Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who is missing in Iran’s mountains after a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan, is a hardliner who was instrumental in the last few years in steering Iran back towards the more uncompromising beliefs of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary founders.

A supporter of deeply conservative values on the domestic front, in terms of foreign policy, Raisi also carved out an increasingly aggressive stance, and it was on his watch that Tehran opted to launch its recent unprecedented missile and drone strike against Israel bringing the two countries into direct and open conflict for the first time.

While he was elected president in June 2021, having represented himself as the best person to fight corruption and Iran’s economic problems, Raisi had long occupied important positions in Iran, including an alleged key role in the so-called Death Committee responsible for executing thousands of prisoners in the 1980s – a claim he has denied.

Born in 1960 into a clerical family in Mashdad, Raisi was a child of the revolution that overthrew the Shah after he had travelled to Qom to attend a Shia seminary at the age of 15, following in his father’s footsteps.

While still a young student, he joined the mass protests against the western-backed Shah in 1979 that would lead to the Islamic Revolution under the guidance of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a cleric until his dramatic return from exile in France.

In the turbulent first years of the Islamic Revolution, the young Raisi continued with his studies at the Shahid Motahari University in Tehran, where he received a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence and law.

Joining the judiciary, Raisi, aged just 25 – like many other young men of his generation – would find himself catapulted into important office, in his case as the deputy prosecutor of Tehran.

It was while still in that role, say human rights groups, that he became one of four judges sitting on the infamous Death Committee, a secret tribunal set up in 1988 to retry thousands of prisoners, many of them members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq group.

It served as a springboard to his wider ambitions. Raisi would later serve as Tehran’s chief prosecutor, then as the head of the State Inspectorate Organisation. By 2006, he had been elected to the Assembly of Experts, which is charged with appointing and overseeing the supreme leader and whose members are approved by the powerful Guardian Council.

After the disputed 2009 presidential election triggered months of public protests, Raisi backed the brutal crackdowns and mass incarcerations. He became the country’s prosecutor general in 2014. He was placed under sanctions by the US Treasury in 2019 for his role in domestic repression.

Raisi’s election win, which saw him succeed Hassan Rouhani as president, represented a push back from Iran’s ultra-conservatives against the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that gave Iran relief from international sanctions.

Now, under Raisi, Iran enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and obstructs international inspections.

Raisi’s first effort to displace Rouhani, in 2017, fell short, as Rouhani won 57% of the vote. His profile, however, was given a new boost when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed him deputy chief of the Assembly of Experts in 2019.

Raisi won the 2021 presidential election, although that vote saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

In late 2022, a wave of nationwide protests erupted after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.

In March 2023, Iran and Saudi Arabia, longtime regional foes, announced a surprise deal that restored diplomatic relations.

The detente with Saudi Arabia, however, has been something of an outlier in terms of Iranian foreign policy under Raisi as Iran has supplied arms to Russia in its war on Ukraine, launched a massive drone and missile attack on Israel, and continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

I had heat pumps installed in my 100-year-old seafront house in 2009, with air-to-air systems – outside units connected with highly controllable indoor heaters – in three of the four flats. Why are systems like this – relatively cheap to install and run, and easy to manage, requiring no plumbing because they don’t use radiators – so often ignored? Your article on air-source heat pumps doesn’t even mention them (Are heat pumps more expensive to run than gas boilers?, 13 May).

My experience of air-to-air heaters has been brilliant; they are not only cheap to run, but they also work as air conditioners on hot days. I heat water separately, without hot water cylinders; the water is heated only when the hot tap is turned on, so there’s minimal waste of energy.

In my middle flat, I thought an air-to-air system would be impractical, so I had an air-to-water system installed, with radiators. It has proved much more expensive to run and more troublesome to maintain. The heat pump itself is brilliant; the problems are with the control systems and the fact that hot water has to be stored at a higher temperature than the heat pump produces, which requires the use of direct heating in the hot water cylinder. Had I known this when I bought the system – which was expensive, despite the grant – I would never have had it installed.

Please let your readers know: air-to-air heat pump systems, involving no water or radiators, are wonderful.
Arabella Melville
Pwllheli, Gwynedd

Your myth-busting article examining the relative cost of heat pumps versus gas boilers rightly mentions the expense and disruption of insulation and larger radiators necessary for some heat pump installations to work properly. What is seldom discussed is the cost and disruption of installing the cylinder needed to store water heated by a heat pump.

With a heat pump, the hot water is typically stored at a lower temperature to enhance efficiency, and the consequence is that a larger store is needed. For modern, moderately sized houses with a gas combination boiler (hence no existing hot water cylinder), this can make a heat pump installation practically impossible. What is needed is a hybrid: the heat pump supplies space-heating via radiators and hot water is supplied on demand by an electric “boiler” akin to a gas combination boiler.
Robert Palgrave
Cranleigh, Surrey

No wonder the uptake of heat pumps in the UK is so low. Planning permission is sometimes required. With the necessary noise impact study, that alone can cost £2,000. A quote for a small three-bedroom converted flat in central London for replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump and underfloor heating, without the cost of a new floor? £74,000.

