Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime; construct a ten-thousand-hectare fish farm, and you’ll put him out of business.

That’s the idea, anyway.

Sail along the smog-ridden shorelines of northern China, and you’ll see an endless horizon of nets containing plump sea cucumbers fattened for market. Elsewhere — on coastal ranches — the water writhes with millions of captive fish.

These are the fish farms of the Bohai Sea. In a matter of decades, they’ve turned the shallow gulf — sheltered from the Pacific Ocean — into the world’s foremost aquacultural centre. …

In the dusty, windswept lands of Niger, there once stood a lonely acacia tree. Caravans passed beneath its spiky branches — the last stop before the endless sea of sand. Known as the Tree of Ténéré it was the only one for hundreds of miles — the loneliest tree on Earth.

But it was also a reminder of a long-forgotten time when the Sahara teemed with life. Beautifully painted prehistoric rock art tells of a panoply of hippos, rhinos, elephants, giraffes and antelopes. For millennia they thrived in a land of oceanic lakes and thundering rivers.

That was 6,000 years…

Peter Sellers, in the 1964 film, plays the eponymous Dr Strangelove, a mad nuclear scientist and former Nazi. The film parodies the absurdities of the Cold War and the unfolding world order. Nuclear Armageddon loomed on the horizon, and the outbreak of a Third World War was a real possibility.

They were simpler times.

At one point, facing imminent destruction, Strangelove proposes starting a breeding program once the nuclear fallout subsides down a mineshaft, in the bowels of the Earth. Now that’s sticking your head in the sand. Today, Strangelovian absurdity reigns as we battle to contain the ravenousness of…

Overpopulation is a dirty word.

Politicians talk about climate change and plastic pollution; conservationists preach of mass extinction and deforestation. We decry the erosion of our soils and contamination of our water.

But, heaven forbid, you suggest there are too many people. That’s a cardinal sin: it’s blaming the voter base. It’s questioning our core biological instinct. Life is good; people are even better.

That hasn’t stopped a daring few.

Back in 1798, Thomas Malthus — a cleric and scholar — was the first to preach the dangers of never-ending population growth. Writing in ‘An Essay on the Principle of…

Strange it seems, in 2020, to still be debating the existence of climate change. Forest fires. A scorching arctic. Sea level rise. Desertification. Mass extinction. Melting glaciers. Collapsing ice sheets. The evidence surrounds us and overwhelms us. Nor, is the underlying science controversial or even new, as I explore in ‘Seven Points You Need to Know About Climate Change.’

As with everything these days, climate change has become polarised. With neither side giving credence to the other, or even hearing a word they say.

Recent research by Pew found only 34% of self-identified modern Republicans and 15% of conservative Republicans…

Beavers are industrious little critters, voraciously chowing down on a tasty tree trunk to build their iconic dams (which stretch up to a half-mile long!), beavers are as determined as they are ingenious. In fact, they’re so assiduous they’re our go to metaphor — to ‘beaver away’ or be ‘busy as a beaver’ are common idioms commending hard work.

Don’t let our language fool you. We’ve not always been on good terms with our furry friends. The two extant species, the North American and Eurasia beavers, almost went extinct in recent centuries due to our appetite for beaver meat, furs…

In a matter of weeks, COVID-19 has turned the world upside down; striking down old habits and assumptions, as we scramble to control the pandemic. Central to our efforts has been social distancing. People are staying home fearful of catching the virus or spreading it; only venturing out to get groceries, or for their daily dose of exercise. City centres have shut down, factories have closed. If aliens arrived tomorrow, they’d quickly get the message: we’re closed for business.

However, in our abrupt absence, the environment is undergoing a metamorphosis. As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. …

Science is not sacred. It holds no regard for myths or magic. And despite a history bursting with legendary figures, from Newton to Einstein, science cares little for their lives, just their ideas. Sentimentality has been banished to the arts.

There is one notable exception, however. A hidden Eden, a virgin island. Nature’s private collection, whose discovery sparked the boldest of biological theories.

In this land that time forgot, nature takes her time. Giant tortoises plod through misty meadows, marine iguanas bask in the sun, entertained by Sally Lightfoot crabs who dance upon the rocks. …