Natural World

Why are GM crops being grown, how are plants genetically modified, where is it being cultivated, who’s in control and what is being researched and developed?

Bizarrely formed and practising one of nature’s most mysterious parenting methods, the seahorse is the victim of an international trade that kills 20 million of them every year. By Davina Langdale

I think that pigs everywhere are dropping semantic pearls before human swine who labour under the delusion that all pigs can do is go ‘oink’

Myth number 7: Industrial agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife

The economic troubles in Argentina have been widely reported around the world. The impoverishment of the middle classes and the Argentines’ growing cynicism about their politicians have been extensively written up. Less well covered in the news has been the effects of the crisis on Argentina’s very poorest – people who live far from the eye of city-based reporters, the country’s original inhabitants, a people despised and vilified as ‘savages’ by the settler population.

They build masterfully constructed homes, have a brilliantly regulated social order, are essential to sustaining the environment and are playing a vital role in sustainable development projects.

Dirty deals between the European Commission and Ireland have enabled the world’s biggest trawler to plunder African fish stocks.

It swam the oceans when dinosaurs walked the earth. Now our hunger for tuna means the Pacific leatherback turtle could be extinct within 10 years.

Russia’s zapovedniks are some of the world’s most pristine wildernesses. For 70 years they were protected ruthlessly by the Soviet system, but recently they have fallen prey to Putin, the World Bank and ecotourists. Paul Webster reports on their plight

The problem with vivisection, argues Derrick Jensen, is that we’re experimenting on the wrong sort of animals.

Ros Coward reports from Murcia in southern Spain, the driest place in Europe, where tourism and intensive agriculture is draining its meagre water supplies and causing a growing environmental crisis.

The promise that cloning will be a boon to conservation is, says Malcolm Tait, a complete cop-out

Kirkpatrick Sale is shocked by a new and disturbing view of the ecological role of the American Indian.

If trends continue the world’s great apes are doomed to extinction. But one unique rehabilitation project in West Africa is challenging this bleak picture. Beatrice Newbery reports

A new threat to whales, dolphins and other marine life exists in the worlds oceans, as the US Navys new sonar technology could have huge long-term effects on their whole way of life. Leigh Calvez reveals why the lords of the sea aren't singing any more.

Episode One - Killer Bees

Scientists have found that the UK’s common or garden earthworms are far more diverse than previously thought, a discovery with important consequences for agriculture.