I wonder how other countries manage to install heat pumps. Are installers in other countries really that much more efficient? Or might there be other reasons, such as price gouging when businesses see a central London postcode?
Jan-Peter Onstwedder
London

Please don’t forget that an air-to-air heat pump (the most efficient type) can be supplied and installed for about £4,000 to heat a house’s living area or extension without any other changes necessary. Think of it as an air-conditioning unit that keeps you warm as toast too.
Chris Sugden
Biggar, South Lanarkshire

Ships calling at the UK’s most-polluted ports produce more nitrogen oxides than all the cars registered in the same cities or regions, analysis has shown.

A report from Transport & Environment (T&E) said that ships were continuing to discharge huge quantities of air pollutants at ports, with Milford Haven, Southampton and Immingham topping the list for emissions of harmful sulphur oxides and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as well as nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The NGO said the data underlined the urgent need for government action to ensure ships used cleaner fuels and that ports enforce more zero-emission technology such as shore-side electricity.

Shipping and ports representatives said the report used “flawed methodology” and disputed the comparisons, but said they supported moves to reduce pollution.

The report found that in the top 10 NOx-polluted ports, about 4,000 ships produced an estimated 1.75 times as much NOx as almost one million cars registered to the same areas.

Ships calling at Southampton, a major cruise ship port, produced four times more NOx than cars in the city, T&E said. Southampton was also the worst for PM2.5, with cruise ships responsible for more than half the particulate pollution.

Jonathan Hood, the UK sustainable shipping manager at T&E, said: “The awful levels of pollution revealed in this analysis demonstrate how the UK’s port cities are being choked by the harmful fumes caused by a shipping industry that, thanks to years of government inaction, has no impetus to change.

“The government has its last chance to chart a better course for the industry with the updated clean maritime plan and it must not waste this opportunity. We need to see a rapid switch away from filthy fossil fuels, and ports must set binding targets to implement zero-emission technologies. These must include shore side electricity, which would ensure ships can plug in at port and switch off their polluting engines.”

A UK Chamber of Shipping spokesperson said the report did not take account of shore-side power now being used in Southampton by cruise ships, improving the air quality, but admitted that the UK was “behind the curve” and that more facilities should be installed.

The spokesperson added: “The industry supports the ambition to reduce emissions and is investing billions worldwide to do so. A long-term plan, codesigned by industry and government, is the way to set out the clear roadmap for emissions reduction [and] unlock future investment.”

Mark Simmonds, director of policy at the British Ports Association, said the industry’s net zero targets would also improve air quality. But he said the report was “irresponsible” and “discredited” by not examining how emissions dispersed before affecting population centres.

“Air pollutant emissions have a very localised impact and comparing emissions from ships, which deliver 450m tonnes of goods a year including half our of food and energy, to local car journeys is absurd. Emissions from ships are limited while at-berth when the main engines are turned off,” Simmonds said.

Lord Deben, the former chairman of the government’s Climate Change Committee, said it was “disheartening to see the staggering levels of emissions from ships around UK ports” and said the government should prioritise stricter emissions control measures. He said: “Without decisive action, the health impacts for residents and workers in port towns, not to mention economic costs, will continue to soar.”

A Department for Transport spokesperson said the UK would be publishing an updated clean maritime plan for shipping as part of its 2050 net zero targets. The spokesperson said: “We’ve already invested over £200m to develop innovative technology that will decarbonise the industry [and] are currently looking at extending emission restrictions across our waters after their success in the North Sea.”

A graphic novel investigating Indigenous identity in Canada has prompted outrage from Métis groups, who say the book undermines their history and represents an attack on their sovereignty.

The work is the result of a third-year history seminar at Dalhousie University, where students collaborated on a book examining thorny questions over ancestry and identity.

While the French term métis initially referred to those with mixed European and First Nations ancestry, the term has come refer to descendants of a specific group in western Canada’s Red River region. Historically maligned by colonial powers, who dubbed them “traitors”, the Métis people emerged in the 1800s and have a distinct culture and history, as well as their own language, Michif.

They are one of the three Indigenous peoples, alongside Inuit and First Nations, recognized in Canada’s Constitution Act, an acknowledgment that stems from decades of political and legal battles for nationhood.

Mixed relationships were common along the historic fur trade trade routes, but Métis people in the Canadian prairies have long asserted the term can’t simply be used to define anyone with mixed ancestry.

Other groups have challenged that definition, and a growing number of people have started identifying as Métis , especially in regions of Canada like New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec, where the group doesn’t have a homeland or deep historic ties. Those groups are referred to as Eastern Métis, and their status as Métis is strongly disputed by those in the west.

Lisa Binkley, an assistant professor of history at Dalhousie, said she wanted to help students understand the current arguments around Métis identity in Canada. Students in the seminar were exposed to “scholarship, laws, oral histories and the constitution” in order to better understand the complexity of the debate, she said.

“A lot of people only hear one side. These students are curious and they just want to know more about who they are,” she said. “There’s so much fear around ideas of ‘pretendians’ and discussions around race-shifting.”

The result was the graphic novel Rocking Spurs: The Anti-Bullying Tour, which explores issues of “stereotyping and lateral violence”, said Binkley. The book, an adaptation of the novel Rocking Ten by prolific author KD Beckett, is published by the Métis Nation of Canada (MNC), a group that isn’t recognized by the federal government. KD Beckett is the pen name of Karole Dumont, the group’s national chief.

The book’s main character is an Innu-Métis artist from Quebec who is bullied over her Eastern Métis identity.

