The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco. He chose a spot near an old bigleaf maple. Many people loved this place: there was a creek and a scattering of picnic benches nearby.

As a soundscape recordist, Krause had travelled around the world listening to the planet. But in 1993 he turned his attention to what was happening on his doorstep. In his first recording, a stream of chortles, peeps and squeaks erupt from the animals that lived in the rich, scrubby habitat. His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove.

Back then, Krause never thought of this as a form of data-gathering. He began recording ecosystem sounds simply because he found them beautiful and relaxing. Krause has ADHD and found no medication would work: “The only thing that relieved the anxiety was being out there and just listening to the soundscapes,” he says.

Inadvertently, he had begun to gather a rich trove of data. Over the next three decades he would return each April to the spot at the bigleaf maple, set his recorder down and wait to hear what it would reveal.

But in April last year, Krause played back his recording and was greeted with something he had not heard before: total silence. The recorder had run for its usual hour, but picked up no birdsong, no rush of water over stones, no beating wings. “I’ve got an hour of material with nothing, at the high point of spring,” says Krause. “What’s happening here is just a small indication of what’s happening almost everywhere on an even larger scale.”

A rich weave of sound fades

Animals produce a vast array of sounds: to find mates, protect territories, identify offspring or simply by moving about. But traditionally, ecologists have measured environmental health by looking at habitats rather than listening to them. Krause developed the idea that the sound of healthy ecosystems contained not only the calls of individual animals, but a dense, structured weave of sounds that he called the “biophony”.

In 2009, when Krause listened through his archive, he realised a story was emerging: a subtle but noticeable loss in the density and variety of natural sounds.

At the same time, he began observing odd things happening in Sugarloaf Ridge park. Leaves on some tree species were unfurling two weeks earlier than documented in historical records. The change in bloom meant migrating birds following the Pacific Flyway were out of sync with sources of food along their route. Winter rain patterns had changed. Then in 2012, exceptional drought conditions started. California had been getting little rain and record hot temperatures, which pushed the parched land into unprecedented territory.

By 2014, northern California was experiencing its most serious drought in 1,200 years, and the bird song in Krause’s recording becomes muted.

In 2015, the quiet sets in. There is no stream flow or wind in the audio. In 2016, the hush is broken only by the call of a purple finch.

“A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening,” Krause wrote in 2012, in his book The Great Animal Orchestra. “The sense of desolation extends beyond mere silence.”

Life swept away by fire

Then, in 2017, the Tubbs fire struck, the most destructive wildfire in northern California’s modern history.

Krause happened to be awake at 2.30am on the October morning when the flames reached his home. He and his wife had to run through a wall of fire surrounding the house. “Except for us, not one single item that we had amassed over the arc of our lives survived,” he says. “As we raced toward the car, a fire tornado seethed with a voice of rage.

“That sound haunts us to this day,” he says. “I rarely make it through a night without awakening to frightful sonic nightmares.”

Propelled by gusts of 78mph, the fire incinerated entire neighbourhoods. Krause’s cats, Seaweed and Barnacle, died. He lost 70 years of letters, photographs and field journals, in flames so intense they left the refrigerator an unrecognisable puddle of aluminium and steel. His precious recording archive survived, in copies stored elsewhere.

The Tubbs fire burned 80% of Sugarloaf Ridge park. John Roney, the park manager, managed to evacuate 50-60 campers as the fire roared towards them.

The bigleaf maple survived. It stood up to the fire,” says Breck Parkman, a retired state parks archaeologist. “It lost branches and got partially stunted, but it survived.” But in September 2020, the Glass fire hit: one of nearly 30 wildfires across California that month.

“That pretty much finished off what was left of that tree,” says Parkman. He remembers once taking Clint Eastwood to look at it, as well as some botanists trying to establish if it was the biggest maple in the American west – they never confirmed its status. “It didn’t really matter, though. The birds knew the tree was grand. For them, this was the tree of life,” he says.

He believes the tree should have lived for a few hundred more years and likens it to an elder at family gatherings who brings wonderful food. One day that person disappears. “It’s a type of sadness – it’s hard to describe,” he says.

“It’s a loss, and there’s a longing. I would suspect the birds still miss that tree. I do.”

