England could produce 13 times more renewable energy than it does now, while using less than 3% of its land, analysis has found.

Onshore wind and solar projects could provide enough electricity to power all the households in England two and a half times over, the research by Exeter University, commissioned by Friends of the Earth (FoE), suggested.

Currently, about 17 gigawatt hours of electricity comes from homegrown renewables on land. But there is potential for 130 GWh to come from solar panels, and 96GWh from onshore wind.

These figures are reached by only taking into account the most suitable sites, excluding national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, higher grade agricultural land and heritage sites.

Some commentators have argued that solar farms will reduce the UK’s ability to grow its own food, but the new analysis suggests there is plenty of land that can be used without impairing agricultural production. More land is now taken up by golf courses than solar farms, and developers can be required to enhance biodiversity through simple measures such as maintaining hedgerows and ponds.

Onshore windfarms were in effect banned in 2015 by the then prime minister, David Cameron. Rishi Sunak last year claimed to make moves towards lifting the ban, through small changes to the planning regulations, but campaigners say they were ineffectual and real planning reform is needed. No plans were submitted for new windfarms in England last year, and few new developments are coming forward, despite high gas prices, rising bills and onshore wind being the cheapest form of electricity generation.

The calculations of the land needed exclude rooftop solar panels. Ministers have resisted calls for solar panels to be made mandatory on new-build housing. Kitting out a new-build home with renewables, high-grade insulation and other low-carbon features costs less than £5,000 for a housing developer, but retrofitting it to the same standard costs about £20,000, with the cost borne by the householder. Housing developers are among the largest donors to the Conservative party.

FoE has produced a map that shows potential sites for onshore wind and solar generation. North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire show particularly good potential. The sites total about 374,900 hectares (926,400 acres), or about 2.9% of the available land in England.

Tony Bosworth, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Unleashing the UK’s immense potential to generate cheap, clean homegrown renewables is essential to bring down our energy bills for good and meeting the UK’s vital international target to reduce carbon emissions by two-thirds by 2030. But the current government’s record on boosting our energy security through renewables is woefully inadequate and has left the UK lagging far behind in the global race to a zero-carbon economy. Meanwhile, Labour is looking increasingly shaky on climate after rolling back its planned investment in green growth.”

He called on all the main parties to commit to lifting restrictions on onshore windfarms in England; for local authorities to identify suitable areas for renewable development; for upgrades to the electricity grid to enable the vast expansion of renewable energy; and for tougher requirements on renewable developers to protect biodiversity.

Local communities can also be helped to benefit from renewable developments, for instance through being offered cheaper power or a share in the development.

Bosworth said: “We urgently need our political leaders to pull their heads out of the sand and produce a strong, ambitious and fair new climate plan that lifts the barriers to onshore wind and solar power and secures investment in the infrastructure needed to support the switch to renewables. These are win-win policies for creating long-term jobs, boosting our ailing economy and protecting our planet for future generations.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “Onshore wind power capacity has almost quadrupled since 2010 and renewables account for nearly half of our electricity, up from just 7%. We’ve also streamlined planning rules in England to make it easier for councils to identify suitable land for onshore wind. Our latest renewables auction has its largest ever budget of £1bn, including a record £800m pot for offshore wind, to further strengthen our world-leading clean energy sector, supporting a range of renewables from onshore wind to solar.”

The world’s biggest economies have continued to finance the expansion of fossil fuels in poor countries to the tune of billions of dollars, despite their commitments on the climate.

The G20 group of developed and developing economies, and the multilateral development banks they fund, put $142bn (£112bn) into fossil fuel developments overseas from 2020 to 2022, according to estimates compiled by the campaigning groups Oil Change International (OCI) and Friends of the Earth US.

Canada, Japan and South Korea were the biggest sources of such finance in the three years studied, and gas received more funding than either coal or oil.

The G7 group of biggest economies, to which Japan and Canada belong, pledged in 2022 to halt overseas funding of fossil fuels. But while funding for coal has rapidly diminished, finance for oil and gas projects has continued at a strong pace.

Some of the money is going to other developed economies, including Australia, but much of it is to the developing world. However, richer middle income countries still receive more finance than the poorest.

The most recent G7 pledge, in the study, is to phase out all overseas fossil fuel funding by the end of 2022. The OCI study concentrates on the period from the beginning of the fiscal year of 2020-21 for each country, to the end of the fiscal year of 2022-23.

However, the researchers also found that Japan had continued to make new fossil fuel investments overseas in the past few weeks, up to mid-March 2024, exploiting loopholes in its promise to end fossil fuel funding.

The World Bank provided about $1.2bn a year to fossil fuels over the three-year period, of which about two-thirds went to gas projects.

The US, Germany and Italy also provided billions in funding a year to overseas fossil fuel projects before the end of 2022-23, according to the report published on Tuesday. The UK supplied about $600m a year on average.