“Some people deny the existence of the Métis people from Nova Scotia to eastern Ontario,” the text says. “They claim that anyone identifying as Eastern Métis is a race shifter and doing it for benefits, tax evasion and money. They claim we’re cheating First Nations of their lands and treaty rights.”

Binkley, also a member of the non-recognized MNC, said students discussed the controversy of “Métis-ness” in eastern Canada.

“We thought that if you take this idea of the word ‘Méttis’ out of it, you realize there are a lot of people still in Canada that are of mixed descent, and that are just interested in understanding and engaging with that culture,” said Binkley.

Nearly 1,500 copies have been sent to schools across the country for educational purposes, but the book has drawn outrage from Métis leadership.

“This attempt to make it look like we’re bunch of mixed bloods – that you can have an ancestor going back several hundred years and that you can claim you’re Métis – that is so, so far from what being Métis is” said David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF).

“They’ve created a fantasy. But we’ve fought battles for our people, our nation and for our identity. We’re not going to give it up now, because a group has decided there are benefits to calling themselves Métis.”

Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council (MNC), told APTN “there is no such thing” as Eastern Métis.

“Our communities come from the historic north-west. There is no such thing as a Métis-Innu community and we stand firm against this fight against the ‘Eastern Métis’.” The MNC has pledged to “take action” and ask the boards to remove the books, arguing the book undermines Métis sovereignty.

Frustration over the book has created an unlikely alliance: the MMF and the MNC previously have publicly sparred over the definition of Métis.

The row over the book comes days after First Nations, Inuit and Métis groups met in Winnipeg for a summit on identity fraud, which they say is a growing threat to their constitutional rights. The summit passed resolutions condemning another group, the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), which Chartrand likened to “thieves” stealing rights from his nation.

“Indigenous peoples only lose when we fight amongst ourselves and approach self-determination as a zero-sum game,” the MNO said in a statement. “The only winners are colonial governments who find further reason to ignore our inherent rights and stand idly by.”

The summit also passed a resolution condemning Nunatukavut, a group that identifies as Inuit but which previously identified as Métis. Federally recognized Inuit groups say Nunatukavut represents a threat to their sovereignty.

Indigenous groups also worry the federal government will push through self-governance legislation that would recognize new Métis nations, leading to an explosion in claims to Métis identity.

Binkley says “powerful and well-funded” groups need to “recognize that there were other iterations of ‘Métis-ness’ that happened” across Canada, including people who never really fit into First Nations or European groups.

“We’re a diverse land. And we should be embracing that and not trying to suppress information about our history,” Binkley said.

But for Chartrand, the possibility that hard-fought constitutional rights for the Métis could be diluted has left him angered and defiant.

“Canada is not taking this seriously. It’s not a battle they’re prepared to have. They think it’s just one person and one story about what it means to be Métis,” he said. “But they don’t see the damage it will cause. They don’t see how one hell of a storm is coming.”

When Boris the fantail arrived in Callum Percy’s life in 2020, the 29-year-old trainee teacher was immediately smitten. Boris had been discovered by a family friend in a dishevelled state after what looked like a run-in with a sparrow hawk, its blond-white tail as fluffy as a cumulus cloud.
“We called him Boris after the prime minister as his feathers were all over the place when we found him,” Callum laughs as his 13-strong flock of fantails, frillbacks and capuchines coo in the aviary behind him. He and his girlfriend, Serena Mihaila, 24, also a trainee teacher, installed the 6ft by 4ft wooden and mesh aviary and nesting area in the garden of their Derby home earlier this year.

For now, Callum and Serena are fancy birders – they keep their frilled, coloured and crested feathered friends for the sheer pleasure of appreciating their looks. But next year, when the couple buy their own home, they would like to start exhibiting at shows. That means upstaging Boris and co with some purer-breed pigeons, such as frillbacks with more erect frills or capuchines with elaborate, super-fluffy head crests. At show, these headturners will be assessed for their appearance, good breeding and how they sit in their handlers’ hands.

Along with fancy birders, there are two other distinct groups of pigeoneers: keepers of long-distance pigeons for the racing circuit, as kept by King Charles on his Norfolk estate in Sandringham; and performance pigeon enthusiasts, such as those who keep Birmingham rollers – first bred in the West Midlands city in the 1860s for their ability to perform aerial acrobatics – and high-flying breeds, such as teddies and Indian pearls, prized for their soaring flight.

As 20-something pigeoneers, Callum and Serena are no longer a rare species. Since the pandemic, the Royal Pigeon Racing Association has reported a rising interest from younger people in pigeon-keeping. In the US, according to Phillip Fry, host of the All About Pigeons Podcast, which covers Europe, Australia and the US, 80% of the new intake of his pigeon racing clubs are aged 20 or below, a demographic matched in Europe, says Fry. The rise of “one loft racing”, in which pigeoneers buy a bird and send it to be raised with other pigeons in a shared loft where they are then raced against each other, has increased access to the sport for younger enthusiasts. “You now no longer need outdoor space or infrastructure like lofts to dabble,” says Fry. Plus, “pigeons are usually cheap to purchase and feed, they are very hardy and they don’t present the ethical problems you can have with pet birds, such as parrots, which are often trapped in the wild to be sold as pets.”