Many forest ecosystems are reliant on fire to decompose dead wood and old leaves but historically these tended to be smaller fires. They did not typically burn the tree canopy, so insects and other animals could take refuge without getting scorched. The larger fires in recent years are much hotter and threaten endangered species that have restricted ranges.

Desirae Harp, an educator at the state park and member of the local Mishewal Wappo tribe, says the silence that fell after the fires broke her heart.

“Hearing that silence, of all those native plants and animals, is heartbreaking because those are our relatives. I feel like when human beings die we call it genocide. But when we destroy whole ecosystems, we don’t always understand the weight of that.”

A silent message to the world

One of the most significant environmental books of the 20th century is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Published in 1962, it warned that if people did not stop their destruction of nature, especially through the use of pesticides such as DDT, the number of birds and other wild creatures would continue to decline and silence would begin to fall over the natural world.

In Krause’s recording from April 2023, not only is the birdsong missing, but there is no water in the creek either. “We’re watching this in our own lifetime, which is startling,” he says.

Comparison of 2003 and 2023:

In 2019, Krause argued that the climate crisis could be “changing the Earth’s natural acoustic fabric”. He drew an analogy between the natural world and a concert hall: if the heat and moisture of the concert hall changed, so too would the players’ ability to perform.

“The same is happening for Earth’s orchestra. New atmospheric conditions are detuning natural sounds,” he wrote. “Only major mitigation actions will help preserve Earth’s beat.”

One of the reasons people were first drawn to Sonoma county, where most of the state park lies, was to go fishing, hunting and swim in the creeks. In the 1970s there were many places to swim, says Steven Lee, a research manager at Sonoma Ecology Center. “People don’t swim in the creeks here any more. Why not? Because there’s not enough water.”

The biodiversity associated with the streams has also been lost. Chinook salmon and steelhead trout are unable to reach their spawning grounds if there is no water. “It’s definitely drastic,” says Lee, about Krause’s latest recording. “The pessimist in me would say that we’re probably going to see a lot of these declines continue to happen.”

Waterways are critical lifelines for wildlife in dry places such as California, with a whole cascade of life depending on them. Droughts mean this lifeblood no longer flows through the landscape.

Caitlin Cornwall, a project manager at the Sonoma Ecology Center, says: “There is a direct link between reversing climate change and having more birds in Bernie’s recordings.

She calls Sugarloaf “a relatively mid-range example of what happens when you have an extreme drought”.

The drought is not the only pressure. Across the state, human activity is cutting into animal food sources and habitats. Wild places are being converted into farmland and urban areas, and invasive species are becoming more common. Some of the songbirds Krause captured in 1993, such as the orange-crowned warbler, are now in widespread decline.

Many of the birds captured in Krause’s recordings are migrant species “living on a knife-edge”, says Cornwall. “If a year’s cohorts have died in a particular place, then next year the young – and even the adults – might not come back.” It could take generations for them to recolonise a habitat – assuming they survive elsewhere.

Krause, who has been recording ecosystems from Africa to Latin America to Europe, says it is depressing to hear how the places he visits have changed. His personal library contains more than 5,000 hours of recordings, taken over 55 years from all over the world. He estimates that 70% of his archive is from habitats that have now disappeared.

“The changes are profound,” he says. “And they are happening everywhere.”

“I’ve got to this point in my life now where I just don’t know quite how to handle it, or how to express it, or what to say – yet I’ve got to tell people what I see and what I hear. Actually, I don’t need to say anything – the messages are revealed through the soundscapes.”

There have been some optimistic signs at Sugarloaf Ridge. Roney has 40 cameras around the park, which have taken 60,000 photos in the past five years. He says there are hopeful indications, such as black bears and mountain lions moving into the area. Krause is 85 now and says his hearing days are numbered: he is almost totally deaf in his right ear and has some hearing loss in his left. He can no longer hear subtle changes in sound like he used to. “That’s a loss that I quite regret but have learned to live with,” he says.

Still, he looks forward to spring and to his next recording in Sugarloaf Ridge. He is hopeful that this year there could be signs of a resurgence. “The stories conveyed through the voices of these critters will tell us all we need to know that’s worthwhile,” he says. “When we finally learn how to listen.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

The UK faces food shortages and price rises as extreme weather linked to climate breakdown causes low yields on farms locally and abroad.