Canada supplied just under $11bn a year on average, in the 2020-22 period studied, while South Korea put forward $10bn and Japan about $7bn.

Over the same three-year period, the G20 economies put about $104bn into clean energy developments overseas, according to the report.

Claire O’Manique, a public finance analyst at OCI, said: “While rich countries continue to drag their feet and claim they can’t afford to fund a globally just energy transition, countries like Canada, Korea, Japan and the US appear to have no shortage of public funds for climate-wrecking fossil fuels.

“We must continue to hold wealthy countries accountable for their role in funding the climate crisis, and demand they move first and fastest on a fossil fuel phase-out, to stop funding fossil fuels, and that they pay their fair share of a globally just transition, loss and damage and adaptation finance.”

Makiko Arima, a senior finance campaigner at OCI, called on Japan particularly to stop supporting fossil fuels. Japan has lobbied behind the scenes to stop G7 countries adopting a stronger stance on fossil fuels, and in favour of some key projects.

Arima said: “Japan is derailing the transition to renewable energy across Asia and globally. Despite its G7 commitment to end fossil fuel financing, its public financial institutions like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) continue to support new fossil fuel projects, including the Scarborough gasfield in Australia and gas power plants in Mexico.

“JBIC is currently investigating a claim that it failed to follow its social and environmental safeguards in developing the Philippines’ first LNG [liquefied natural gas] terminal in Batangas. Japan needs to put people and planet over profit, and shift its finances from fossil fuels to renewables.”

The director general of the National Trust, Hilary McGrady, is correct when she says that “the benefit of ensuring access to nature is plain to see but there is unequal access to it” (Three-quarters of children want more time in nature, says National Trust, 1 April). Sadly, evidence shows that this situation is also reflected in our schools.

Over the last 20 years, Ofsted reports have shown that school fieldwork has been declining. And a survey of geography teachers in 2023 indicated that since Covid, up to 40% of secondary schools may have cut their provision of fieldwork. This trend affects smaller schools and those serving disadvantaged pupils the hardest.

A combination of costs, Covid catch-up and other administrative hurdles are limiting the work of many geography teachers who want to offer their pupils high-quality fieldwork.

So as well as trips that might take place farther afield, at the Geographical Association we are supporting teachers to explore local, low-cost fieldwork – whether investigating carbon storage in a local wood, soil infiltration in the school grounds or the health of a local stream.

Regardless of the weather, it is in the field where young people encounter the messy, complicated real world and develop a deeper understanding of how our human and natural worlds interact. It will be this understanding that is essential if young people are to become the future custodians of our environment.
Steve Brace
Chief executive, Geographical Association

The “15-minute city” has become a toxic phrase in the UK, so controversial that the city of Oxford has stopped using it and the transport minister has spread discredited conspiracy theories about the urban planning scheme.

But while fake news spreads about officials enacting “climate lockdowns” to “imprison” people in their neighbourhoods, across the Channel, Parisians are enjoying their new 15-minute neighbourhoods. The French are stereotyped for their love of protest, so the lack of uproar around the redesign of their capital is in stark contrast to the frenzied response in Oxford.

Carlos Moreno, a jovial and owlish professor at the Sorbonne University, came up with the phrase “15-minute cities” and has been quietly getting on setting them up in Paris. He has a bemused air when asked about how his modest proposal for a more enjoyable urban life has caused such vile conspiracy theories, and takes it all in good humour despite the death threats and other abuse he has received.

Moreno says: “We don’t have the conspiracy mongers, because it is impossible to say in Paris that Moreno wants to create a new Paris lockdown. This is impossible to say that I am Pol Pot or that I am Stalin – because we live in Paris, I can invite guests to visit me and they see this is impossible.

“We have created a lot of new districts and they have been popular. The opposition in Paris is not the same that you have in the UK, because nobody can say in Paris we want to create an open jail – this is evident that it is not the case. We have beautiful new green spaces and areas to live.”

Moreno has been working with the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to make its arrondissements more prosperous and pleasurable to live in. He says there are 50 15-minute cities up and running, with more to come.

“We have an outstanding mayor, who is committed to tackling climate change. She said the 15-minute city will be the backbone for creating a new urban plan. The last time Paris had a new urban plan was in 2000, so this road map will be relevant for the next 10 or 15 years at least,” he explains.

“I said to Hidalgo, the 15-minute city is not an urban traffic plan. The 15-minute city is a radical change of our life.”