Callum is perfectly aware that his hobby does seem odd to some of his contemporaries. “When you tell them you keep pigeons, they think of town pigeons – the rock pigeons you see in cities that people call, unfairly I think, ‘rats of the sky’,” he says. “But if I have a bad day, I head into the aviary and Boris pets me and does a little dance, or I stroke one of my frillbacks, with their soft, curly down, and I feel really at peace.” That said, relations within the aviary are not always peaceful. Boris’s son, Brian, recently seduced a female fantail named Marilyn, introduced to the aviary as a mate for Boris. “It can be a bit tricky managing the pigeons’ romantic lives,” he admits.

Keelie Wright, 19, former UK Young Pigeon Fancier of the Year and winner of the coveted “Best Racing Pigeon” award at the British Homing World Show of the Year 2024, the Crufts of pigeon-keeping, believes this is an exciting time for the sport. “Young pigeoneers are causing a stir in a traditional scene that can sometimes live up to the flat cap and pipe-smoking stereotypes. There’s a bit of a rebirth with all the new blood after years of being seen as a dying hobby.”

Nicknamed “pigeon girl” in her home town of Magheralin, County Down, Keelie decided to stay close to home for her undergraduate degree, so she could spend her weekends mucking out the loft of more than 200 pigeons she shares with her father and grandad. All of the birds are related and bred down from a Belgian fast-racing line of Heremans-Ceusters that her dad first bought in the 2000s.

Keelie exhibits her birds “through the wire” (for their breeding and appearance in the cage) and “out of the pen” (for their feel and handling in the judges’ hands). “I tend to do best through the wire as our birds are good-looking,” she coos. From April to August, she races her birds: dropping them at sites in Penzance and St Malo in France, to fly back to Magheralin in clocked times.

Fellow racer Trent Lightfoot, 15, runs a one-loft race for owners under the age of 16 from his family home in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Fifty-five young bird owners have entered his Northwest Junior One Loft Race in its inaugural year, for £50 an entry. The birds race back to the loft from “hotspots” (drop-off points) in Marlborough, Worcester and Stow on the Wold. Trent and his mum, Lisa Lightfoot, have secured sponsorship from seed companies Triple S and Benzing to reduce the birds’ upkeep costs. With Lisa on camera, Trent broadcasts the birds’ progress on Facebook live once a week.

“Staging the race means I get to race amazing pigeons from some amazing fanciers that I wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise,” says Trent, who also keeps sheep, chickens, ducks and turkeys on the family’s smallholding. Keen to spread the joy of pigeon-keeping as a sport for young people, “the love they have for home, the way they find their way back from afar” fills him with wonder. “I also love it when the tame ones sit on my head and shoulders.”

For ecologist Rob Dunn, it’s not only the fancy birds that deserve our love and attention. In 2007, the academic coined the term “the pigeon paradox” to account for the fact that the most common creatures that humans encounter in our urban world – rats, insects and city pigeons – are actively disliked or rarely noticed. If we could learn to connect with these urban creatures instead, says Dunn, we’d be more attuned to nature and, in turn, to the importance of animal conservation.

It’s an idea that speaks to Nottingham pigeon champion Hannah Hall, 28, who went viral on TikTok in 2022 after recounting her meeting with Penny, a “scraggly” fledgling pigeon who decided to sit on her lap in a pub beer garden in Nottingham. Hall adopted the ailing pigeon, which other pub-goers had been shooing away, taking the bird home perched on her shoulder. She named the baby rock pigeon Penny with TikTokers’ help, and quickly became a mainstay of #pigeontok, where millions of social media users watch videos that exhibit a different side of the urban bird more often viewed as a pest than as a pet. (The 2024 breakout star of this online trend is Pidge, a bird adopted as a “purse pigeon” from a trash can by 26-year-old New Yorker Abby Jardine and who now accompanies her on adventures around the Big Apple.) Earlier this year, Hall founded Penny’s Pigeon Aid in tribute to her feathered pal, an advocacy group to rehabilitate pigeons’ reputation and combat what she sees as a rise in “anti-pigeon propaganda”.
“People are unkind towards pigeons and don’t see them as living things,” Hall says. The NHS worker is campaigning for measures to reduce the plastic and fishing litter that can wrap around birds’ necks, and a ban on anti-pigeon spikes in UK cities. Due to conflict with humans, town pigeons live an average of four years, whereas loft-kept pigeons live up to the age of 20. “I’d like there to be a pigeon appreciation day in the UK [as there is in the US] and I’d love to stage a celebratory ‘pigeon parade’ in Nottingham,” she says.

Pigeon spectacles already feature in the lives of Bilal Liaquat, 29, and wife Sadaf, 24. The couple have kept pigeons on the balcony of their Chiswick flat, and in a friend’s garden in Birmingham, since they moved to the UK from Pakistan in 2019. Bilal loves watching footage of tumbling roller pigeons, but the couple’s particular passion is for teddies, a high-flying performance pigeon first bred in the Pakistani city of Kasoor in 1963.
“I love that they fly high, it makes me feel so happy to watch them,” Bilal says. “The birds are calm with our two small children, too,” Sadaf adds. “They are nice to have as pets.” Bilal and Sadaf fly their birds in high-flight competitions in Pakistan, painting their wings pink and yellow so they can be spotted among a black mass of other birds. The 115,000 subscribers on Bilal’s YouTube channel, Bilal’s Pigeon Sport, tune in for weekly breeding tips in English and Urdu and to watch the soaring flights, his birds carving fluid arabesques against the skies of Lahore and west London.