Record rainfall has meant farmers in many parts of the UK have been unable to plant crops such as potatoes, wheat and vegetables during the key spring season. Crops that have been planted are of poor quality, with some rotting in the ground.

The persistent wet weather has also meant a high mortality rate for lambs on the UK’s hills, while some dairy cows have been unable to be turned out on to grass, meaning they will produce less milk.

Agricultural groups have said the UK will be more reliant on imports, but similarly wet conditions in European countries such as France and Germany, as well as drought in Morocco, could mean there is less food to import. Economists have warned this could cause food inflation to rise, meaning higher prices at supermarkets.

Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, said markets had “collapsed” as farmers fail to produce food in the punishing conditions. He said: “We’re going to be importing a lot more product this year.”

One major retailer said the wholesale price of potatoes was up 60% year on year as much of the crop had rotted in the ground.

Supplies of potatoes have also been affected by a 10% reduction in the area planted last year as farmers switched to less weather dependent and more financially secure crops. Industry insiders said they expected a further 5% fall in planting this year.

Jack Ward, chief executive of the British Growers Association, said: “There is a concern that we won’t ever have the volumes [of potatoes] we had in the past in the future.”

He said wholesale prices were too low for farmers to generate enough income to cope with high fuel, labour and machinery costs as well as the effects of climate breakdown. “We are not in a good position and it is 100% not sustainable.”

Supplies of carrots and parsnips, which are left in the ground and so also affected by sodden soils, are also much lower than usual, pushing up prices.

Martin Lines, the chief executive of Nature Friendly Farming Network, said: “The impact in the UK this year will significantly affect potatoes and the salad crop. Farmers are already facing delays in planting, with many fields in poor condition. If planting occurs at all, it will likely be late, potentially leading to a shortage of root vegetables and potatoes this coming winter.

“Some farmers have ceased planning for planting altogether, opting instead to put fields into fallow or switch to alternative crops. This could also result in shortages of wheat, barley and pulses as it’s currently unprofitable to grow these due to the lateness of the season and low forecasted prices.”

Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of the organic vegetable box company Riverford, said he had so far planted “virtually no veg”. “Some overgrown plants cannot wait any longer to go in the ground, and will have to be ditched.”

While retailers often turn to imports to fill gaps on shelves, farmers across Europe are enduring a similarly difficult start to the year, with difficulties developing winter crops and sowing spring crops.

France is experiencing the poorest start to its wheat-growing season since 2020 amid cold wet weather, while production of fruit and vegetables in Morocco is being affected by drought. Morocco’s second-largest reservoir has dried up, meaning irrigating crops will be difficult.

Amber Sawyer, an analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said last year almost a third of the UK’s tomatoes, and more than two-thirds of its raspberries and brussels sprouts, came from Morocco.

“As climate change worsens, the threat to our food supply chains – both at home and overseas – will grow,” Sawyer said.

Scientists have said this is just the beginning of shocks to the food supply chain caused by climate breakdown and that without rapid action to drive down emissions by ceasing to burn fossil fuels, the current system is unsustainable.

Dr Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said: “We should all be extremely concerned. We need to be doing everything to reduce emissions while transforming our food systems.”

He added: “If we don’t … I expect huge turmoil and escalating prices in the next 10 to 20 years. When food prices spiral we always expect political instability. I wish people understood the urgent climate threat to our near-term food security.

“Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets.”

The yew in the churchyard here has a legend as the oldest tree in Britain, although its exact age is a matter of dispute. Many propose that it is older than Christianity and some that it could even predate Stonehenge.

Perhaps a more revealing comparison arises with an “artefact” from about the same period (circa 3000BC). It’s the man called “Oetzi”, whose leathery, ice-preserved remains were extracted from a Tirolean glacier in 1991, along with his deerskin boots and bearskin cap. Oetzi carried a mark of high prestige in his little copper axe, but this state-of-the-art technology also had a handle made of the same wood as the tree in Fortingall. The Scottish yew has thus endured from the age of copper to a time when children (like those standing next to us as we visited) take Snapchat shots on smartphones.