Moreno has written a new book, The 15-Minute City, about his theory, which is being implemented in cities from Milan to Buenos Aires. In it, he explains his theory, which is quite simple. When many modern cities were designed, they were for men to work in. Their wives and family stayed in the suburbs, while the workers drove in. So they have been designed around the car, and segmented into different districts: the financial district (think Canary Wharf), the cultural area (for example, the West End) and then the suburbs. They have also often been segmented into wealthier and poorer areas; in the less prosperous area to the north-east of Paris, Moreno says up to 40% of homes are social housing. In the wealthier west of Paris, this drops below 5%.

“My idea is to break this triple segregation,” he says.

Moreno thinks this segregation leads to a poorer quality of life, one designed around outdated “masculine desires”, so his proposal is to mix this up, creating housing developments with a mixture of social, affordable and more expensive housing so different social strata can intermingle. He also wants to bring schools and children’s areas closer to work and home, so caregivers can more easily travel around and participate in society. He also thinks office should generally be closer to homes, as well as cultural venues, doctors, shops and other amenities. Shared spaces such as parks help the people living in the areas to form communities.

An example of this is the new Îlot Saint-Germain development in one of Paris’s most chic neighbourhoods. It is situated in the old defence ministry, and flats with sweeping views of the Eiffel Tower go for a social rent of €600 (£515) a month.

Moreno says there was some “aggressive” opposition to this, not from conspiracy theorists but from wealthy Parisians who did not want lower-income people living in their district.

“It was a scandal for the richest to have the working class living here in the 7th arrondissement. They said we will have a reduction in the price of our real estate, there will be more crime. The local mayor of the arrondissement opposed it. But now, it is so, so beautiful with increased quality of life, the development has won awards, it is a desirable place to live.”

The city has also been regenerating the Clichy-Batignolles district in the less prosperous north-west of Paris to have a green, village-like feel. About a quarter of it is taken up by green space and a new park.

“As a 15-minute district, it is incredible,” says Moreno. “It is beautiful, it has proximity, social mixing, 50% of the inhabitants live in social housing, 25% in middle class and 25% own their homes.”

Many of his proposals are dear to the culture of the French. In a large, wealthy metropolis such as Paris, it is easy for small shops to be choked out by large chains. The city of Paris, in its new plan, has put measures in to stop this.

“We have a commercial subsidiary of the city of Paris which has put €200m into managing retail areas in the city with rates below the speculative real estate market. This is specifically to rent to small shops, artisans, bakeries, bookstores. This is not only a good investment because it creates a good economic model, but it keeps the culture of the city of Paris,” says Moreno. This is in keeping with the 15-minute city plan as it keeps local shops close to housing, so people can stroll down from their apartment to pick up a fresh baguette from an independent baker. “It creates a more vibrant neighbourhood,” he adds.

Hidalgo inevitably faced a large backlash from the motorist lobby. Stroll down the banks of the Seine today in the new protected parks and outdoor bars, and it is hard to imagine that it was recently a traffic-choked highway. But with the guidance of Moreno, this became a reality.

In London, there has been a furore around the expansion of the ultra-low emissions zone in London, and attempts to pedestrianise Oxford Street, the city’s busiest shopping district, have failed. So how did Hidalgo do it?

“The drivers were radically very noisy, saying that we wanted to attack their individual rights, their freedom. The motorist lobby said she cannot be elected without our support, that they are very powerful in France,” Moreno says. But Hidalgo called their bluff: “She often says ‘I was elected two times, with the opposition of the automotive lobby’. In 2024, nobody requests to open again the highway on the Seine, no one wants the Seine urban park to be open for cars.”

In his book, Moreno talks about the concept of a “giant metronome of the city” which causes people to rush around. He wants to slow this down, to allow people to reclaim their “useful time” back from commuting and travelling to shops and cultural areas.

Moreno says this is happening with or without him; after the Covid crisis many offices are selling up their large spaces in the financial district and moving closer to residential areas. People are choosing jobs they can work remotely from or that are situated closer to their homes.

“I bet for the next year, for the next decade, we will have this new transformation of corporation real estate,” he says. “Businesses are choosing multi-use areas with housing, schools, shops for their office space now. The time of the skyscrapers in the masculine design is finished.”

The 15-Minute City is out on 7 May..

Lobbyists for the world’s biggest meat companies have lauded a better than expected outcome at Cop28, which they say left them “excited” and “enthusiastic” for their industry’s prospects.

US livestock bosses reflected on the conference’s implication for their sector on a virtual panel, fresh from “sharing US agriculture’s story” at the climate summit in December.

Campaigners and climate scientists had hoped the summit, which was billed as a “Food Cop” because of its focus on farming, would result in governments agreeing to ambitious action to transform food systems in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

But while more than 130 governments vowed to tackle agriculture’s carbon footprint, a slew of announcements and initiatives failed to set binding targets, or to broach the question of reducing herds of ruminant livestock such as cattle and sheep, which are agriculture’s largest driver of emissions.

In the online discussion, which was hosted by the trade publication Feedstuffs, meat lobbyist groups made it clear they felt Cop28 resulted in a positive outcome.