Bilal, like other bird keepers, admits that his hobby presents increasing challenges. Brexit red tape has inhibited imports of birds from prime racing breeders in Belgium and Germany, pigeons are being killed in number by peregrine falcons and sparrowhawks as populations of these birds of prey boom, and bird flu has led to intermittent bans on races from the continent. But back in Derby, Callum and Serena’s toddler son, Sami, has taken to the family’s feathered friends, particularly Boris, and a chirpy king pigeon called Kong. The couple’s more curious friends now come to hang out in the couple’s aviary and Callum plans to install a seating area so visitors can sit amid his perching birds. Serena tells me that pigeons are traditionally kept in her native Romania to teach children responsibility towards animals, though less sentimental eastern Europeans also keep pigeons for meat and for their eggs that taste like quails’ eggs. “I don’t like to eat them though, I’m quite squeamish,” she says.

There’s a bright future for these misunderstood avians in the Percy-Mihaila home, if not, alas, for Boris’s love life. “Yes, Brian and Marilyn are still an item,” Callum says of his aviary’s social dynamics. “Pigeons tend to be together for life once they’re bonded, you see.” He pauses: “Boris is taking it quite well though.” A bird coos. “That was Boris agreeing,” he laughs.

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.

In almost every case, the nests belonged to birds that had once thrived on the western Pacific island but which were now extinct. “A dozen species, many unique to Guam, had been wiped out since those nests had been collected. All that was left was this grim reminder of wildlife that once flourished on the island.”

As to the cause of this devastation, conservationists blame brown tree snakes, which were brought to the island on US transport – probably as stowaways on military ships – at the end of the second world war. These expert climbers spend their time on high branches, where they eat birds and their eggs. They slowly swept through Guam’s forests during the latter half of the last century.

Huge numbers of indigenous mammals, lizards and birds, including the Guam rail and the Guam flycatcher, were wiped out in its wake. Within a few decades, Boiga irregularis had silenced the island’s forests.

It is an unsettling story that will be highlighted at Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre, which opens on 24 May at the Natural History Museum. The exhibition will reveal how birds evolved from a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods and eventually spread across the planet to settle on all its continents.

Today there are more than 11,000 species of birds on Earth and the exhibition will reveal the many strange ways they have found to survive. Some bathe in formic acid to kill off parasites. Others, such as the vampire finch, suck blood for food.

The show will also focus on the impact that humans are having on birds and their habitats, and the story of the brown tree snake will provide a key display that will include an image of one of the Guam flycatcher’s nests that Russell has studied, a symbol of a species lost to the world because of human interference.

“Nests have only one purpose,” said Russell, whose book, Interesting Bird Nests and Eggs, will be published in September. “They exist to help to nurture future generations of life, and there is something particularly tragic about looking at a nest which will never see a live bird within it.”

Many efforts are being made to restore the fortunes of Guam’s lost birds, including an international project backed by the Zoological Society of London and several US universities. It aims to return Guam kingfishers to the wild this year using birds bred from members of the species that were rescued just before the kingfishers succumbed to the predations of the brown tree snake. These captive-bred birds will be released on another Pacific island, Palmyra Atoll, which is free of predators.

However, the loss of these birds has had other worrying impacts on their habitat, as revealed in a paper in Nature Communications. Scientists at Iowa State University and other research centres found that the removal of birds that once thrived on local fruits on Guam “resulted in the complete loss of seed dispersal there”. The result has been a reduction in the growth of local trees and a big decline in the health of ecosystems across the island, an observation that underlines the key role of birds in maintaining the health of habitats across the planet.

“When you take out a whole group of organisms – for example, its birdlife – from an ecosystem, you don’t just lose those organisms. The whole ecosystem itself suffers, as we are finding out on Guam,” added Russell.

This is particularly worrying given that brown tree snakes’ homes have been spotted in recent years on Saipan, an island north of Guam, added Russell. “There is now a risk, an absolutely devastating one, that brown tree snakes could become established there. And that, of course, would have a terrible impact on the birdlife and habitats of the island.

“Birds are fantastic creatures but they are now very vulnerable to the effects of human behaviour. People should come from the exhibition with a sense that we must learn from our failures, and most importantly, protect and cherish what we’ve got left.”

A growing number of couples, a new report says, are Living Apart Together – “LAT.” So: this is when you maintain both a romantic relationship and your own private home, and it’s led by older women who (according to Brides magazine) are prioritising a newfound freedom. “After years of taking care of their husbands and children, these women seek a new chapter where their individual needs are at the forefront.” I mean, I love it, obviously. I love that this is the new “When I’m an old woman I shall wear purple”, when I’m an old woman I shall get my own bedroom, these women finding their voices, their sexuality, their freedom in their 50s, but it also highlights how, the world being the way it is, these versions of utopia are only available to the wealthy.

Who wouldn’t want their own house just so, their bathroom untouched by other feet, unlittered with half-empty bottles of Head & Shoulders shampoo? Who would honestly say no, if money were no object, to a room of their own and all the nudity, slobbiness, collecting of curios and war rugs that implies? It’s like when parents break up and the modern advice is for their children to remain in the family house while the parents move into separate flats. Three homes! If they had the luxury of those kinds of choices, I counter, perhaps the parents wouldn’t have broken up in the first place. It reminds me of the best divorce I’ve ever heard about, where the parents simply moved into different wings of their manor house and the children didn’t really notice anything had changed at all.