The tree, in truth, is much reduced since 1769, when it was lassoed by Daines Barrington and measured at 15.9 metres. Souvenir hunters began hacking off parts of its monumental girth until concerned locals threw up a wall – some see it as a prison – to protect the remains. As I pondered my tree, I wondered how best to capture its full eldritch condition.

Should I photograph the blackening heartwood, some of whose laminar swirling shapes suggest the eddying surface to a pollen-stained river, but also the flames licking up from a wood fire? Or does its true exceptionalism lie in the cone-like flowers that are still sprouting at the twig ends and, at this very moment, look for all the world like any rain-sodden greenery in this landscape?

My dilemma reminded me of a pronouncement by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, known for a series of fragmentary sayings, many paradoxical in nature. Life, he proposed, was akin to music produced when the strings of a bow are laid crosswise upon a lyre. Harmony arises in the tension of these diametrically opposed strings. “The name of the bow is life,” he wrote, “and its work [the music] is death.” The Fortingall yew, which is closer to immortality than any other resident in these islands, is perhaps the most death-like life I’ve ever seen.

Intense thunderstorms are forecast across parts of the Gulf on Monday and Tuesday, bringing very high rainfall to the region and a significant flooding risk in parts.

Low pressure over the Arabian peninsula will deepen on Monday while a flow of moist tropical air moves into the region, significantly enhancing the production of showers as a result.

Shower activity will increase through Monday with the development of a line of severe thunderstorms to the east of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, which will push onwards into southern parts of the United Arab Emirates. Heavy downpours are expected, with some places expected to get up to 40mm of rain within three hours, alongside outbreaks of hail. Blustery conditions are also anticipated, with the risk of dust storms that could hinder visibility.

Widespread thunderstorms will continue to develop within the Gulf overnight, pushing farther north into the UAE and dominating the forecast throughout Tuesday. By the time thunderstorms ease on Tuesday evening, about 40mm of rain is expected to have fallen widely across northern parts of the UAE within 24 hours, with more than 100mm possible for the northernmost tip of the country.

Dubai, which typically receives about 7mm on average for the entire month of April, may get up to 100mm, with even higher totals possible.

Much of Europe has been undergoing exceptionally mild conditions for the time of year, with a multitude of records broken in Spain and France over the weekend. Temperatures in northern parts of Spain were akin to those usually experienced in summer, with highs in the 30s celsius. The maximum temperature recorded was 33.5C on Saturday at Miranda de Ebro in Castilla y Leon.

Meanwhile, more than 150 maximum monthly temperature records were broken on the same day in France, with a peak of 32.4C at Sabres. However, this is soon to change, with much cooler conditions forecast this week across much of Europe, bringing the potential for overnight frost.

Finally, it has been confirmed that March 2024 was the warmest on record globally. This is also the 10th consecutive month that has broken the average global temperature record for that month. While the heat can be linked to El Niño’s ongoing phase in the Pacific Ocean, climate scientists are concerned that records may continue to fall, even as El Niño tapers off in the coming months.

France has been accused of hypocrisy by conservationists over a fresh post-Brexit dispute with the UK over fishing rights.

France launched an official protest after the UK banned bottom trawling from parts of its territorial waters last month, with the aim of protecting vulnerable habitats.

The ban on bottom trawling – a hugely damaging fishing technique that drags heavy nets along the seabed – covers British as well as EU vessels, and applies to 13 marine protected areas (MPAs), covering 4,000 sq km.

French diplomats claimed the move breached the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which could lead to punitive measures against the UK if an arbitration tribunal rules in France’s favour.

Charles Clover, director of the Blue Marine Foundation, a UK-based conservation organisation, said the TCA clearly permitted fishing restrictions provided they were applied equally.

“This is hypocrisy by the French,” he said. “They are not looking at the small print.

“They are playing a ludicrous ideological game against their own rightwing parties, grabbing back support from the trawlermen and not looking at what the rules are.”

The Paris-based environmental group Bloom said it would consider legal action against France if it continued the dispute.

Claire Nouvian, head of Bloom, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was showing the world his true ideological stripes.

