Nature Studies

Michael McCarthy, the Independent's Environment Editor, is one of Britain’s leading writers on the environment and the natural world. He has three times been Environment Journalist of the Year (1991, 2003 and 2006) and in 2001 was Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards. In 2007 he was awarded the medal of the RSPB for "Oustanding Services to Conservation" – the first time in the medal's 100-year history that it has been given to a journalist – and in 2009 he was given the Marsh Award for Lepidoptera Conservation. In 2009 he published Say Goodbye To The Cuckoo (John Murray), a study of Britain's declining migrant birds.

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Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The small-leaved lime, lost tree of England

Some myths are so tenacious as to be virtually unshakeable, and one such is that the national tree of England is the oak. There is no Act of Parliament proclaiming Quercus robur to be an official symbol of Englishness, but there doesn't need to be, with a belief which has such deep roots in Middle England's psyche that David Cameron's Conservative Party ditched Margaret Thatcher's red, white and blue "torch of freedom" in favour of an oak tree as the new Tory emblem (although I notice that these days they tend to fill in the tree's outline with the Union Jack, just in case anyone doesn't get the point. Didn't Dr Johnson say that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel?).

Inside Nature Studies

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: It's time Man stopped to consider Earth's health

Friday, 18 February 2011

Are there any limits on what humans can do? Asked rhetorically, the question invites the smiling, triumphant answer, No!, complete with happy-clappy exclamation mark. But to ask it the other way – that is, to ask it simply, in all seriousness – seems to me something that doesn't happen any more. In fact, the absence of this question seems to be a great gap at the heart of our current creed, which we might term liberal secular humanism, as we approach one of the climaxes of human history, which is the coming clash between humans as a species, and the Earth which is our only home.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Why winter is a time to savour small pleasures

Friday, 11 February 2011

One of the compensations of the cold months in this country for anyone who enjoys the natural world is the great arrival from the north of wintering wildfowl, of wild ducks, wild swans, and above all, wild geese. Britain is a winter haven for hundreds of thousands of these waterbirds which breed in what the naturalist and writer Mark Cocker calls "the crown of the planet" – the halo of land around the Earth's northern latitudes, below the Arctic, from Canada, through Greenland, Iceland, Northern Scandinavia, Siberia, and back to Canada again.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Greenest government ever – that's a sick joke

Friday, 4 February 2011

Some false ideas need robustly confronting, and never more so than when they are enshrined in slogans, as slogans can develop a power of their own, almost an independent life; and such a one is the idea that the administration of David Cameron is going to be "the greenest government ever." This phrase, first uttered by the Prime Minister in a speech to civil servants last May, has now become a mantra and is regularly trotted out as an earnest of the Government's good environmental intentions, almost as if it had been a manifesto commitment. Yet, based on what the Government is actually doing, it is so far from the truth as to be risible, and it needs to be demolished; or better, it needs to be shot with a silver bullet and buried in a lead coffin at a crossroads with a stake through its heart, just in case any minister has the brass neck to try to resurrect it.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The 21st century bodes ill for non-human species

Friday, 28 January 2011

If the Earth is eventually to be overwhelmed by the human species, is it a crime to speak up for the Earth? Our morality is anthropocentric: at the heart of our notions of good and bad lies human suffering, and what we can do to avoid it.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Of all our conservation failures, this is the saddest

Friday, 21 January 2011

It's a hoary old cliché, the dream that died, but perhaps we may be allowed to write the dream that is dying: for such is the situation facing anyone who has supported the noble aim of restoring salmon, the finest of all freshwater fish, to the River Thames.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Of the dingy footman, and other such creatures

Friday, 14 January 2011

With a thump, a thick tome lands on my desk: it is the Provisional Atlas of the UK's Larger Moths. Two adjectives in that title, provisional and larger, may well deter some people as they give off a definite whiff of nerdiness, but having by now been infected with the nerd germ I am immune to such concerns, open the volume eagerly and at once find myself immersed in the world of the oblique carpet, the dark spinach, the smoky wainscot, the brindled pug, the snout, the beautiful snout, the Bloxworth snout and the true lover's knot.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Have we learned nothing since 'Silent Spring'?

Friday, 7 January 2011

Nicotine, found in tobacco, is a deadly substance – and not only for smokers. It has long been known as a powerful natural insecticide, and its presence in the tobacco crop has evolved to deter pests; it is toxic to virtually all of them (except one, the Carolina sphinx moth, whose fat green caterpillar, known in the US as the tobacco hornworm, has evolved a way of dealing with it).

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Survival skills of the highest order

Friday, 31 December 2010

Alpine Dorset: that was a new one on me, in the heart of that most gently rolling of counties, but such the landscape seemed to be as we trudged on Christmas Day up the slopes of Maiden Castle, the colossal prehistoric hillfort on the outskirts of Dorchester. As far as the eye could see the countryside was white, apart from the woodlands which were black against the snow, while above, all was blue: a high-pressure system meant there was no cloud in the sky, and the sun poured down unhindered. Blinding white, luminous blue, searing sun: I've only seen that palette high in the Alps, on skiing holidays.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The winter solstice, festival of rebirth

Friday, 24 December 2010

Let us celebrate the day then, the long-awaited day, the great midwinter feast, and let us give thanks for what it represents, most of all, its restoration of hope. I'm not referring to tomorrow, though, I'm not referring to Christmas. I'm referring to last Tuesday: the winter solstice.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Cancun was a triumph for global co-operation

Friday, 17 December 2010

It is difficult sometimes, when one understands a situation but imperfectly, to make an accurate assessment of it; and such may be the case with some of those who have belittled the achievement of the United Nations climate conference which ended in Cancun, Mexico, a week ago.

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