Conservation

Conservation, Travel

What Lies Beneath

Four Seasons Resort Seychelles – Desroches Island

At first, I thought I’d imagined it. Not a full shape. Just something slightly off in the water. Then it moved. We were standing just off Aquarium Beach at Four Seasons Resort Seychelles Desroches Island, fins half on, the sea flat before the light started to drop. Nasreen Khan, the resort’s conservationist and marine biologist, had brought us here to see one of the island’s most important marine habitats: a vast seagrass meadow that feeds its population of green sea turtles. The water was so clear it played tricks with perspective: distances shortened and shapes sharpened. A turtle surfaced a few metres ahead, took a breath and slipped beneath the water again. Then another appeared, followed by another, until we realised they had been there all along. We had simply begun to notice them, moving through the seagrass as they had long before we entered the water. Nasreen had been clear about how to behave around them. They need an unobstructed path to the surface, so we kept our distance. Don’t approach. Don’t follow. If they look at you, look away. In observing those rules,...

Conservation

Mindahi Bastida: the One Who Comes with the Wind

Indigenous Wisdom for a Planet in Crisis

From a blazing fire pit at Highgrove to global climate summits, Indigenous leader Mindahi Bastida is urging the world to listen again to the Earth. It is a glorious sunny July day in the gardens at Highgrove, King Charles’ grand estate in Gloucestershire. The monarch is one of a ring of people encircling a blazing […]

Conservation

Julie Church: A Life in Love with the Ocean

Her Life, her Work and the Birth of Seas4Life

Courageous, entrepreneurial and quietly formidable, Julie Church has spent three decades working to protect the marine life of the Western Indian Ocean, from the Red Sea to South Africa. As founder and CEO of Seas4Life, she now translates that commitment into carefully designed sea safaris: journeys that place guests in direct contact with the ocean […]

Conservation, Culture

From Fear to Fascination

How “Jaws” became the shark's greatest champion

When Jaws was released half a century ago, it instantly sank its teeth into our consciousness – and has never loosened its grip. Steven Spielberg’s gripping masterpiece follows three mismatched men – aquaphobic Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), passionate ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and salty shark fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) – hunting the great white terrorising a New […]

Conservation

Ocean with Sir David Attenborough

A plea to put an end to bottom trawling in our seas

Ocean, Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary, exposes the curse of modern-day industrial fishing: bottom trawling. Sir David cannot contain his anger. This highly destructive practice is laying waste to marine life all over the globe. It involves gigantic trawlers pulling a massive metal beam across the ocean floor and driving all the creatures it throws […]

Conservation

IUCN RED LIST OF THREATENED SPECIES

The unsung hero of the environment turns 60

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species provides a vital service to us all. It is the world’s most far-reaching information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species, watching over them with the care of a doting parent. It has an enormous and beneficial […]

Conservation

Birdwatching in St Lucia

The search for the elusive Jacquot, the emerald island’s national bird

A few months ago I went birdwatching to St Lucia in search of the elusive Jacquot, the island’s national bird, and learnt about biodiversity, endangered species and the power of environmental activism. My wife and I are nearing the end of an eight-hour hike up a vertiginous mountain trail. We are in the heart of […]

Conservation

Nature, wildlife and climate change

A story of peacock spiders, seabirds and koalas

The collective actions of animals over millions of years have shaped the planet’s climate to make it habitable for all. Our addiction to fossil fuels has become a smoke screen for this facet of reality. It’s true that humans are the major cause of climate change. However, the solutions aren’t simply about humans engineering new […]

Conservation

Everland and the Alto Mayo REDD+ Project

Changing the economics of deforestation

In 2019, I visited northern Peru to travel to an area of rainforest that had, at one time, seemed destined to disappear. I was part of a team supporting a successful conservation project in the Amazon, known as the Alto Mayo REDD+ Project, set up in 2008 by Conservation International and Peru’s National Parks Agency. […]

Conservation

Second Lives

Creating circularity and ‘second life’ products

As we are seeing such severe changes in climates across the globe, it is time for us to question our consumer and shopping habits. We should look for brands that are creative, sustainable and committed to be positive agents of change in what concerns the future of our planet. Circularity, commonly known as a lifecycle […]

Conservation

A Buzzing Network

Eco-conscious companies turn to beekeeping

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article on the plight of bees, and one of the questions I asked was what people in metropolitan areas such as London could do to promote this cause, so following a chat with our Editor-in-Chief, we decided to do a follow-up piece focusing on urban and corporate […]

Conservation, Toys

Pay It Forward

Watches for Eco-Friendly Dads

In the last five years or so, environmental concerns have multiplied exponentially in most industries. Watch brands are no different and alignment with sustainability and eco-friendly practises has become an important concern for many of them. There are three main avenues along which watch firms demonstrate their green credentials. First is the co-branding of a […]