“It is an embarrassment for France, who say they are champions of the world’s oceans, to do this,” she said.

“It highlights the discrepancy between their words and their actions. If they keep going down that route, we will look into litigation ourselves to sue the French government.”

Many trawlers operating out of Boulogne depend on the restricted areas for much of their catch. Far-right politicians have backed the trawler operators, with Rassemblement National, the parliamentary party led by Marine Le Pen, stepping up rhetoric on the issue.

The party in the northern Hauts-de-France region, in a post on X, accused the UK of threatening the survival of the industry.

Last year, an editorial in Nature magazine described France – which held a global oceans summit in 2022 and is hosting next year’s UN ocean conference – as being among the countries undermining progress towards ocean sustainability because it opposed a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas in the EU.

In 2022, France, the UK and Costa Rica launched the High Ambition Coalition for Nature & People to push for protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030 (known as the “30×30” target).

Nouvian said: “The TCA language is precise. It’s not discrimination to implement what the scientists have been saying and what member states have been talking about in their 30×30 plans.”

She noted that all member states were expected to ban bottom trawling in MPAs by 2030 under the EU’s ocean action plans.

A UK government spokesperson said: “We are proud of our strong record of safeguarding our oceans and the precious species that depend on them. The recent decision to prohibit bottom trawling, which applies to all vessels –including British ones – followed extensive consultation with a range of stakeholders, including UK and French fishing organisations.

“It represents a significant step in protecting our vulnerable and ecologically valuable rock and reef habitats, where the scientific evidence has demonstrated the negative impact of bottom-towed fishing gear.”

Officials from the European Commission were meeting their French and UK counterparts on Monday to discuss the issue.

A commission spokesperson said: “We are having a meeting to share information on adopted, or about to be adopted, measures, as part of our technical exchanges.”

It is the second dispute this year over the UK’s marine conservation measures. In February, Denmark and Sweden asked the EU to intervene after the UK closed part of the Dogger Bank fishing grounds in the North Sea to protect seabirds.

A climate-disrupted ocean is pushing sharks, rays and other species to flee ever-hotter water in the tropics, only for them to be killed by increasingly intense upwells of cold water from the depths, a study has found.

One of the authors of the paper described the “eerie” aftermath of a mass die-off of more than 260 marine organisms from 81 species in a singular event of extreme cold upwelling off the coast of South Africa in 2021.

The paper, published in Nature Climate Change on Monday, found that shifts in ocean currents and pressure systems driven by climate breakdown were increasing the frequency and intensity of upwellings, which may in turn increase the vulnerability of migratory species such as bull sharks.

Scientists focused on the mass die-off event in 2021, which they were able to track in unusually precise detail because one of affected creature that survived was a bull shark that had been satellite tagged. They found it had been caught in water that fell more than 10C below the temperature that such tropical species were used to.

The paper details how the shark changed its behaviour in an attempt to avoid the cold areas. It swam much closer to the surface than normal and moved outside its normal migration pattern.

Many of the affected sea creatures’ carcasses washed up on the shore of South Africa, including the pup of a big manta ray that had been aborted by its traumatised mother.

“It was eerie to see so many species washed up dead,” said Ryan Daly, one of the authors of the paper. He said he was surprised that even the very mobile species, such as manta rays and bull sharks, were caught in the upwelling. “You’d think they would have swum away but they got squeezed. They couldn’t escape,” he said.

To understand the broader trends behind the die-off, the scientists tagged other sharks and used 41 years of sea surface temperature data and 33 years of wind records to investigate the frequency and intensity of cold “killer events” inshore of the Indian Ocean’s Agulhas current and the east Australian current in the past 30 years.

They found cold upwelling events had increased in frequency and intensity in these regions between 1981 and 2022. Other species killed in such events include whale sharks, convict surgeonfish, bigeye trevallies and common blacktip sharks.

Tagged bull sharks appeared to change their behaviour to avoid sudden temperature drops by swimming closer to the surface, sheltering in bays and estuaries and only moving to the extent of their poleward distribution during warm seasons.

The marine biologists worked with oceanographers to map upwelling trends and forecast what could happen in the future as climate disruption becomes ever more pronounced and extreme cold upwellings increase in frequency along with periods of extreme surface heat.

