Showing titles in Nature & Ecology

Plants play a critical role in how we experience our environment. They create calming green spaces, provide oxygen for us to breathe, and nourish our senses. In The Nature of Plants, ecologist and nursery owner Craig Huegel demystifies the complex lives of plants and provides listeners with an extensive tour into their workings.

Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company.

Have you ever wondered how peas, kale, asparagus, beans, squash, and corn have ended up on our plates? Well, Adam Alexander has. In The Seed Detective, Adam shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday food heroes. Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization, and serendipity—describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.

We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.

A bird flits overhead. It’s an everyday occurrence, repeated hundreds, thousands, millions of times daily by creatures across the world. It’s something so normal, so entirely taken for granted, that sometimes we forget how extraordinary it is. But take that in for a moment. This animal flies. It. Flies. The miracle of flight has evolved in hugely diverse ways, with countless variations of flapping and gliding, hovering and diving, murmurating and migrating.

From cunning Neolithic traps, intricate Roman nets and quarrellous Victorian societies to the evolution of angling and eventual gentrification of river access, this history spans thousands of years and ends with a poignant call to protect the underwater world from the horrors of industrial fishing and farming.

The Last Great Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga the third highest but reputedly the hardest mountain in the world. It was an astonishing achievement for a British team led by Everest veteran Charles Evans. Drawing on interviews, diaries and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey begins his story in 1905 with the disastrous first attempt on the mountain by a team led by Aleister Crowley, explores the three dramatic German expeditions of the the late 1920s and brings it all to a climax 50 years later with the first ascent by Joe Brown and George Band.

According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), each year, an estimated 24 billion tons of fertile soil are lost due to erosion. That’s a whopping 3.4 tons lost every year for each person on the planet.

A place of exceptional diversity, rapid change and high energy, for the past 100 million years Europe has literally been at the crossroads of the world. By virtue of its geology and geography, evolution in Europe proceeds faster than elsewhere. The continent has absorbed wave after wave of immigrant species over the millennia, taking them in, transforming them and sometimes hybridising them. Flannery's exploration of the nature of Europe reveals a compelling intellectual drama, with a cast of heroic researchers whose discoveries have changed our understanding of life itself.

When Guy Stagg decided to walk from Canterbury to Jerusalem, he spent the next 10 months following medieval pilgrim paths across 5,500 km. He began the journey after suffering several years of mental illness, hoping the ritual would heal him. Travelling alone and without support, he had to rely each night on the charity of strangers.

As Brits we pride ourselves as stoic defenders, boasting a record of resistance dating back to 1066. Yet, even a cursory examination of the natural world reveals that while interlopers of the human variety may have been kept at bay, our islands have been invaded, conquered and settled by an endless succession of animals, plants, fungi and other alien lifeforms that apparently belong elsewhere. Indeed it’s often hard to work out what actually is native, and what is foreign.

Thought for Food takes a deep dive into how what’s at stake goes beyond just our own health but that of our planet and the people and animals that populate it. James Collier gets to the bottom of critically important concerns that relate to poor nutrition and its impact on physical and mental health, the environment and animal welfare.

One of the nation's most popular presenters, Sir David examines 40 marvels of the natural world from his extraordinary and pioneering experiences. What was Sir David's first pet? Which animal would he most like to be? How did he track down a giant earthworm? Why does he respect rats? And what did he do when confronted by a 10-foot-long reptile? His enthusiasm is as infectious as ever and conveys a unique fascination on topics as diverse as the sloth, monstrous flowers, the platypus, dragons, the fire salamander, the coelacanth, the dodo, bird's-nest soup and the large blue butterfly.

When John Tovey lost his sight at the age of 42, he thought his life was over. He was wrong, it was just beginning. John had followed a bad path drifting in and out of trouble. He was sent to improvement schools, a young offenders institute and eventually a prison. John was on self-destruct and thought nothing or no one could help him. Then he became the victim of a vicious attack by a notorious train ‘steaming’ gang. John knew he had to take the witness stand.

Looking at the trees around his house, Tristan Gooley realises how little he has noticed, or even really seen them. He decides to embark journey, to investigate the signs that can be read from trees and everything about them that we often overlook. Tristan takes the listener on a series on micro-expeditions to uncover the signs to look for in each tree. In each journey he highlights at least one exemplary sign or pattern; from the everyday to the more exotic, from Kew Gardens in London to the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

The Arctic Treeline - the northern limit of the boreal forest that encircles the globe in an almost unbroken green ring - is the second largest biome on our planet. At this little-known frontline of climate change, the trees have been creeping towards the pole for 50 years already. Six of the tree species that populate these forests (larch, spruce, mountain ash, downy birch, balsam poplar and Scots pine) form the central protagonists of Ben Rawlence's story.

Let's be clear: Mamadou Ndiaye knows a whole lot of animals that can and will end you, but he has no plans to let these strange and horrifying creatures cash in his life insurance policy. Now the TikTok star is turning his engaging, entertaining and informative takes on animal biology and behaviour into this hilarious guide to the world's most deadly creatures.

After Kiran loses her mother, she escapes to the Welsh countryside—to allow herself to grieve away from turbulent city life in London, to leave her toxic family behind, and to find solace in the purity of the natural world. I Can Hear the Cuckoo is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth. This is a reflective book about finding friendship in the most unexpected places—and what nature and a small community in the Welsh Valleys can teach us about life.

Fast fashion is the ultimate toxic relationship. It's bad news for the planet, our brains and our bank balances. We can't go on like this; our shopping habits need an overhaul. Journalist Lauren Bravo loves clothes more than anything, but she's called time on her affair with fast fashion in search of a slower, saner way of dressing. In this book, she'll help you do the same.

In 2001, Sharon Pincott traded her privileged life as a high-flying corporate executive to start a new one with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe. She was unpaid, untrained, self-funded, and arrived with the starry-eyed idealism of most foreigners during early encounters with Africa. For 13 years - the worst in Zimbabwe's volatile history - this intrepid Australian woman lived in the Hwange bush fighting for the lives of these elephants, forming an extraordinary and life-changing bond with them.