News & Stories – Page 10 – Oxford Nature Network

Selected News and Stories

wildflower meadow with fields and trees in distance — Wildflower meadow in Oxfordshire. Photo Yadvinder Malhi

The great significance of observing nature in your back garden

Yadvinder Malhi shares his rediscovery of nature at the local level Like many, I have found solace and refuge in local nature over this year of pandemic and lockdown. When able to escape from Zoom calls and cabin fever, I’ve wandered and exercised in my local floodplain meadow of the Thames. I’ve used books and […]

Nature Networking Coffee morning & talk

Join us on October 22nd 2026 at 10.30 in Seminar rooms 1&2 in the Oxford Martin School for refreshments and pastries, at 11am our speaker will join us for an informal talk. 4 million UK votes for nature. The Why and How of school-based nature education (a brief introduction). Kim Polgreen. Dept. of Education & […]

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Would a whitelist work better to regulate the world’s wildlife...

Dr Dan Challender and Dr Amy Hinsley discuss a new paper in which they evaluate the potential of ‘reverse listing’ to regulate international wildlife trade, highlighting that this approach is not a panacea. Globally, people use and trade at least 50,000 wild species for food, medicinal products, construction materials, and to support their livelihoods, among […]

Inspired by Nature. Powered by People

Celebrating a Remarkable Nature Festival 2026. On Saturday 27 June, as Oxfordshire experienced one of the hottest days of the year, hundreds of people came together for something worth celebrating: a festival that connected people with nature, with each other and with the inspiring work taking place to protect our environment. Despite the heatwave, The […]

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The Oxford Nature Network is a network of researchers and practitioners in and around the University working on biodiversity.

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All Stories

A beaver about to enter a river — Beavers help build our biodiversity

Beaver ecosystems

Annie Welden takes us to the wonderful world of beavers, the remarkable ecosystems engineers that work with humans to increase ecosystem biodiversity. Ever heard the phrase, ‘busy as a beaver?’ These large rodents found in North America and Eurasia are busy literally building biodiversity. By constructing their dams out of the materials around them, from […]

Close up of ocean waves — The Oxygen we breathe comes from our Oceans

Rainforests are not the lungs of our planet

The statement that Amazon is the lungs of our planet is a misconception. Our tropical forests are undoubtedly one of the most precious resources of our planet, for a multitude of reasons including being a hotspot for biodiversity and life on earth, storing carbon, climate regulation, water regulation, social and economic resilience, and much more. […]

Close of burning leaf — As we are approaching wildfire season in the Amazon, it is worth remembering that records of active fires in the Amazon Rainforest peaked in August 2019.

Amazon fires

As we approach the Amazonian wildfire season, Drs. Erika Berengue and Aoife Bennett from the Ecosystems Lab provide their insights on the drivers of wildfires and what this means in desperate times of COVID-19 pandemic.  Amazonians face devastating times: the rapid spread of COVID-19 across Amazonia, the lack of monitoring, infrastructure, and access to medical […]

The Sabah Biodiversity Experiment

One of the largest ecosystem restoration experiment in the world, the experiment has been going on for almost half a century. It has planted 100,000 trees over more than 5 square kilometres of a remote area of logged forest to investigate how it can be best restored. The project, located in Northern Borneo, Malaysia, studies […]

Illustration of sharks and graph — The 4 steps 4 the earth framework can help us deal with our impacts on nature

Conservation mitigation hierarchy

Dr. Henry Grub and Prof. E.J. Milner‐Gulland explain how researchers from the ICCS have developed a new framework to help us frame and account for all impacts humans have on nature – one that can be used by everyone: the 4 steps 4 the earth. It came from the mitigation hierarchy, which is used to […]

Illustration of what describes Nature-based Solutions — Nature-based solutions (NbS) are ways of tackling societal challenges by working with nature.

NbSI team

The Nature Based Solutions Initiative’s team explore how Nature-based Solutions can help us build the nature-rich, low-carbon societies of the future. Nature-based solutions (NbS) are ways of tackling societal challenges by working with nature. They typically involve restoration of natural ecosystems, such as forests, peatlands, marshes, grasslands and reefs (Seddon et al. 2019, 2020). But […]

Aerial shot of land and sea — Protecting and restoring Nature, letting the wild be wild, can help us heal our planet

Guidelines for Nature-based Solutions

Humanity is facing a climate, biodiversity, and social crisis: keeping global warming below dangerous thresholds & reversing the global decline in biodiversity are the two greatest environmental challenges of our century. We all depend on healthy ecosystems for food, energy, water, and biodiversity. The Paris Agreement, the publication of the IPCC SR 1.5 (2018), and […]

Tiger in the forest, dappled light — Big predators keep smaller animal populations under control

Illegal wildlife trade

The global pandemic is on all our minds. It is becoming increasingly clear that humanity fundamentally needs to change it’s relationship with nature. The science is clear Protecting biodiversity and letting the wild be wild reduces the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease – caused by an infectious pathogen or parasite […]

Dung beetle on the forest floor — We have an inkling of the global importance of invertebrates but have merely scratched the surface of their complex evolutionary history.

Invertebrates

The little things that run the world Invertebrates -animals without a backbone- have been accorded little attention in science, considering how incredibly biodiverse they are and their key role in maintaining the healthy functioning of our ecosystems. 6.1 million species of insects We have an inkling of the global importance of invertebrates but have merely […]

Woodland stream — Protecting, restoring, and better management of ecosystems helps avoid emissions and sequestering carbon

Ecosystems and Climate Change

Ecosystems are a big part of the solution to climate change: Agriculture, deforestation, and land degradation contribute to 24{4136d53bac2007e4117f1d8828c187063ea0a85f13bd7ca9434591c56c4e6ea2} of global greenhouse gas emissions (Smith et al., 2014). Restoring our natural world helps mitigate climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (Le Quéré et al., 2018). Protecting, restoring, and better management of ecosystems […]