BBC Wildlife Magazine
I remember when I first discovered marmots...
Can you remember the first animal you properly fell in love with? The earliest one I recall was an Alpine marmot, which I saw on a natural history programme. I was about seven or eight years old, and I couldn’t believe this creature existed and that...
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Have you heard? Our new Wild Lives podcast is out now
Sixty-three years ago this month, Armand Denis launched the magazine that evolved into the one you’re reading now. Since then, we’ve been reporting on a changing world and have responded to meet the challenges this presents. In this issue we bring you...
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When a picture paints a thousand words
Some animals seem to affect us more than others. It’s why as children we ask each other which are our favourites. Well, as from this issue, I have a new favourite (or top 10 entry at least): the wonderfully named snowshoe hare, so perfectly captured in...
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Seeing wildlife in the dark heightens our other senses
I’ll never forget my first night in the Amazon. With head torches on we walked from the comfort of the lodge into the pitch dark jungle, nervously joking about the various ways we could meet a sticky end, while staying just that bit closer together...
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I’m trying to think more like Indigenous people
One of the great pleasures of my job is meeting extraordinary people who work with wildlife in all corners of the world. But few have made such an impression on me as the First Nations people I met in British Columbia earlier this year (p52). I found...
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I’ve often fancied being a real-life Doctor Dolittle
Ilove learning languages and I’m happy to be able to speak two or three to at least a basic level. But one thing I’ve dreamed of as long as I can remember is to be able to talk with animals. It would have come in handy this morning. Our kitten has just...
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Being a parent is rarely easy – especially for this duck
David Attenborough’s new series, Parenthood (see p48), reminded me of watching some mergansers on a recent trip, the mother swimming proudly ahead of a string of super-cute ducklings. It was a moment of calm serenity – until a juvenile bald eagle...
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I’m making the most of these reasons to be cheerful
It’s 10 years since the shooting of Cecil the lion by a trophy hunter caused shockwaves worldwide. And while the debate rages about whether hunting is good or bad for wildlife, Sara Evans’ cover feature this issue (p48) examines the fate of Africa’s...
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Jaws may be a great movie, but its legacy needs a refresh
Sharks are more than 400 million years old, but the last 50 years have been perhaps the worst they’ve ever known. Can this all be down to a movie? A few years ago, I was interviewing Steve Backshall about sharks. Of the many fascinating things he had...
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The rare lizard that shows how conservation offers hope
When I first read the story of the rare Sombrero lizard (p66), I couldn’t help but picture a reptilian version of one of Zorro’s enemies. And while I was initially disappointed to learn that this was no masked Mexican from the movies, the tale of the...
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You never forget your first crocodilian
Ihave a personal reason for enjoying Louis Guillot’s feature about caimans in Peru’s Tambopata reserve (p64), a place I visited about 15 years ago. I still recall the thrill of my first night there. My senses had never been so overloaded – the intense...
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This Natural Life
Martha Kearney joins the nature writer Richard Mabey and his partner Polly on their beloved boat on the Norfolk Broads. She hears about Richard’s childhood in the Chilterns and finds out how he first became fascinated by the natural world.
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Conservation projects around the world can inspire us all
Have you ever tried to move an elephant from one country to another? No, me neither. How would you even go about it? Well, that’s exactly what writer and photographer Jim Tan found out for us this issue as he followed a translocation project moving...
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Keeping your eyes peeled pays off
Not many things interupt our games of garden cricket, but play came to a halt near the end of last summer when I spotted a red kite way off in the distance. Living in the West Country, I’d never seen one this close to home before, and, as it came...
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Tourism lends wildlife a fiscal value – but at what cost?
Whenever I speak to people who live alongside some of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, or cohabit with some of its most threatened wildlife, they always tell me the same thing: without tourist dollars, financing conservation just wouldn’t happen....
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It’s time we took joy in happy accidents
Richard Mabey – a long-time contributor to these pages – asks a most pertinent question in his feature this month (p60), about how he embraced his accidental garden. “Do we, even as conservationists with the best intentions, always have to be so...
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In praise of the eight-legged groove machine
One of my bugbears is the demonisation of certain species – why are hyenas always the bad guys? Why do we insist on making sharks out to be evil predators, who like nothing better than crunching into a human every five minutes? It’s the same for...
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I’ve been enjoying a journey to a land that time forgot
My big brother was obsessed with dinosaurs when we were small, and he taught me all about them: Triceratops’ horny head; ‘steggers’, with those plates and spiked tail; and of course, old short-arms himself, T. rex. So when my son began his dinosaur...
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