But the fact that it requires sometimes impossible-seeming levels of privilege to live a beautiful and satisfying life doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The pitch and quantity of discourse right now around polyamory has reached the stage where someone clever on social media wryly suggested it was the new “wild swimming”. And yes, they had a point! Three or four points perhaps, not limited to our fervid delvings into the sex lives of New Yorkers or the sense that one short sharp shock can cure all ills, or the fear of a filthy death.

Personally, I can’t get enough of these stories, of the reminders, as with LAT, that relationships are not made of stone, that they are plastic and can be moulded or broken into brand new shapes. I admire, from afar, all these people’s unwillingness to compromise on the only life they will ever lead.

The thing all these conversations circle, but rarely land directly on, is how monogamy as we play it is so much harder than most people like to admit. I write this in the garden, the wifi patchy, as I lick out the white core of a Tunnock’s teacake and watch my boyfriend of some decades mow the lawn, the first hot day of the year. Monogamy has its benefits. It does – as well as things like sexual safety, we as individuals are seen as safer prospects socially when in monogamous relationships. But there are drawbacks, too, not least a lack of freedom and light to middling boredom.

We treat monogamy as the barometer of a successful relationship, rather than, say, comfort, or having a laugh, which for some raises the bar so high the relationship is destined to fail. Nothing is natural, not monogamy or nonmonogamy – there are huge variations in how humans form relationships, but the thing that makes the best ones succeed I guess, is trust and mutual integrity.

We should try to be honest, is the thing. Which, of course, is often easier said than done, not just with partners, but with ourselves. Yes, we enjoy the ways marriage provides an established structure within which we can create a family; yes, we like the way his arms look in a white T-shirt or the pitch of her laugh, but – is it not the case that many people choose cohabiting and monogamy at least in part to stop having to choose? You take a person and then you can relax. The story is written for us.

Part of the LAT thing that appeals to me the most, as well as the shampoo and war rug bit, is the clear way it positions its inhabitants as individuals. They are confident in their commitment to each other, but also in their freedom to live, sprawl, eat pasta alone in bed, etc, in ways that are rarely seen in depictions of serious adult relationships. These people can dip in and out of domestic responsibility and care, and sex and conversation, never having to fight over the washing up or the broadband bill, unless maybe they fancy it tonight, as a kink.

Even those of us in relationships that can’t quite afford two whole rents might be inspired or influenced by the ways LAT reframes monogamy, by the way it exposes its pressures. I like how, instead of being defined by their coupledom, these men and women remain individuals, just people in the world.

Email Eva at [email protected] or follow her on X @EvaWiseman

The question I am mid-40s and married. My husband is good at dealing with life. He never worries, is never insecure, always positive, has unlimited energy and always has a solution for everything. He deals with our kids seemingly without effort, doesn’t set many rules and never worries if they eat enough vegetables or go to bed too late. Everything is a breeze; rules are to be broken and life must be enjoyed.

I am not like that. I like to abide by rules and routines, and I get irritated quickly and think of all the possible consequences of any particular action. The problem is that he always corrects me (and often in front of the kids), gives me unwanted advice repeatedly, telling me that things are “easy” and that my worries are “nonsense”.

We’ve had counselling, but he feels he has the right to give me “feedback” whenever he wants, even though the therapist disagreed. He doesn’t understand how I feel since he means well and only wants to “make me better”. He is a very sweet man, but his stubbornness in not understanding that I’m not like him is driving me mad.

Philippa’s answer Generally speaking, there are two types of people – those who like to go with the flow and people who like to plan. Let’s call them the Flows and Structureds. You are the Structured type and your husband is a Flow. Flows are people who can react to what’s happening in the moment and Structureds are people who, well, prefer to have a structure. What is important for your husband to know is that you cannot scold the second type to be like the first type, nor can you bully the first type to be like the second.

The fact that you are different may have been part of what attracted you to each other in the first place. We are often attracted to people who have a personality trait that we haven’t and, paradoxically, when couples come to relationship counselling, it is these very traits that were once novel enough to be attractive that can start to cause problems. His way isn’t right. Your way isn’t right. There isn’t a “right way”. What you each have is your preferred way.

To feel relaxed, you personally need to have structure, planning and children who eat vegetables from time to time. For him to feel relaxed he needs to be in the moment and deal with things as they arise. You’d probably prefer to have the children in bed with clean teeth and a story before they cry with tiredness, whereas he’ll cover them with a blanket after they’ve fallen asleep on the sofa.

His way suits him so well that he cannot understand why everyone isn’t like him. What he doesn’t know yet is that you cannot just leap from being a Structured into being a Flow – that’s not how your brain is wired. What he needs to do is respect the way your brain works.

The key is to understand that you each have your preferences particular to you, because you are two different people. Your children will understand that you prefer a structured routine, and that Dad prefers no rules. Individual people each have their own way of feeling most comfortable and it’s fine for Mum and Dad to have different boundaries – you are two different people with different needs.

I would like his “correcting” of you to stop. It isn’t a matter of being correct or incorrect, it’s a matter of your individual feeling. You feel happier, safer, more secure when you know, for example, when and how the money is coming in to pay the bills, and he feels happier just to trust that it will. It is a matter of your individual feelings, not a matter of who is right. When you each learn to acknowledge each other’s preferences, it will be a good model for the children to learn to respect feelings different from their own. The goal should not be for one of you to win a particular disagreement, but to understand each other’s feelings and know where each of you is coming from. When he thoroughly understands how you feel and you get where he is coming from, the next stage is to find a compromise. I don’t think he understands yet that having some order and planning is what you need, not just want, to feel calm and OK.