Within individual species, certain groups tend to live on the edge of their population range. Daly said these groups were most vulnerable to the sudden and protracted temperature shifts. “There are bull sharks that run the gauntlet of a cool area to get to thermal refuges. Upwellings could kill off this unique genetic diversity.”

He said the findings suggested the need for a new approach to marine conservation that incorporated knowledge about the increasingly complex ways that climate chaos is affecting marine species. “We need to think about expanding conservation areas and prioritising different species,” he said. “We need to think out of the box.”

Global heating has pushed the world’s coral reefs to a fourth planet-wide mass bleaching event that is on track to be the most extensive on record, US government scientists have confirmed.

Some 54% of ocean waters containing coral reefs have experienced heat stress high enough to cause bleaching, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch said.

A global bleaching event is declared when at least 12% of corals in each of the main ocean basins – Pacific, Atlantic and Indian – experience bleaching-level heat stress within a 12-month period. The declaration also requires confirmed reports of bleaching.

Coral Reef Watch also confirmed the world’s largest coral reef system – Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – had been through its most widespread heat stress event on record in 2024.

The first global bleaching event happened in 1998 with 20% of the ocean’s reef corals exposed to a level of heat stress high enough to cause bleaching. The second event, in 2010, saw 35% reaching that threshold, and the third from 2014 to 2017 peaked at 56%.

Dr Derek Manzello, the Coral Reef Watch director, told the Guardian the current bleaching was likely to surpass the previous most widespread event soon “because the percentage of reef areas experiencing bleaching-level heat stress has been increasing by roughly 1% per week”.

NOAA’s threshold for the onset of bleaching relates to the amount of accumulated heat corals are facing at any given time, known as degree heating weeks.

For example, a 1 DHW is accumulated if corals are subjected to temperatures 1C above the usual maximum for seven days. Coral Reef Watch considers 4 DHWs as a bleaching threshold.

Coral reefs are rich in biodiversity and provide habitat to a quarter of all marine species while covering less than 1% of ocean area. Reefs provide food and tourism income to millions of people and protect coastlines, but are considered to be one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to global heating.

The current global event started in early 2023 and in the northern hemisphere summer reefs across the Americas bleached from record levels of heat stress.

Mass bleaching has been confirmed throughout the tropics, NOAA said, including Florida, the Caribbean, Brazil, many countries across the south Pacific, the Middle East and in parts of the Indian Ocean from Indonesia’s west coast to reefs off east Africa.

Quick Guide

What is coral bleaching?

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Coral bleaching describes a process where the coral animal expels the algae that live in their tissues and give them their colour and much of their nutrients.

Without their algae, a coral’s white skeleton can be seen through their translucent flesh, giving a bleached appearance.

Mass coral bleaching over large areas, first noticed in the 1980s around the Caribbean, is caused by rising ocean temperatures.

Some corals also display fluorescent colours under stress when they release a pigment that filters light. Sunlight also plays a role in triggering bleaching.

Corals can survive bleaching if temperatures are not too extreme or prolonged.  But extreme marine heatwaves can kill corals outright.

Coral bleaching can also have sub-lethal effects, including increased susceptibility to disease and reduced rates of growth and reproduction.

Scientists say the gaps between bleaching events are becoming too short to allow reefs to recover.

Coral reefs are considered one of the planet’s ecosystems most at risk from global heating. Reefs support fisheries that feed hundreds of millions of people, as well as supporting major tourism industries.

The world’s biggest coral reef system – Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – has suffered seven mass bleaching events since 1998, of which five were in the past decade. 

Prolonged and severe bleaching can kill corals, but if temperatures fall quickly enough the animals can recover. Research has found previously bleached corals find it harder to reproduce and can be more susceptible to disease after bleaching.

Manzello said global heating had combined with a global El Niño to push up sea surface temperatures. He said predictions made by scientists decades ago about the fate of corals in a warming world were now coming to pass.

“The bottom line is that as coral reefs experience more frequent and severe bleaching events, the time they have to recover is becoming shorter and shorter. Current climate models suggest that every reef on planet Earth will experience severe, annual bleaching sometime between 2040 and 2050.”

Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a pioneer of coral research who was among the first to link bleaching to global heating, said: “It’s a shock. We clearly have to prevent governments from investing in fossil fuels, or we won’t have a chance in hell [to save reefs].”

Earlier this year, Coral Reef Watch was forced to add three new alert levels to its global coral bleaching warning system to represent ever-increasing extremes.

Prof Tracy Ainsworth, the vice-president of the International Coral Reef Society, said the bleaching had extended to some of the most remote places on Earth.

“Globally we are failing to protect coral reefs and the communities that rely upon them. This is neglect on a global scale,” Ainsworth said.

The Great Barrier Reef is now suffering its fifth mass bleaching in eight years. Coral Reef Watch data shows 80% of the reef was subjected to bleaching-level heat stress in 2024, the highest extent on record and above the previous high of 60% seen in 2017.

Dr Roger Beeden, the chief scientist at the Australian government’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said it was more important than ever to see global action on climate change.

“But the prognosis is not good for coral reefs as we know them, and the GBR is not immune. We are certainly not giving up on reefs, but they’re under serious pressure.”

Squat lobsters, bright red sea toads and deep-sea dragon fish were among more than 160 species never previously seen in the region that were spotted on a recent expedition exploring an underwater mountain range off the coast of South America. Researchers from the California-based Schmidt Ocean Institute believe that at least 50 of those species are likely to be new to science.

Underwater mountain ranges are oases of life and biodiversity, where communities of different organisms band together: some creatures make the most of the elevation and unique currents that the peaks provide, while others find refuge in the nooks and crannies of the rocky slopes to build intricate structures.

Erin Easton, of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, was the chief scientist on the 40-day research voyage along the Salas y Gómez ridge, which spans the waters from Chile to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. “We’re still astounded by what we observed,” she says.

It’s a political earthquake! The common earthworm, the soil-maker, food provider and grand recycler, is the landslide winner of the inaugural UK invertebrate of the year competition.

Lumbricus terrestris, also known as the lob worm, dew worm and nightcrawler, took a mighty 38% of the popular vote after readers nominated it to be added to the shortlist for the Guardian contest.

The rare and endangered shrill carder bee demonstrated the popular affection for bumblebees by coming second with 15% of the vote while the romantics’ choice, the glowworm, narrowly beat the unexpectedly popular distinguished jumping spider into bronze medal position with 9% of the vote.

Chris Packham, whose plea for the disrupter of the shortlist, the Asian or yellow-legged hornet made the front page of the Daily Star, said: “Through constant wriggling and extraordinary ecological commitment it’s great to see the earthworm take top spot. Although I suspect vote rigging by blackbirds, badgers and moles.”

The nature writer and campaigner Dr Amy-Jane Beer said: “Stop the press, here’s an award that really means something! In a media obsessed with the rare and beautiful, for the overwhelming importance of a cold, slimy, mostly unseen creature long associated with a kind of mute, spineless, humility to receive public recognition is a big deal.”

The invertebrate charity Buglife also welcomed the earthworm’s triumph. “It’s great news,” said David Smith, Buglife’s advocacy and social change officer. “These ecosystem engineers go about their lives often unnoticed yet are vital for producing the food we eat and easing the impacts of flooding. Unfortunately, earthworms are under threat from multiple sources including chemical use, invasive species, and intensive land use, hopefully with its new title, the public will support these vital invertebrates and take action to help them thrive.”

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm,” declared Hamlet, baffling Claudius the King in Shakespeare’s play but hailing the recycling prowess of the earthworm.

Earthworms can bring 40 tonnes of soil to the surface per hectare a year in Britain. Their usefulness is increasingly hailed in an era where regenerative farmers and many others are paying new attention to soil health.

Worms make soils less prone to flooding in winter and less baking hard in summer, they boost microbial activity and, of course, are vital in supporting plant growth, including the crops that feed us.

As well as being important, earthworms lead long (up to six years in captivity) and wondrous lives, and their charisma is well appreciated by those great connoisseurs of the living world, children. One of many readers who nominated the earthworm was Lily, four, who appreciated their “soft” feel in the hand and their general wiggly appeal.

