Latest news with #woodland
BBC News
4 days ago
- Climate
- BBC News
Holt Country Park fire tackled by crews from 13 stations
Crews from 13 stations worked throughout the night to tackle a fire in a woodland area near a country Fire and Rescue Service was called to Norwich Road near Holt Country Park at about 21:25 BST on Sunday.A spokesperson said crews remained on the scene through the following day to check for Norfolk District Council, which owns the park, said "fortunately" there was no fire on the park. Charlotte Brown was walking with her partner when she saw the fire: "As soon as we could see the flames and were sure it was out of control and not just a bonfire, I phoned it in." The service warned the risk of fires in the open was "currently high" due to dry weather and high temperatures. "They also take away resources which may be needed for other emergencies - many fires in the open are preventable by taking extra care," a spokesperson said. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Forest project helping children with their grief
Outdoor activities like den building, tree climbing and campfire skills are being used to help bereaved children explore and talk about their Together in Grief Forest Project takes groups to woodland in East Yorkshire, where group leaders weave discussions about feelings into the has also launched an animated film, based on the children's artwork and experiences which it hopes will be used by schools and project, which has so far helped almost 120 children, is a collaboration between Fitmums and Friends, the Humber Forest School and the University of Hull. Sam Barlow, Fit Mums' founder said, "We want the film to tell people what we do. "But it's also a really good reflection of what children tell us would be helpful to them, their tips about how teachers could help them."Mrs Barlow started the project after seeing how her own children needed support after her husband Mike died, following a 13 year battle with cancer."The school was initially really good and compassionate, " she said."But as time went on, they became more isolated. If they became upset it was difficult to say something."And they both handled it differently. One wanted school to tell people what had happened. The other didn'tCharlie, 10, and Lara, 14 have both been to the Forest Project, attending once a week for four weeks at woodland near Meaux. Lara's dad had a brain tumour and died three years ago."He was one of the nicest people ever," she said."You've got the idea that they'll pass away but it doesn't mean that anything can prepare you for how you'll feel."At the Forest Project there was always someone to talk to. "Charlie was six when his "funny and playful" grandad died and said he did not know who to speak to when he missed him and felt he did not want to join in activities."At the Forest Project, we played games, I made a massive stick man, dug for clay and whittled sticks."There were so many people who had also lost someone, whereas none of my friends had lost anyone."The people who run it don't ask questions and it's a nice environment in the forest." The project says it aims to give children "a safe space to explore and express their grief" and 'learn ways of coping" as well as developing a sense of project is supported by The Ideas Fund, a grants programme run by the British Science Association and funded by Wellcome. It helps to test out ideas to address mental wellbeing problems. Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
BBC News
18-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Coundon couple's new woodland is thriving four years on
Thousands of trees planted by a couple at a former colliery site are thriving as a new and Tracy Featherstone, based at High Meadows near Coundon, County Durham, made the decision during lockdown to transform their 49-acre (20-hectare) site into a haven for land, which used to be a colliery before becoming a farm, has now been carpeted with 25,000 trees of 14 different couple said they were "immensely proud and honoured" to be asked to become ambassadors of the UK Forestry Commission to promote the planting of new woodlands across the country. Mr Featherstone, 66, explained that the couple were the first in the North East to receive the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) grant in 2021."It has been absolutely amazing, we love it," he said. In the last four years, the land at High Meadows has been transformed, with small saplings becoming10ft (3m) tall trees."Everything is growing at this time of year, it looks tremendously impressive," Mr Featherstone said."When the wind is blowing through the leaves you really feel at one with nature."It is hoped the variety of trees, including hazel, hawthorn, alder, oak, aspen and willow, will encourage a wide range of wildlife to live in the £80,000 cost of planting and buying all of the trees was covered by the EWCO UK Forestry Commission predicts the woodland will capture 4,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over a 100-year Featherstone, 57, said woodland and green spaces were valuable for mental said: "Life on Earth would be inconceivable without trees and nature."A community of adults and children can grow together in kindness and mental health when they have access to the countryside."The Featherstones have opened up four of their fields to the public to enable walkers to enjoy the woodland too. Follow BBC Tees on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Die, My Love review — Jennifer Lawrence bombs in a maternal splatterfest
It's only taken eight years, but Jennifer Lawrence has finally delivered a companion piece for her outré mommy-horror Mother! And this one's terrible too, possibly even worse. At least Mother! demonstrated (pretentious) conceptual coherence, with Lawrence serving as a metaphor for the planet while her baby represented environmental destruction. In Die, My Love we're treated to a splatterfest that features Lawrence as a former writer called Grace who moves with her selfish, seedy, beer-swilling husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) to a run-down woodland abode somewhere in middle America and has a baby that triggers an all-consuming psychotic breakdown. Fine on paper, and clearly the subject of postpartum depression can handle more big screen engagement than the few paltry mainstream titles that have attempted it
Daily Mail
18-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
How cutting-edge tech could soon help find your missing grandma - and it could be a gamechanger for dementia patients
