaning there is little here that feels original. At one stage, he recounts the highlights of a Robert Macfarlane Twitter thread about JA Baker's classic 1967 book The Peregrine; we're thus presented with the curious spectacle of one author writing about another author tweeting about another author who was writing on birds. And as for the Ted Hughes test, a wren is described as a 'miniaturised, soft machine-gun spraying paper bullets of sound', and choughs as flying like 'an aerial clown-show'. At one stage, Gower even coins his own collective noun: a 'serenity of swans'. (There are already several words: flock, bevy, gaggle, herd.) For all his admirable passion, one can't help but wonder whether he might leave birdland to the birds for a while. In Bird School (★★★★☆), Adam Nicolson seems more alert to the challenges, and perils, of his field. Early on, he cites the writer Charles Foster's claim that whenever he, Foster, is perusing the 'birdwatching' section of a bookshop, he'll seek out the titles that describe the experience of having birds watch us, rather than the other way around. And, instead of striking out in pursuit of birds, Nicolson instead constructs a hide in a field close to his home on the Sussex Weald. What follows is in part a deep topography of a local patch, and in part an exploration of the intricacies of the lives of the birds that reside there. The result is deeply satisfying. 'We do not know each other and their lives are invisible to us,' Nicolson writes of the birds he watches. Instead of attempting to capture the unknowable, he draws upon an impressive depth of scientific and historical research to bring his subjects to life. Bird School works, to a degree, like a scrapbook, with Nicolson including old maps and notes – he records the exact sequence of birds singing in the dawn chorus – as well as a diary of the time he spends in the hide. He only loses focus when, on occasion, he ventures too far afield, as when he wanders the streets of Bonn in pursuit of blackbird song. When he stays put, Bird School is a worthy addition to a literary lineage that stretches back to the 18th-century writer and naturalist Gilbert White. Above all, Nicolson's dispassionate style is effective at illustrating the threat to Britain's birds. At one point he produces a series of graphs demonstrating the precipitous collapse of our songbird population over the past 60 years: bullfinches, nightingales and swallows have declined by 50 per cent, skylarks by 60 per cent and turtle doves by 90 per cent. The roll-call of species lost, he writes, reads like a list of regiments decimated in battle. Across Europe as a whole, bird populations have fallen by nearly a fifth over recent decades, a loss of about 600 million birds from a total of 3.2 billion in 1980. That collective indifference to what he calls an 'ending of a multiple form of life' inspired him to write this book. Bird School, then, is a fitting title: we should learn to rekindle our enduring love affair with birds, before they vanish from our sight.
Telegraph
08-03-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
Scientists discuss new habitats for mammoth revival
When scientists first mooted the idea of bringing back the mammoth, it was met with raised eyebrows and widespread incredulity among the scientific community. Now, with the creation of the first ' woolly mice ', the unthinkable might soon become a reality. On Tuesday, scientists at Colossal, the US biotech start-up, announced they had engineered mice with golden shaggy fur and the ability to withstand the cold, in a test run to see if the traits could be transferred successfully to mammals. The company is now so confident it can bring back the mammoth in the next few years, that it is already in talks with governments across the world to find a suitable habitat for the creatures to roam. Dr Beth Shapiro, the chief science officer at Colossal, said: 'The ultimate goal is to have these animals live in the wild somewhere. 'We've been talking to several different state governments and national governments about where they might go for the early stages. 'We need to have animals in an environment where we can very carefully watch them, make sure that they're healthy for some time, before they are actually released into the wild. 'We're still early in the stages of figuring out exactly where they will go. They lived throughout the central part of North America, even into Mexico. 'They don't necessarily need to be in the Arctic, although if we make them cold tolerant, then probably they'll be happiest somewhere colder.' Colossal also wants to resurrect the dodo, which it intends to rewild on Mauritius, the original home of the flightless bird that was hunted to extinction in the 17th century. Discussions are ongoing with the Mauritian government. Dr Shapiro, an evolutionary molecular biologist, joined Colossal in 2024 from the University of California, where her team was the first to sequence the dodo from a specimen in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 'I did my PhD at Oxford, and I would walk by that dodo sample every day when I was going to our ancient DNA lab,' she added. 