Research finds many in England lack proximity to green and blue spaces as Labour urged to speed up manifesto pledge
Nearly half of all parliamentary constituencies in England have low access to nature despite a government target to ensure everyone is within a 15-minute walk from a green or blue space, new research reveals.
The analysis by the Wildlife Trusts comes as the charity presents a green paper to ministers in an attempt to speed up Labour’s manifesto promise to improve access to nature and promote biodiversity.
Make it more affordable for local authorities to use compulsory purchase powers for land purchase.
Establish a community right to buy land for nature access.
Treat nature as essential infrastructure, and free up capital funds to pay for the ongoing maintenance of natural spaces.
Make it mandatory for developers to create climate- and nature-friendly housing estates.
Make access to major rivers, especially those in urban areas, a statutory right.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/17/2026 - 01:00
09/16/2026 - 23:00
Analysis of global resources reveals depletion in world’s water savings bank to 42% below normal levels last year
Rivers across the world experienced one of their driest years in more than three decades in 2025, a comprehensive study of global water resources has found.
The assessment of the global water cycle by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals a depletion in the world’s water savings bank: the amount of freshwater held on or under the ground, including groundwater, lakes, rivers, snow, ice moisture in the soil and inside plants and trees, was 42% below normal across the world last year.
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09/16/2026 - 23:00
As three siblings came of age and had to leave their pack, scientists tracked the dogs’ perilous 2,500-mile odyssey to find their own territory
It sounds like a Disney movie: three wild dogs, all brothers, on an epic journey to find a home of their own after their family tells them to leave. They dodge cars and hunters in search of a new life, navigating bushmeat snares and the hostility of a human-dominated landscape until they find a new haven on the African savannah.
But this is exactly what happened in Zambia last year, when three endangered African wild dogs made the longest-ever recorded single journey of any mammal from the continent. The brothers travelled more than 2,500 miles (4,100km) over eight months in their “dispersal” – when a young dog comes of age and must establish new territory to find a mate and start a family of their own.
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09/16/2026 - 23:00
Initiative aims to keep alive age-old skill, and at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset improve habitat for rare shrill carder bee
It sounds like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel: a merry band of men and women roaming the West Country cutting meadows by hand in exchange for hunks of bread and cheese.
But the conservation charity English Heritage is recruiting a team of volunteer scythers to maintain 21st-century meadowland in the old-fashioned way.
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09/16/2026 - 21:22
The behaviours we observed could represent grief, but they could also reflect maternal attachment, confusion or instinctive caregiving
It was a tragic sight.
One day last July, a newborn humpback whale calf lay motionless on the seafloor, just a kilometre off Australia’s Gold Coast. The encounter was captured through underwater video.
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09/14/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00244-8
The ocean we want in the decade of ocean science:a four-country pilot survey
09/11/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 12 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00246-6
Aligning Marine Spatial Data Infrastructures and Open Science for FAIR and sustainable ocean knowledge systems
09/10/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00239-5
Using a trait-based framework to characterize farmed seaweeds and guide selection of new candidates
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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