The three representatives all said there had been widespread recognition at the Dubai summit that agriculture was a “solution” to the climate crisis, despite livestock accounting for more than 30% of anthropogenic methane emissions.

Outcomes at the summit were characterised as “far more positive … than we anticipated” by Constance Cullman, the president of the Animal Feed Industry Association (AFIA), a US lobby group whose members include some of the world’s biggest meat and animal feed producers.

She added that this was the first time she had “felt that optimistic” after a “large international gathering like this one”.

Cullman also praised the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s “Global Roadmap” to tackle the climate crisis and end hunger, which she described as “music to our ears”, saying she particularly welcomed the report’s emphasis on “production and efficiency” over “looking at reduced consumption of animal protein”.

Academics described the FAO report’s failure to recommend cuts to meat-eating as “bewildering” in a March submission to the journal Nature Food.

According to a March paper, which surveyed more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, meat and dairy production must be drastically reduced – and fast – to align with the Paris agreement.

The report concludes that global emissions from livestock production need to decline by 50% during the next six years, with “high-producing and consuming nations” taking the lead.

The FAO said in a statement that its roadmap took a “balanced” approach to animal agriculture, saying that its report had “acknowledged the importance of livestock for poor people in traditional agrifood systems” and referred to the need for dietary shifts.

“We believe that some comments on the change in diets and the role of animal products in them are either misinformed because people have not properly read the roadmap report, or deliberately disingenuous for the sake of feeding vested interests narratives,” it said.

Another industry panellist, Eric Mittenthal, had attended Cop28 on behalf of lobby group the Meat Institute (formerly the North American Meat Institute, or Nami). He emphasised the importance of sharing the message that animal agriculture was necessary for nutrition and sustainability.

The Meat Institute represents hundreds of corporations in the meat supply chain, including the meat sector’s three largest companies, JBS, Cargill and Tyson Foods, which together have emissions equal to a major oil company on the scale of BP or Shell.

Sophie Nodzenski, a senior campaign strategist on food and agriculture at Greenpeace International, said it was “unsurprising” that industrial meat producers felt positively about Cop28’s outcomes “given that their interests essentially took the central stage there”.

The number of lobbyists for big meat and dairy companies tripled at Cop28, as revealed by DeSmog and the Guardian, amid rising scrutiny of the food sector’s climate impact, while smallholders and family farmers at the summit said they felt “drowned out”.

“Cop28 has rightly put the spotlight on the link between food production and the climate crisis, but the sheer number of Big Ag lobbyists present gave them an outsized influence,” Nodzenski said.

Documents seen by DeSmog and the Guardian show that the meat industry was poised to “tell its story and tell it well” before and during the Dubai conference, which it described as a “notoriously challenging environment”.

Cop28 had promised to increase action on food systems transformation, but campaigners and experts said its declarations and reports fell far short of what was needed.

On the second day of the summit, the leaders’ declaration on sustainable food systems, which was signed by more than 130 countries, committed to food systems transformation.

But while it was praised for moving food up the global climate agenda, the International Panel of Experts on Food Systems co-chair Lim Li Ching criticised the declaration for its “vague language” and noted the lack of any reference to “reducing overconsumption of industrially produced meat”.

The long-awaited FAO roadmap followed. While it proposed a 25% reduction in livestock methane emissions by 2030 to put the agriculture sector on track to reach global climate goals, it again failed to explicitly recommend a cut to meat and dairy consumption.

A reduction in “excess meat eating” – which is prevalent in high-income countries such as the US and UK – is a key recommendation of major scientific bodies, and has appeared in reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the recommendations of the EAT-Lancet commission.

The third Cop28 agreement that failed to tackle food system emissions was the “Global Stocktake”, in which agriculture was mentioned only in the context of adaptation to climate impacts, not mitigation, despite food systems making up around a third of greenhouse gas emissions overall.

Jamie Burr, a representative of the US Pork Board who spoke on Feedstuff’s panel, said he was “excited to see” the roadmap recognise efficiency as the best pathway to emissions reduction, going on to describe US agriculture as the “most efficient in the world”.

Industrial meat companies emphasise emissions intensity and efficiency over absolute cuts to emissions, or dietary shifts that would lead to a drop in production.

This is especially true in the US, where livestock methane emissions as reported to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have increased by about 5% since 2010 according to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and have increased about 20% since 1990.

Cullman also welcomed the FAO’s proposals – including its plug for the role new technologies could play in bringing down methane emissions.

Numerous assessments have found that there is a role for efficiency and innovation to cut livestock emissions, although many technologies are unproven at scale. But to be effective, they should also be accompanied by a shift away from meat in diets, and, researchers caution, should not be used to delay demand-side policy.