'Eventually I got permission to take a sample and figured out that a dodo is a type of pigeon and its closest living relative is something called a Nicobar pigeon, which is a really beautiful bird. 'We're trying to identify what DNA sequences we need to change if we're going to take a Nicobar pigeon and turn it into a flightless, big headed, pretty freaking cool dodo. 'But we're also working with government and nonprofit organisations on Mauritius to develop plans for rewilding, because one of the things that we need to do with a dodo is have a safe place for it to be released into the wild.' Birds are trickier to bring back than mammals because they cannot be cloned. Instead, scientists need to come up with a different way of passing edits on to the next generation. The technique they are working on involves using a needle to suck primordial germ cells – which will become sperm or eggs – from a developing Nicobar pigeon embryo so they can edit them with dodo genes in the lab. The edited germ cells can then be put into a surrogate bird which does not make its own germ cells, and so will be then passed on to an embryo. There is no date yet for resurrecting the dodo, but the mammoth may be just a few years away. Mammoths share 99.5 per cent of their genes with Asian elephants, so bringing them back is largely a case of finding missing genetic traits linked to cold adaptation, such as long shaggy coats and fat storage. The idea was first put forward by Harvard geneticist Professor George Church in 2008, who had become interested in attempts to sequence the mammoth genome by Swedish scientists. The genome was finally fully sequenced in 2015 and in the same year Church's team successfully copied some woolly mammoth genes into the genome of an Asian elephant. At the time, Church predicted that the animal could be resurrected by the end of the decade, however progress stalled until he founded Colossal in 2021 with entrepreneur Ben Lamm, which has brought millions of dollars of investment. Dr Shapiro said: 'When the company was launched, they said they hoped to see the first mammoth in 2028, and I think our team is on track to be able to create cells and embryos by 2027 sometime. 'After that, we have a 22 month gestation period, and that's just a lot of stuff that could happen that's completely out of our control. There are a lot of unknowns in there, and some of it is just biology. And biology is hard.' The woolly mice success paves the way for multiple genetic traits to be introduced to Asian elephant DNA, and resurrect the mammoth, which died out around 10,000 years ago. 'We put all the genetic edits together for the first time which is something that we're going to have to do if we want to change an elephant genome into a mammoth genome, or a Nicobar pigeon genome into a dodo genome,' said Dr Shapiro. 'We've confirmed our hypotheses that these are the genes that we want to target for the mammoth project.' Elephants have a 22 month gestation, and it takes another more than a decade to reach sexual maturity, so it is not feasible to test genetic edits out on real animals until scientists are sure they will work. They are also an endangered species. Mice, on the other hand, have a 20 days gestation, so researchers can tell quickly if their work has been a success. But the mice are still well looked after. 'We didn't just go ahead and shove mammoth genes into a mouse,' added Dr Shapiro. 'We know these genes have been studied in the past and are associated with healthy mice that can live and thrive in a normal environment. 'They're well treated. At Colossal, they have these cute little runs and wooden houses that they can hide in and things like that. Ben really likes them, so they get superstar treatment.' While the mammoth and dodo might get all the attention, the team is also working on resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) and has future plans to bring back a giant bear from the Ice Age and a five foot tall beaver. Although bringing back animals from extinction has echoes of Jurassic Park, the team at Colossal hope that the techniques they are pioneering could uncover lost genetic traits from the past and ensure that no species alive today need ever go permanently extinct. The company has also been focusing on endangered animals such as the vaquita, a porpoise which is also one of the most threatened marine species on the planet, the northern white rhino, which is on the brink of extinction, and the pink pigeon, a rare species found in Mauritius. And resurrecting the mammoth might also save the elephant. Dr Shapiro added: 'If we create elephants that are able to live in habitats outside of their natural zone, by making them better adapted to living in cold places, then this means that we can have more habitats that we might be able to protect, that are available to elephants as well.'