Each year in the UK, around 40,000 people with dementia will wander from their homes, get lost and go missing. While most are soon found, those who are gone for over 24 hours face the risk of serious injury and death even within a short distance of safety. But now, cutting-edge tech is giving search and rescue teams the edge they need to find the most vulnerable people before they come to serious harm. To see how this could soon be helping to find your missing loved ones, MailOnline joined Surrey Search and Rescue (SAR) as they put their skills to the test in a live training exercise. On a sweltering spring day, MailOnline met Surrey SAR's volunteers as they geared up and prepared to track down a missing person hidden somewhere in the surrounding woodland. With the undergrowth well over waist high in places and the missing person last seen over a day ago, the odds seemed thoroughly stacked against them. However, tipping the scales back in their favour is SARNET: the latest software which helps search planners track down their missing person based on statistical trends. Backed up by communications systems originally designed for the military, SARNET means the search teams can find people faster and, ultimately, save more lives. Developed by British tech firm UK Connect, SARNET is essentially a way of bringing together the vast amounts of information search and rescue teams need to function. This is critical for search and rescue teams because of the types of people they are called on to find. Unlike mountain rescue services, where incidents are usually called in by members of the public, teams like Surrey SAR are called in by the police as specialists when someone extremely vulnerable goes missing. A lot of the time this is someone with dementia, but it can include individuals with severe autism, mental health issues, or 'despondent' individuals attempting suicide. UK Connect CEO and Surrey SAR team member PJ Farr told MailOnline: 'The people we are looking for either don't know they're lost or don't want to be found.' Originally inspired by his work with defence organisations, Mr Farr says the idea was to take tools made for 'finding bad guys' and use them to find these vulnerable people. When a missing person is reported, the police search coordinators will call up one of the search and rescue volunteers and pass on all the information they have. Using that data, a search planner will start to create a map of the most likely locations and arrange a location for the on-call volunteers to meet and begin the search. In the past, teams of volunteers would need to meet to collect physical copies of the maps before heading out to search an area, then come back, report their findings, get a new map, and head out again. Sean Berry, team leader and search planner with Surrey SAR, told MailOnline: 'We used to have a printer in the back because paper was primarily how we used to get tasked.' All of that took up valuable time, which could mean the difference between life and death for the missing person. But Mr Berry says a new piece of software called SARSYS has been a 'gamechanger', allowing teams to cut out all of these time-consuming steps. As soon as the mission planner starts to receive data from the police, it is entered directly into the SARSYS system. Some of that information might be basic details such as the missing person's name, home address, and last known location. However, using SARSYS, the planner can also start to add information that can help to predict where the person might be before the search and rescue teams have even laced up their boots. Mr Farr explains that every type of missing person has certain statistical characteristics that narrow down the search area. For example, people with dementia generally always go in straight lines. 'So, they only turn when they reach a decision point like a T junction,' explains Mr Farr. People with severe autism, meanwhile, tend to gravitate towards areas with bodies of water as well as structures like railway bridges and motorway overpasses. SARSYS also takes into account the specifics of the individual missing person to help build a better prediction. For someone with dementia, this might mean referencing a person's previous homes, favourite walking routes, or even that they happen to enjoy bird watching. In the practice operation taking place, the fictional missing person is a young man with severe autism and ADHD. But thanks to information provided by the police and the parents, the model shows this person is also attracted to the woods - making the woodland's dangerous ponds a high priority area. Mr Farr says: 'Every time we find someone, we upload their statistics to the central system and that helps improve the model. 'We don't have AI yet, but that's obviously going to be the next step.' Critically, that information is also shared in real time with every member of the search team via an app on their phones. Each of Surrey SAR's vehicles is fitted with an Ericsson R2100 in-vehicle router, which uses both mobile networks and low-earth orbit satellites to keep the teams in contact. That means the search locations are sent out in real time to every team, removing the need to come back to the operations vehicle between searches and saving valuable time. Mark Lindsay, operations officer and search planner at Surrey SAR, told MailOnline: 'Because it's all run through connectivity-based communications, it enables us to not only react quickly, but do it concurrently. 'So, when we get a call from the police, the search panel can literally open their laptop at home, listen to the intelligence as it comes through and start planning straight away.' Back in the Incident Command Unit (a van filled to the brim with communications equipment, screens and laptops), search planners have all the information they need right in front of them. Search planners can see their team's locations in real time alongside live video feeds from the volunteers' mobile phones, footage from airborne drone teams, and the latest statistical updates. As the training operation plays out, Mr Lindsay's screens show a series of red search areas slowly switching over to blue as the search teams tick off one area after another. Then, less than two hours after the teams left the car park, a small dot appeared on the screen: the location of the missing person. As the SARSYS model had predicted, they were found in the woods near a group of small structures, not far from a body of water. Soon, Surrey SAR's teams swarmed to the scene, loading them onto a stretcher and carrying them to the waiting support vehicle for first aid. Thanks to this new technology, Mr Lindsay and his planners can make their responses that much more efficient and get rescuers to a missing person faster than ever before. While saving a few minutes here and there might not sound important, when it comes to a missing person, every moment counts. Although this is just a drill, were this a real scenario, every extra minute spent printing maps and sharing screenshots of locations is another minute a vulnerable person is in danger. So, for search and rescue teams like Surrey SAR, saving time means saving lives. HOW DOES GPS WORK? The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of about 30 satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 20,000 km (12,000 miles). The system can pinpoint your location anywhere on Earth. The system was originally developed by the US government for military navigation but now anyone with a GPS device, be it a SatNav, mobile phone or handheld GPS unit, can receive the radio signals that the satellites broadcast. Wherever you are on the planet, at least four GPS satellites are 'visible' at any time. Each one transmits information about its position and the current time at regular intervals. These signals, travelling at the speed of light, are intercepted by your GPS receiver, which calculates how far away each satellite is based on how long it took for the messages to arrive. Once it has information on how far away at least three satellites are, your GPS receiver can pinpoint your location using a process called trilateration. Trilateration is a sophisticated version of triangulation, though it does not use the measurement of angles in its calculations. Data from a single satellite provides a general location of a point within a large circular area on the Earth's surface. GPS satellites have atomic clocks on board to keep accurate time. General and Special Relativity however predict that differences will appear between these clocks and an identical clock on Earth. General Relativity predicts that time will appear to run slower under stronger gravitational pull – the clocks on board the satellites will therefore seem to run faster than a clock on Earth.