Another hint is to replace “you statements” like, “you are incorrect”, to “I statements”. For example, “I prefer to do it like this.” My suggestion is that you show your husband this column, so he can see how unhappy your current pattern together is making you (I’m sure he doesn’t want you to be unhappy). See if he can understand that you cannot change the way your brain is wired just because he thinks it would be a good idea.

For further help on how to cope with differences read my book The Book You Want Everyone You Love to Read, where I have a chapter on How We Argue with more information on how clashing personality types can aim for mutual understanding and compromise. This can help prevent people getting bogged down with winning or losing, or winning at a loved one’s expense.

Philippa Perry will be appearing at the Also Festival, 12-14 July 2024 (also-festival.com)

Every week Philippa Perry addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Philippa, please send your problem to [email protected]. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions

They’re the artwork the public rarely sees: the custom personal portraits hanging in homes, maybe above a mantelpiece, in a study or a bedroom; images of ourselves, family and other loved ones, sometimes even our pets.

With selfies available to anyone with a smartphone and professional photography affordable and accessible, the desire for a painted portrait speaks to the pull of tradition and its unique process – the artist’s interpretation of the subject that often reveals more than just a likeness.

“There’s something that happens in that closeness, that one-on-one contact,” says Joanna Gilmour, a curator at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. “You can’t define it or quantify it.”

The popularity of portraiture prizes, including the Archibald and the Darling, as well as the success of the ABC TV series Anh’s Brush with Fame, confirms that the artform is here to stay. “We’re hardwired to respond to people whether we like it or not, and portraits have such an effective way of [tapping into] that,” Gilmour says. “It is an incredibly accessible genre.”

While we love to look at portraits, commissioning one is another thing entirely. Portrait commission fees can range from $5,000 to $20,000 and beyond, depending on the scope of the work, materials used, process and time commitment, as well as the artist’s profile.

Few portraitists in Australia experience enough demand to make it a full-time occupation. Even Ralph Heimans, whose Portraiture. Power. Influence exhibition now at the National Portrait Gallery includes paintings of Queen Mary of Denmark, King Charles III and Dame Judi Dench, had to leave Australia to make a go of it.

Although it might be niche, Gilmour has no doubt the personal portrait will endure. “People commission a portrait because they want an image of the people they love and admire. They’ve been making portraits for those reasons for as long as portraits have been made.”

Here three Australians share the painted portraits that hang in their homes – and the stories behind them.

‘I became fascinated about how it might look’

Wendy Brown’s reaction to her husband’s desire to commission a portrait of her wasn’t initially positive. She was horrified. “It’s my worst nightmare,” the surgeon says.

The idea came to her husband, the Melbourne art collector and property developer Andrew Cook, out of a desire to express his love for his wife and admiration for her achievements. Brown eventually came around to the idea. “I guess I became a bit fascinated about how it might look,” she says.

Cook knew Yvette Coppersmith’s portrait work, and says he was struck by how so much comes through her works. “You feel like you’re getting a glimpse of someone’s interior life.” He contacted Coppersmith’s gallery and, after the Archibald prize-winning artist met the couple, she accepted the commission.

Over the following months, Coppersmith compiled a dossier of reference points from historical paintings for inspiration and spent hours with Brown experimenting with different poses, clothing, colours and facial expressions.

The process took about a year while Coppersmith worked around other commissions and exhibitions. “That time allows you to problem solve. It may not take 12 months to paint, but it takes 12 months for things to settle,” says Coppersmith.

The portrait shows a side of Brown that is very different from her medical persona. An “intimacy”, Coppersmith says, that is much more challenging to achieve in an institutional commission. “This is the self they get to have at home; it’s a visual anchor to remind you of how you like to feel.”

For Brown, it’s more than just a beautiful painting. “Yvette has taken me with her on a journey as she’s created this piece of art,” she says. “It’s been a really precious gift.”

‘The best present I’ve ever received’

When Mikhayla Carey decided to commission a portrait of their three children for her husband, Jarwin, she knew there could only be one artist for the job. Having already painted several portraits of the extended Carey clan, the work by Bundjalung and Biripai woman and artist Noni Cragg was a family favourite.

The portrait was planned as a Christmas surprise, so neither Jarwin nor their children knew anything about it. Carey sent Cragg multiple photos and notes about Koda, Arlo and Nala to help the artist capture the children’s personalities and connection to Gumbaynggirr Country on the New South Wales north coast where the family lives.

First Nations portraits have always played an important role in Cragg’s practice. “I want to celebrate people who historically have not been celebrated in fine art institutions – people of colour, women and gender-diverse people,” she says.

In every portrait she typically includes plants, animals and birds that are significant to her subjects and their country. For the Carey commission, that meant painting a ngarlaa, the turtle Nala was named after, and a jaawan (lyrebird) for Jarwin. She also included an Aboriginal flag and local birds and plants.

Painted in Sydney, where Cragg is based, Carey only saw the final work when the family opened the package together. “When Jarwin saw it he said, ‘This is the best present I’ve ever received.’”

The portrait hangs in the family’s dining room, and the children love showing it to visitors. Carey says Jarwin vows it’s the first object he would rescue if they ever had a house fire.