Scrutiny of the FAO’s relationship with industry has grown in recent years. Last autumn, former officials said their work on livestock emissions had been censored because of pressure from industry and diplomats from large producer countries. Experts have called on the FAO for greater transparency, querying the lack of authors on the roadmap.

The FAO said: “The Global Roadmap has been developed with reference to and based on existing scientific and peer-reviewed publications. In no stage of the development of the roadmap were livestock industries consulted, or any inputs received from them.”

AFIA, Nami and the US Pork Board did not respond to a request for comment.

The meat lobbyists, whose industry enjoyed many routes to influence at the summit, also celebrated the cut-through of their message that industrial animal agriculture has an important role to play in addressing global hunger.

Cullman said that she was pleased to see there had been a “strong recognition” at Cop28 that animal products “had a real role in meeting the nutritional needs of folks around the globe”.

Burr added that Cops provided an opportunity for US agriculture groups to demonstrate how they “feed the world”, while Mittenthal said the Meat Institute had showcased how agriculture can be a “solution” for “healthy people and a healthy planet”.

A spokesperson for the Global Alliance for the Future of Food said the argument that industrial agriculture is “critical to address hunger” is one of the greatest “myths” shared by the industry.

As well as helping to drive global heating, which is undermining food security worldwide, the meat industry is also the leading driver of deforestation and ecosystem loss, while the overconsumption of animal products has been linked to a greater likelihood of developing illnesses such as heart disease.

The eyes have it. If you’re a sucker for a charismatic gaze, an impressive name and great rarity, then the distinguished jumping spider should get your vote.

But this acrobatic, spectacular-looking tiny spider with two large black forward-facing eyes is not merely a pretty face. It is a powerful environmentalist and mighty representative of the value of often-derided, seemingly desolate post-industrial landscapes.

The spider was only discovered in Britain in 2003 and is today only found in two locations: West Thurrock marshes and Swanscombe peninsula. Both are “brownfield” sites in the Thames Gateway, the largest area designated for new development in Europe.

Politicians from both right and left are queueing up to build on brownfield because it seems – and sounds – so much better to place new buildings on the footprint of old rather than concrete over the luscious greenbelt.

But life isn’t that simple, and most brownfield sites, particularly those in the warm, dry south-east, are far more biodiverse than farmers’ fields. Some are the most biodiverse sanctuaries in the land. The abandoned oil refinery at Canvey Wick, for instance, is home to nearly 2,000 invertebrate species. Many thrive because the old concrete and rubble create dry, sheltered and warm microclimates where species at the northern edge of their natural range can thrive.

The distinguished jumping spider is one such denizen of the rubble, liking old coal heaps and dry and salty terrain where relatively few plants survive.

Its name was given during a Victorian dispute over similar species. Like the other 37 jumping spider species found in Britain, it does not spin webs but uses its excellent eyesight (the best of any invertebrate except for cephalopods) and ability to leap 10 times its body length to catch prey. The male of the species also uses its keen eyes to assess the receptiveness of females during their mating dance, and making a quick exit to avoid getting eaten if his dance does not go down well.

The spider has been at the forefront of opposition to ambitious plans to build Britain’s “Disneyland” on Swanscombe peninsula and although plans have been withdrawn, the spider’s home and site of special scientific interest (SSSI) is still earmarked for development.

So vote distinguished, vote for treasuring our smallest creatures, and vote for leaving some brownfield sites alone. The spider’s success shows that our restless abandonment of yesterday’s industries opens up niches that wild nature is always ready to rapidly exploit. Which is well worth celebrating.

• Welcome to the Guardian’s UK invertebrate of the year competition. Every day between 2 April and 12 April we’ll be profiling one of the incredible invertebrates that live in and around the UK. Let us know which invertebrates you think we should be including here. And at midnight on Friday 12 April, voting will open to decide which is our favourite invertebrate – for now – with the winner to be announced on Monday 15 April.

In 2019, 15,000 children from primary schools across the UK went out to their local playing field. Instead of kicking a ball around, they dug up worms, looked out for birds, and counted them both.

“The kids were just so enthusiastic about it. It was incredible,” said Blaise Martay, lead researcher from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Martay had worried about the data quality – she thought children’s counting might vary with their enthusiasm. But the results “showed exactly what we’d expect”, she said: that more worms meant a greater number of blackbirds, robins and thrushes, the birds that rely on earthworms as a vital part of their diets. The data was consistent across school groups.

Earthworms are a keystone species with potentially enormous effects on above-ground wildlife and ecosystem functioning, yet we still know little about them. They live in a hidden landscape below our feet, breaking down organic matter into the soil so it can be used by other soil organisms. As they wriggle around, they create miniature tunnels, so air and water can pass through, with some deep-burrowing worms able to dig tunnels up to 2 metres deep. Sometimes called the “poor man’s tropical rainforest” on account of its biodiversity, topsoil is the bedrock for human food systems, and is where 95% of the planet’s food is grown.

