Lynx

Tuesday

Derek Turner

Could we bring back the Great Auk?

From our UK edition

In 2023, the State of Nature Report announced that Britain was one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. This can have been scarcely surprising to anyone conscious of the ever-emptier countryside, and perhaps even expected for a small island that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. But Lee Raye’s many sources reveal that the process has long predated the steam engine, with far-reaching effects not just on the natural world but on national psychology. The 14 species featured in this book once bulked large in the British consciousness – as living beings and also as metaphors, morals, similes and symbols.

Wednesday

Matt Ridley

Turtle doves and the myth of rewilding

In the latest success story for reintroducing species to the British countryside, turtle doves, reared in captivity and released at three locations in Somerset and Devon last year, have returned to breed. Turtle doves have steeply declined in numbers, hanging on in the south and east of the country, but this scheme opens a new front in the battle to save the species as a British summer visitor. In May 2025, 244 captive-bred turtle doves were set free across three sites. Like others of their species, they spent the winter in Africa but a handful found their way back to south-west England this summer. Reintroductions like this are now all the rage among conservationists because it is a policy that can have spectacular results.