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists discuss new habitats for mammoth revival
When scientists first mooted the idea of bringing back the mammoth, it was met with raised eyebrows and widespread incredulity among the scientific community. Now, with the creation of the first 'woolly mice', the unthinkable might soon become a reality. On Tuesday, scientists at Colossal, the US biotech start-up, announced they had engineered mice with golden shaggy fur and the ability to withstand the cold, in a test run to see if the traits could be transferred successfully to mammals. The company is now so confident it can bring back the mammoth in the next few years, that it is already in talks with governments across the world to find a suitable habitat for the creatures to roam. Dr Beth Shapiro, the chief science officer at Colossal, said: 'The ultimate goal is to have these animals live in the wild somewhere. 'We've been talking to several different state governments and national governments about where they might go for the early stages. 'We need to have animals in an environment where we can very carefully watch them, make sure that they're healthy for some time, before they are actually released into the wild. 'We're still early in the stages of figuring out exactly where they will go. They lived throughout the central part of North America, even into Mexico. 'They don't necessarily need to be in the Arctic, although if we make them cold tolerant, then probably they'll be happiest somewhere colder.' Colossal also wants to resurrect the dodo, which it intends to rewild on Mauritius, the original home of the flightless bird that was hunted to extinction in the 17th century. Discussions are ongoing with the Mauritian government. Dr Shapiro, an evolutionary molecular biologist, joined Colossal in 2024 from the University of California, where her team was the first to sequence the dodo from a specimen in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 'I did my PhD at Oxford, and I would walk by that dodo sample every day when I was going to our ancient DNA lab,' she added. 'Eventually I got permission to take a sample and figured out that a dodo is a type of pigeon and its closest living relative is something called a Nicobar pigeon, which is a really beautiful bird. 'We're trying to identify what DNA sequences we need to change if we're going to take a Nicobar pigeon and turn it into a flightless, big headed, pretty freaking cool dodo. 'But we're also working with government and nonprofit organisations on Mauritius to develop plans for rewilding, because one of the things that we need to do with a dodo is have a safe place for it to be released into the wild.' Birds are trickier to bring back than mammals because they cannot be cloned. Instead, scientists need to come up with a different way of passing edits on to the next generation. The technique they are working on involves using a needle to suck primordial germ cells – which will become sperm or eggs – from a developing Nicobar pigeon embryo so they can edit them with dodo genes in the lab. The edited germ cells can then be put into a surrogate bird which does not make its own germ cells, and so will be then passed on to an embryo. There is no date yet for resurrecting the dodo, but the mammoth may be just a few years away. Mammoths share 99.5 per cent of their genes with Asian elephants, so bringing them back is largely a case of finding missing genetic traits linked to cold adaptation, such as long shaggy coats and fat storage. The idea was first put forward by Harvard geneticist Professor George Church in 2008, who had become interested in attempts to sequence the mammoth genome by Swedish scientists. The genome was finally fully sequenced in 2015 and in the same year Church's team successfully copied some woolly mammoth genes into the genome of an Asian elephant. At the time, Church predicted that the animal could be resurrected by the end of the decade, however progress stalled until he founded Colossal in 2021 with entrepreneur Ben Lamm, which has brought millions of dollars of investment. Dr Shapiro said: 'When the company was launched, they said they hoped to see the first mammoth in 2028, and I think our team is on track to be able to create cells and embryos by 2027 sometime. 'After that, we have a 22 month gestation period, and that's just a lot of stuff that could happen that's completely out of our control. There are a lot of unknowns in there, and some of it is just biology. And biology is hard.' The woolly mice success paves the way for multiple genetic traits to be introduced to Asian elephant DNA, and resurrect the mammoth, which died out around 10,000 years ago. 'We put all the genetic edits together for the first time which is something that we're going to have to do if we want to change an elephant genome into a mammoth genome, or a Nicobar pigeon genome into a dodo genome,' said Dr Shapiro. 'We've confirmed our hypotheses that these are the genes that we want to target for the mammoth project.' Elephants have a 22 month gestation, and it takes another more than a decade to reach sexual maturity, so it is not feasible to test genetic edits out on real animals until scientists are sure they will work. They are also an endangered species. Mice, on the other hand, have a 20 days gestation, so researchers can tell quickly if their work has been a success. But the mice are still well looked after. 'We didn't just go ahead and shove mammoth genes into a mouse,' added Dr Shapiro. 'We know these genes have been studied in the past and are associated with healthy mice that can live and thrive in a normal environment. 'They're well treated. At Colossal, they have these cute little runs and wooden houses that they can hide in and things like that. Ben really likes them, so they get superstar treatment.' While the mammoth and dodo might get all the attention, the team is also working on resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) and has future plans to bring back a giant bear from the Ice Age and a five foot tall beaver. Although bringing back animals from extinction has echoes of Jurassic Park, the team at Colossal hope that the techniques they are pioneering could uncover lost genetic traits from the past and ensure that no species alive today need ever go permanently extinct. The company has also been focusing on endangered animals such as the vaquita, a porpoise which is also one of the most threatened marine species on the planet, the northern white rhino, which is on the brink of extinction, and the pink pigeon, a rare species found in Mauritius. And resurrecting the mammoth might also save the elephant. Dr Shapiro added: 'If we create elephants that are able to live in habitats outside of their natural zone, by making them better adapted to living in cold places, then this means that we can have more habitats that we might be able to protect, that are available to elephants as well.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