The common earthworm appears on the surface – especially during damp and wet times, hence its other names, dew worm and rain worm – and is one of those precious invertebrates who we can see almost daily, and help too. I always feel better about myself if I stop mid-stride and rescue a stranded worm from the pavement or road.

Unfortunately, like so many other common invertebrates, earthworms are disappearing: the UK’s first national assessment, in 2023, found that populations are estimated to have declined by a third over the past 25 years.

It is not just on farmland where declines are occurring, probably due to pesticides and intensive ploughing, but in broadleaved woodlands – suggesting that wider factors such as climate change and pollution from animal worming including treatments for pets are driving losses.

Surprisingly the most traditionally beautiful animals on the shortlist, the swallowtail butterfly and the Clifden nonpareil moth, polled modestly, finishing in sixth and 10th place respectively.

The naturalist and author Dominic Couzens said: “There’s no doubt that the earthworm is a worthy winner, but perhaps that reflects the grey sky of our troubled times? Perhaps one day we will go with a feelgood selection, such as the sumptuously glamorous Clifton nonpareil or swallowtail?”

Bringing up the rear on the shortlist with just 0.8% of the vote was the Asian or yellow-legged hornet, an invasive species known for attacking honeybee colonies which was nevertheless championed by Packham, who made the case for tackling the biodiversity crisis rather than scapegoating one species, which humans are to blame for spreading.

Europe removed a record number of dams and other barriers from its rivers in 2023, a report has found, helping to restore its disturbed waterways to their natural states.

Nearly 500 barriers were taken out of European rivers last year, according to figures compiled by Dam Removal Europe, an increase of 50% from the year before.

France led the way in helping rivers recover, with 156 removals, the report found, followed by Spain, Sweden and Denmark. The UK removed 36 barriers.

“It is amazing to witness another record-breaking year for dam removals in European rivers,” said Herman Wanningen, the director of the World Fish Migration Foundation and co-founder of Dam Removal Europe.

Europe’s rivers have been fragmented by dams, weirs, culverts and fords – many of which are no longer needed. An estimated 150,000 of the 1.2m barriers in European waterways are obsolete and possibly dangerous, according to the report, which documented 113 deaths involving river barriers in Europe since 2000.

Dam Removal Europe, a coalition of seven environmental groups including WWF and The Nature Conservancy, which aims to restore the free-flowing state of rivers and streams, said the pace of removals was rising.

It highlighted the removal of a quarry weir in Scotland, where a steep gorge blocked heavy machinery and meant the weir had to be removed by hand, along with the removal of a series of dams on the Hiitolanjoki River in Finland, where 34 miles (54km) of river has been opened up to salmon after being blocked for more than a century.

The EU’s proposed nature restoration law – the fate of which hangs in the balance after last-minute lobbying from member states – aims to reconnect 25,000km of fragmented river by 2030. But achieving this “will require a paradigm shift in river restoration”, according to a study in Nature that highlighted the “widespread impacts” caused by small barriers. Although large dams get the most attention, the researchers found that nine in 10 European river barriers are less than 5 metres high.

Connecting rivers helps wildlife travel and allows migratory fish to reach breeding grounds. Removing dams also allows water levels to vary over the year, which can cause habitat changes that increase the diversity of plants and animals, said Pol Huguet, a city councillor in the Spanish town of Manresa, whichremoved a dam as part of a rewilding project. He said: “Thanks to this change, for the first time, we have seen some fish going upstream to this part of the river.”

Dam removals are not always popular. When Poland removed its first big dam in 2021, most people in the area objected despite risks to their safety due to poor construction, a study found in February.

As carbon pollution heats the planet, allowing air to hold more moisture, the risks of extreme rainfall collapsing ageing river barriers is rising. At least three river barriers collapsed last year due to heavy rain in Norway, Northern Ireland, and Slovenia, the report found. Last week, a dam burst in the Orsk region of Russia as heavy rains flooded the area and forced more than 100,000 people across Russia and Kazakhstan to flee.

Obsolete barriers that were built to cope with different climates harmed the river and increased nature loss, said Wanningen. “It’s time to rethink the way we manage our rivers by removing all obsolete barriers and letting as many rivers as possible flow freely. A river that does not flow freely is slowly dying.”