Charles Darwin was so obsessed with these extraordinary creatures that he wrote his last book about them, based on a lifetime of study and fascination, and told his son William that what he hoped his book would reveal was that “worms have much bigger souls than anyone would suppose”. Darwin thought that “it may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures”, and his book was a bestseller.

But the UK’s first national assessment, published in 2023, found that earthworm populations had declined by a third over the past 25 years. “Such declines would likely have significant effects on soil health, ecosystem structure and function,” researchers wrote in a 2024 “horizon scan” identifying the biggest threats and possibilities for biodiversity, published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Large-scale wildlife declines have been reported in oceans, freshwater, and on land, but what is happening under the soil is still relatively unknown. “We know birds that feed on earthworms are declining so we were wondering what was happening with the worms,” said Dr Ailidh Barnes, a research ecologist from BTO who conducted the national assessment.

Her paper found earthworm populations in the UK are in long-term decline of up to 2% a year. It is possible that other countries with similar land-use patterns have had equally dramatic declines. The biggest declines seen in Barnes’s study were in broadleaf woodland ecosystems. “That was the finding we were most surprised by,” said Barnes. It could be because the climate crisis is drying out the soil, or runoff from surrounding farmland.

It is possible that the loss of earthworms could already be affecting broader woodland ecology. On average there are 37% fewer woodland birds in British woods compared with 1970, with declines accelerating in the past five years. “The loss of worms could be playing a bigger part than we realise,” said Barnes.

Healthy worm populations are crucial for entire ecosystems, not just birds. Earthworms are ecosystem engineers. As they burrow and feed underground, they break down organic matter, which is then passed along the conveyor belt to smaller organisms. Wormholes create porous structures for water and air to travel through. They play a crucial role in nutrient recycling and soil fertility, which means they significantly contribute to global food production.

“Earthworms are vital at looking after the soil, which is the basis of all life and what grows our food,” said Barnes.

If trends revealed by her study hold true elsewhere the loss could affect our ability to feed a growing human population. Worms’ contribution to the world’s grain harvest matches that of Russia, according to a 2023 study, which found they help make 140m tonnes of food a year. This would make them the fourth largest global producer if they were a country.

Another paper from last year found more than half of the world’s species live in the soil. Yet despite their importance in supporting ecosystems and providing food for humans, soil invertebrates have been “woefully neglected” in biodiversity assessments. Extensive drainage, pesticide use and the use of inorganic fertilisers are likely to be driving them, but data on trends in population abundance are generally only available from studies covering small areas.

Barnes said: “They are vital for everything. When you start talking to people about earthworms they are interested, but they’re under the ground so they get forgotten about.”

• Welcome to the Guardian’s UK invertebrate of the year competition. Every day between 2 April and 12 April we’ll be profiling one of the incredible invertebrates that live in and around the UK. Let us know which invertebrates you think we should be including here. And at midnight on Friday 12 April, voting will open to decide which is our favourite invertebrate – for now – with the winner to be announced on Monday 15 April.

• 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

Lying on a mound of soft sand inside the nursery, Bani looks like a spoilt child being indulged. Two members of the care team massage her hind leg with oil while the third, sitting at her head, funnels sticks of sugar cane gently into her mouth, clucking reassuringly.

It’s the royal treatment – but Bani, a nine-month-old elephant calf, needs all the medical care and nurturing she can get.

Bani was orphaned in mid-December when she and her pregnant mother were crossing a railway track near Jim Corbett national park in Haldwani. A speeding train smashed into them, killing her mother and flinging baby Bani into a ditch, leaving her with serious injuries and fractured bones.

For several weeks, the frightened calf, unable to stand, was treated locally. When the local forest department caring for her saw no progress, they contacted NGO Wildlife SOS, who sent a team of experts to provide critical care. Once she was strong enough, they transported Bani in a custom elephant ambulance to the Mathura hospital – India’s first specialist elephant hospital.

Since arriving, her life has been an intensive schedule of laser treatment, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, nerve stimulation and ayurvedic massage. One day, she was able to twitch her tail, to the elation of the staff – it indicated her spine would recover. Then, with the help of a padded harness, she was able to stand for a few minutes, which was a “euphoric moment”, says Kartick Satyanarayan of Wildlife SOS.

“Bani may have to live her life with a handicap but with each day, you can see her becoming less scared and more playful. She loves her bananas and is quite a drama queen, [having tantrums] if she doesn’t get them,” says Satyanarayan.

Bani is the hospital’s first wild elephant and her arrival illustrates the growing threat posed by trains as railway lines cut through forested habitat and migration corridors. Satyanarayan says the Indian Railways’ primary consideration is cost when planning routes, not the need to protect elephants as they forage for food and water.

