Back from the brink

It might not sound very conservation-minded, but the RSPB is to bring back a valuable wildlife habitat by blowing up ancient trees. A handful of trees aged 100-200 years in Abernethy forest in Scotland will have their crowns blown off in an attempt to bring back the deadwood that invertebrates, fungi, mosses, lichens, birds and small mammals love.

First for the bad news: only half of Borneo’s original forest cover remains, ‘thanks to’ logging, forest fires and forest conversion to plantations. And now for the good: the three Bornean governments - Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia - have joined together to “conserve and sustainably manage” the rainforests across almost a third of the island.

It’s back from the dead - the River Quaggy, which flows 17km from Kent through Greenwich into Lewisham town centre. And with it have come herons, snipe, and emperor dragonflies, attracted to the surrounding reedbeds and watermeadows. The lost river was hidden in tunnels and artificial channels for years, until the Environment Agency decided to use it, and the park it runs through, as a giant watery sponge to prevent flooding.

Not exactly famed for its cross-border environmental initiatives, the troubled Caucasus region could get some better press in April when a group of ecologists and filmmakers hold the Sun Child festival in Armenia, with concerts, seminars, film screenings and tree-planting sessions. “We do believe that this large-scale event will significantly contribute to nature protection and no mines and bombs will destroy our ecosystems anymore,” say its organisers.

10 March 2007