This animated map shows the insect’s population exploding in Australia’s eastern states, with the endangered species coming back from the brink

If you live anywhere on the eastern side of Australia, you’ve probably noticed that bogong moths are back in a big way.

While we don’t yet have figures from ecologist-led surveys to compare with previous years, there is a wealth of data on the great moth revival being generated by citizen scientists across the eastern states.

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© Illustration: Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design

As Cop17 kicks off, records since 1921 show more bee species declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alps

Most of Europe’s wild bee species and about half of its hover fly species have declined over the last century, a study has found, as a UN biodiversity summit begins in Armenia.

Records since 1921 show more bee species are declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alpine region. The richness of bee and hover fly species suffered a persistent drop in the Atlantic and Continental regions, the study found, though trends in other regions were mixed or even positive.

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© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

As Cop17 kicks off, records since 1921 show more bee species declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alps

Most of Europe’s wild bee species and about half of its hover fly species have declined over the last century, a study has found, as a UN biodiversity summit begins in Armenia.

Records since 1921 show more bee species are declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alpine region. The richness of bee and hover fly species suffered a persistent drop in the Atlantic and Continental regions, the study found, though trends in other regions were mixed or even positive.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Trees are suffering one devastating epidemic after another, unleashed by insects and bacteria that enter the country because of global trade.

© Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

At Bybi in Copenhagen, a dedicated group of staff and volunteers have built a community for all centred on the production of honey – much of which is given away for nothing. Could it be replicated elsewhere?

The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.

Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.

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© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) filled his notebooks with insects: dragonflies, bees, wasps, butterflies — almost all of them winged. That focus lines up with what historians already knew about him. Leonardo was fixated on the mechanics of flight, and scholars have long read his drawings of flying insects as studies feeding into his designs for […]