News and Opinion - British Ecological Society

International Day of Forests 2024

Celebrating the UN’s International Day of Forests! Let’s take a deep dive into the significance of forests to our planet and communities, and highlight some innovative new methods being used to conserve these important environments.

Diverse forests are best at standing up to storms

Forests that are most resilient to storms have a greater diversity of tree species and are dominated by slow growing species.

The biosphere cannot save us on its own - our response to COP28

From seagrass to rainforests, natural ecosystems have enormous potential to fight climate change. But the capabilities of the biosphere are being stretched to the limit.

Climate change causing 60% of plants and insects to fall out of synch

Seasonal timings of plants are advancing an average of four times faster than insects, throwing key interactions like pollination out of synch.

Does biodiversity offsetting work?

What influences the effectiveness of offsets schemes?

State of Nature: Ecologists have collected the evidence, now it’s time to act

The latest State of Nature Report rings yet another alarm bell on the biodiversity crisis in the UK, showing major declines in many species.

An assessment of hope: the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Report with Helen Roy

Helen Roy, lead author, discusses the new IPBES report on invasive alien species

How do fires in river habitats affect wildlife?

How do fires affect endangered Western purple-crowned fairy-wrens in riparian zones?

Are tropical butterflies equipped to survive the climate crisis?

There is a very real threat that we could lose many species of tropical butterflies.

British Ecological Society joins call for radical new government nature commitments

British Ecological Society signs open letter calling for the UK government to ramp up environmental ambitions as part of Nature 2030.

Warming climate could turn ocean plankton microbes into carbon emitters

New research finds that a warming climate could flip globally abundant microbial communities from carbon sinks to carbon emitters, potentially triggering climate change tipping points.

Climate change puts early-nesting waterfowl at risk, says new study

A new study highlights the significance of multi-species monitoring for effective habitat management

Orca diets provide insight into climate change impacts on Arctic food webs

Researchers studied orca pods from Canada's coasts, all the way to those in northern Norway.

Desert vegetation changing due to climate change

Even deserts are succumbing to the effects of climate change in new research from the University of California, Riverside

British Ecological Society calls for greater funding for ecological research and sets out research agenda

Two landmark reports by the British Ecological Society reveal that ecological sciences are losing out on funding compared to other sciences.