In India, death from train collisions is the second-highest cause of unnatural elephant deaths, after accidental electrocution. Official data shows that more than 200 elephants were killed in train collisions in the past 10 years. “There’s blood on the tracks when railway lines go through forest areas,” Satyanarayan says.

Indian elephants are classed as endangered, with numbers declining: about 40-50,000 remained in the wild globally at the last assessment in 2019. More than half of the species’ total range has disappeared or been highly fragmented by human settlements, roads and farms. The Wildlife SOS elephant conservation and care centre is a sanctuary for rescued elephants, many of which have come from circuses, hotels, wedding businesses or temples.

Shivam Rai, head coordinator at Wildlife SOS, says most of the 36 elephants in their care have experienced violence at the hands of humans. A number are blind. Many have severe physical disabilities.

“Giving them comfort and dignity is our way of saying sorry – sorry we did this to you, sorry we snatched you from the wild and took you away from your family, sorry for taking everything from you,” says Rai.

The increasing number of elephants being killed by trains has led to calls for changes to the way the railways are managed. Last year, Tamil Nadu in south India installed an AI-enabled surveillance system to monitor elephant movement near railway tracks to help prevent accidents. Sensors pick up elephant movement and alert train drivers, station staff and line controllers.

In other areas, the railways are being fitted with similar systems that sense vibrations, detecting the presence of elephants with nearly 100% accuracy. A system installed in north-east India triggers more than 40 alerts a day.

Flyovers covered with foliage are another option to provide a safe passage for wildlife. In West Bengal, a flyover lined with bamboo and banana trees has been built to encourage elephants to use it and cross the track safely.

But rolling out safety measures is a huge challenge. Indian Railways spans 130,000km (81,000 miles) of track and the country has 150 elephant corridors.

Wildlife SOS believes that if an AI early warning system had been in place, Bani’s mother would be alive and Bani would not be disabled.

“The forest is their home and the trains are invading their homes. Urgent installation of AI-enabled accident prevention systems and strict implementation of speed controls will save hundreds of elephants,” says Satyanarayan.

Of the animals that are hit, Bani is one of the lucky ones. Her progress is steady but slow. Her appetite is gradually improving and she is now able to hold herself up for short periods of time. For the staff who work with her, her recovery is tinged with sadness.

“Bani may never be a normal elephant and can never be wild again,” says Satyanarayan. “She will live with a handicap all her life. Our hope is that she recovers enough to live a life of dignity and freedom.”

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

A hare springs away over the swell of the hill as we drop down into the wood. On this bright morning, a mistle thrush flings its clear song on to the breeze. Wild garlic shines emerald beneath the trees and woodrush thrusts through fallen beech leaves. Other signs of spring: arrow-shaped lords-and-ladies, pale green flowers of dog’s mercury and, on a sheltered bank, the first primroses.

There’s a feeling of movement, of growth, of upward vitality. The thing that jars is that which is not alive: the twisted, distorted tubes of long-ago tree guards, redundant now that the trees have grown. They cling on, cloven in two, forced apart by bark, still attached to mossy stakes by black ties. Or tumbled and half buried in grass and soil, where they will remain for many years. In an act of guerrilla tidying, we gather a load of the split, broken, battered plastic and pile it under an old piece of wriggly tin. These pieces will still break down into microplastics, but removing them frees the struggling trunks.

This is just a small copse in Northumberland, but this scene is replicated across the country. In this last week I’ve seen: sand-coloured straps of plastic like giant tagliatelle wrapped round a hazel on a nature reserve; a roadside red-stemmed dogwood half-throttled as it tries to throw off its burden; and a top-heavy hawthorn hedge, its marching line of white tubes masking a barren base (to be stock-proof, a hedge needs to be dense right from the base).

Tree guards are used to protect new plantings from rabbits, hares, voles and an ever-expanding deer population. They are, in theory, reusable or recyclable, but few are collected once they are no longer needed, and probably damaging the tree and littering the countryside. Biodegradable alternatives being trialled by the Woodland Trust, the National Trust and the Tree Council are made from materials such as wool or cardboard.

I’m heartened by two Northumberland farmers. One does indeed collect the tubes and offers them for reuse, and these are snapped up on Facebook. The other is planting a mix of species within wooden post-and-rail cages without individual guards.

Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary

The sweeping edge of the Pennines at Geltsdale is a cathedral for birdsong on a still spring evening. Everything from thrushes to curlew are calling from this diverse mix of heather moorland, resurgent scrub, rough grassland and pools of water around a rewilded stream.

The conditions on this large nature reserve are perfect for the rare hen harrier to thrive and conservationists hope that this year it will. But there remain fears that illegal persecution will continue to hinder the rare raptor’s recovery.

