The perennial power of punk, the big bird bounce-back and more uplifting stories
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The perennial power of punk, the big bird bounce-back and more uplifting stories | The Guardian
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The perennial power of punk, the big bird bounce-back and more uplifting stories
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Good morning.
When Leoni Horton’s relationship broke down, she lost not only her partner but also her connection to the music she adored. “When I listened to the artists I loved most, I was ambushed by memories and reminded of all the love and intimacy I had lost,” she said.
In a bid to find a new soundtrack to life, she turned to “the genre furthest away from my usual taste”: hardcore punk. She found a certain peace in the sounds of bands such as Every Time I Die and Malevolence. Then came her first moshpit experience when the US band Knocked Loose arrived in the UK.
“I didn’t care where I ended up, whom I crashed into or what I looked like,” Leoni said of the gig. “I was safe in this sweaty bubble. With every shove and collision, my feelings were spilling out of me. The whole night felt like a weird, radical form of therapy.”
Proof, if ever it were still needed, of the positive power of music in our lives.
Read on for more uplifting stories from the week gone by – and enjoy your Sunday.
The Guardian newsletters team
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How the quirky puffin became a symbol of the climate crisis – and hope
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 Threats to the puffin population can be mitigated. Photograph: Tim Graham/Alamy
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In this extract from his book The Puffin, Stephen Moss explains how for centuries, humans exploited puffins for food and feathers, but they have since become beloved symbols of wildlife.
Sadly just as our national affection for them has grown, we are now endangering their future. Pollution and climate change are disrupting marine ecosystems, reducing key prey and making it harder for puffins to raise chicks.
But there are reasons to be hopeful that we can turn the tide. Restricting industrial fishing, removing invasive predators and using advanced tracking technology can help us understand and therefore protect the humble puffin.
As Moss says: “Perhaps we can maintain at least a small fragment of hope for the future not just of the puffin, but of all the world’s seabirds.”
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The Feast app: your most useful kitchen utensil
Get inspired with more than 8,000 recipes from our world-class cooks and smart, exclusive features to make cooking a breeze.
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Seabird numbers bounce back in Solent region after 2022 avian flu wipeout
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Two adult sandwich terns with a chick. Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB
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In 2022, bird flu wiped out the colony of sandwich terns nesting at Pagham harbour, West Sussex. But their numbers have since bounced back to 756 breeding pairs – and populations of other birds such as ringed plovers and oystercatchers have also increased along the same coastline.
The turnaround is thanks to conservation efforts by RSPB staff and volunteers, which have included removing certain vegetation to make space for shorebirds to nest, and erecting special fencing to keep out predators such as foxes.
The RSPB’s Wez Smith said: “It’s taken several years of dedicated conservation action, but the situation began to ‘tern’ around last year, and the site is now thriving with record breaking populations using it.”
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The CO2-absorbing building made of construction waste: Ghent’s green museum
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Angular geometries … Design Museum Ghent. Photograph: Johan Dehlin
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Ghent’s new €20m (£17m) design museum is a gleaming monument to recycling. Designed by London-based architects Carmody Groarke, it was built using everything from car windscreens, seaweed and old toilets to rubble dug straight from the building site.
Its bricks, many of which were pressed by the public during a two-day festival, are made of pulverised construction waste and hydrated lime. As well as saving two-thirds of the embodied carbon of a regular fired clay brick, they will continue to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere in the coming years, as the lime cures.
“We’re not claiming this is … a solution to the climate crisis,” says Sian Ricketts, Carmody Groarke’s sustainability lead. “But it is a sort of 82,000-brick proof of concept that you can do something different.”
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Giant tunnel proposed to tackle Windermere sewage discharges
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Lake Windermere in Ambleside. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Getty Images
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Finally, Lake Windermere might be clean again. After years of being pumped with sewage, a creative solution to remove sewage from England’s largest lake has been agreed by campaigners, the Environment Agency and a local water company. Inspired by the clean-up of Lake Annecy in France, the plan proposes a 12 mile tunnel that will take treated effluent from Windermere to the River Leven or the sea.
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‘Former inmates want to come back to visit’: inside Florida’s prison zoo
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A prisoner holds a skunk at Monroe County detention centre’s on-site zoo. Photograph: Jamie Lee Taete
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Monroe County detention centre in Florida is an unlikely, but successful, place for a zoo.
Beginning as a makeshift rescue centre for some local ducks in 1994, the prison now houses animals such as a partially blind ostrich and a capybara. Select prisoners look after the animals and their enclosures alongside the more mundane chores inside the prison.
Research shows working with animals helps improve mental health and decreases the likelihood for prisoners to reoffend. Zoo supervisor Jeanne Selander, and former prisoners, have much to say on the positive effects the programme has brought to the prison and its wider community.
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