“If anything happened to it, I would be so heartbroken because I know that it will never be able to be replaced,” she says. “It’s priceless.”

‘It was very healing’

After surviving breast cancer, Avis Tolcher continued to live with the devastating psychological impact of events in her past. So when the then 60-year-old former dancer asked artist Yvonne East to paint her, she was looking for more than just a flattering likeness.

Tolcher had seen an exhibition of East’s work at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery in South Australia and was inspired to commission a portrait of her own. “The paintings were beautiful, even if the subject matter wasn’t. I thought, maybe I could cure myself if I could see myself like that?”

Tolcher requested a nude portrait that showed her mastectomy scars, so after agreeing to the commission, East took some time to consider how she would approach the work. “For about two months, I didn’t do anything. It was a simmering, simmering, simmering. Then I woke up one morning and could see it in my mind’s eye. I rang her up and said, ‘Let’s do the sitting.’” Three days later, the portrait was finished.

Tolcher invited East and some close friends to an “unveiling” at home. When the curtain was removed, “Avis stood completely still and put her hand up to cover her mouth,” recalls East. “Everyone was quiet, and she said in a fragile but clear voice, ‘Oh my god … I am beautiful.’”

“It was very healing,” says Tolcher. “And everybody there understood just what it meant to me.”

For years, the portrait hung in her living room where visitors could see it, but after meeting her second husband, David, it now hangs above the four-poster bed he made for her. Tolcher says the painting will always be “absolutely precious” to her.

Oleksandr Usyk is the first undisputed world heavyweight champion this century after he defeated Tyson Fury, in a compelling fight, on a split decision in the early hours of Sunday morning. Usyk added Fury’s WBC title to the IBF, WBA and WBO belts he already owned when he was deservedly given the verdict 115-112 by the first judge and 114-113 by the third official. The middle scorecard was called 114-113 in favour of Fury – but he had been almost knocked out in the ninth round when he staggered across the ring drunkenly. He was given a standing count of eight and saved by the bell.

An absorbing and highly technical, if brutal, contest had shifted in momentum when Usyk had a dominant round in the eighth. A right hook and left cross nailed Fury. And then, suddenly surging with new conviction, Usyk landed a shuddering left which rocked Fury. Blood began to pour from Fury’s nose and he was marked up around the left eye.

Usyk poured on the pressure in the ninth and landed an incredible barrage of 14 unanswered blows. Fury reeled under the assault, swaying and stumbling helplessly, his eyes glazed. The referee could have stopped the fight but, with Fury being held up by the sagging ropes, he gave the stricken fighter time to try to stand upright before he began counting to eight. It seemed an exceedingly long count.

Fury, as always, showed great resilience in the next two rounds and he was competitive – but both the 10th and 11th were won by Usyk, who landed the harder blows. Before the last round Fury stretched his arm out to touch gloves with Usyk as he nodded in admiration.

A sharp combination from Usyk scored early but two straight right hands from Fury proved that he was still trying to win the fight. But Usyk unleashed a thrilling string of punches in a fitting conclusion to a gripping and often magnificent contest.

At the outset of the drama, waiting in their opposing corners both fighters looked to the heavens and crossed themselves just before the opening bell. It was as if they knew they were about to enter dark terrain and be pushed to the limit.

The height difference was obvious, with Fury being six inches taller, but Usyk was immediately effective as he jabbed to the body, again and again. Fury shook his head and wagged his tongue in apparent jest. But then Usyk nailed him with a jolting overhand left near the end of the round. Fury looked out at the crowd and pulled a face as he again played the joker.

Usyk began round two impressively with a slick combination. Fury found his rhythm and a right uppercut caught Usyk. The crowd roared as Fury then sank two hefty right hands to the body before settling back behind the jab. But Usyk remained the aggressor, setting a fast pace.

Usyk moved in and out, showing his slick skills, clipping Fury with glancing blows. But the hardest punch of the third round came from Fury as he hurt Usyk to the body. The Ukrainian backed Fury briefly into a neutral corner and cuffed him with a couple of sharp shots in the fourth. Fury responded and, with his herky-jerky movement, he boxed beautifully. There was a brief clash of heads but Fury kept working the body with powerful and draining blows in the fifth. These were hard punches that threatened to dismantle Usyk.

In the sixth a series of crunching right uppercuts shook Usyk to his core. Fury was in the groove, tagging the Ukrainian again and again, and at the bell he waggled his tongue at the crowd to suggest that he was now in control. He was wrong. Fury used the right uppercut to the body with punishing, repetitive force in the seventh but Usyk, resolute as ever, ended the round clipping the bigger man with crisp combinations. His brilliance was about to flourish – but great credit should also be paid to Fury, who lost for the first time in his 36th fight.

An Olympic champion in 2012, and the former undisputed cruiserweight world champion, Usyk had the severe disadvantage of being more than two stone lighter than the giant King of the Gypsies who stands 6ft 9in tall and weighed 18st 10lb. But the 37-year-old Usyk is a master technician with an iron will and clarity of purpose. Having fought 350 times as an amateur, he has never lost in 22 bouts as a professional and now has reached the summit of his remarkable career.

Lennox Lewis was the last undisputed world heavyweight champion when he defeated Evander Holyfield to win all the belts in Las Vegas in 1999. Almost 25 years later both those great old champions were at ringside in Riyadh to watch their successors. Fury was brave and admirable but the imperious Usyk can now join the pantheon of heavyweight kings.