“There are loads of birds about but they are not lasting very long,” said David Morris, the RSPB area manager for Cumbria and north-east England. “It’s like the Bermuda Triangle for birds when they leave the reserve.”

Last spring, RSPB Geltsdale hosted two successful pairs of nesting hen harriers for the first time since 1999. But a satellite-tagged male bird was found shot dead on a neighbouring grouse moor and the tag of one of five fledglings stopped transmitting in a known hotspot for raptor persecution. Ecologists calculate there could be nine nests on the reserve if there wasn’t so much illegal persecution in the surrounding uplands.

According to 2023 figures released on Monday, the UK and Isle of Man hen harrier population has increased by 20% from 545 territorial pairs in 2016 to 691 pairs. In England, there were 50 breeding attempts in 2023, up from just four pairs in 2016, although numbers are still below the 749 pairs recorded in 2004.

Hen harriers are bouncing back – but illegal persecution is increasing too. Combined Natural England and RSPB data shows that 32 satellite-tagged hen harriers vanished or were confirmed as having been illegally killed in England in 2023 – the highest recorded number of hen harriers killed or to disappear suspiciously in one year.

Newly fledged birds continue to disappear over grouse moors and other shooting estates, and hen harriers remain absent from swaths of suitable habitat in England, including the Peak District and the North York Moors. According to the latest RSPB Birdcrime survey, 71% of confirmed incidents of birds of prey persecution occurred on land managed for game bird shooting.

Hen harriers are targeted because they are seen to consume large quantities of red grouse chicks, which grouse moor managers prize for the lucrative driven grouse shooting season.

Hen harriers’ preferred diet is often voles and on Geltsdale this year conservationists are hopeful that conditions are ideal for hen harriers to thrive. Their security is bolstered by the birds being satellite-tagged by the RSPB as well as Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog.

“It’s looking like a good vole year,” said Morris. “We want to see a good year and the reserve sustaining four pairs free from any outside interference or illegal persecution. Everything is in the hen harriers’ favour this year. A lot of them have got satellite tags on them so we know there are birds about and we know where they are. We just hope people leave them alone. We’re not asking for much – just the law to be upheld and the police to take it seriously when it isn’t.”

The rising numbers of hen harriers has been welcomed by shooting interests as a sign that the government’s recovery plan – controversial “brood management” – is working.

Brood management enables shooting estates that host multiple breeding hen harriers to have chicks removed from wild nests, raised in captivity and released elsewhere. The process is aimed at preventing shooting estates from being inundated by hen harrier nests and therefore reducing the pressure on gamekeepers or others associated with the estates to potentially commit wildlife crimes.

Andrew Gilruth, the chief executive of the Moorland Association, said: “Fifty per cent of hen harrier habitat in the uplands is managed for grouse shooting yet grouse moors host 80% of their nests – a very significant conservation contribution.

“It is disappointing that the RSPB still can’t acknowledge the extraordinary success of Defra’s hen harrier recovery plan, which has increased the English population to a 200-year high in just five years. The RSPB may be frustrated that grouse moors have more harrier nests than all its nature reserves combined but either way, if it has found evidence of illegal activity it should do what everyone else does, take it to the police.”

At Geltsdale in May 2023, one nest was abandoned when the male bird provisioning it, called Dagda, was shot dead. The bird’s satellite tag led RSPB investigators to find the body on neighbouring Knarsdale moor. The postmortem concluded it died instantly or a short time after being shot.

Northumbria police have made no arrests relating to the incident and the RSPB has submitted a complaint about their investigation. It is understood that Northumbria police are currently considering the complaint.

A spokesperson for Knarsdale Estate said: “We take the protection of wildlife extremely seriously and were deeply concerned when we were made aware in May last year of a fatally injured hen harrier. To be clear, no one from the estate was involved in this incident and RSPB confirmed this in its Birdcrime Report issued in November 2023 stating: ‘for the avoidance of doubt, there is no suggestion that the landowner, agent or any employee was involved in any way.’

“The estate deplores any form of wildlife crime and has happily had satellite-tagged hen harriers present on and over its land for years without any issue, and we continue to have a healthy and diverse raptor population.”

A Northumbria police spokesperson said: “We received a report on 11 May last year that a hen harrier had been found dead in countryside in the Haydon Bridge area of Northumberland.

“It sustained injuries consistent with being caused by a firearm. Anyone with information should use the ‘report’ page of our website or call 101, quoting NP-20230511-1263.”

According to RSPB staff, because shooting estates are able to access the satellite-tag location data of captive-reared birds once they are released under the brood management scheme, the satellite tags that should deter illegal persecution in this instance can lead people who want to harm the birds straight to them.

The Scottish government recently passed a bill introducing licensing for grouse shooting in Scotland; the RSPB and other conservationists want similar legislation in England.