Rewilding Northumberland, making Oxford Street traffic-free and more
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Rewilding Northumberland, making Oxford Street traffic-free and more uplifting stories | The Guardian
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Rewilding Northumberland, making Oxford Street traffic-free and more uplifting stories
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Good morning.
One of the most ambitious nature recovery projects ever undertaken in England can go ahead after campaigners announced they had raised £30m to buy an estate in Northumberland.
The Wildlife Trusts’ bid to buy the Rothbury estate, an area the size of Athens, had been championed by David Attenborough who on Friday thanked the public for their help.
Mike Pratt, the chief executive of Northumberland Wildlife Trust, said: “We are absolutely elated, it has been a long haul and it hasn’t all been easy. The other word is humbled. There was £17m from the public to make this happen and that is at the forefront of my mind – we’ve got to honour that support and make sure that people come here and really enjoy getting close to wildlife.”
Read on for more stories to inspire.
The Guardian newsletters team
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The island that goes dark to save young seabirds
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 Forest ranger Rui Pimentel cradles a Cory’s shearwater seabird in his arms. Photograph: Andrea Zanenga
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Every autumn, Corvo Island in the Azores turns off its public lighting for a few key days to help fledgling seabirds fly to the ocean guided by the stars.
Since 2019, the 450 or so inhabitants of the smallest and most northerly island of Portugal’s Azores archipelago have switched off the lights for five nights to tackle the disastrous effects of artificial light on Cory’s shearwaters. The campaign started after the community noticed huge numbers of deaths among young shearwaters, who spend three months in their nests before attempting their first flight to the ocean. Many are fatally confused by the artificial glow of streetlights, and end up crashing on the streets of the island’s only village, Vila do Corvo. By going dark, the stars can be seen clearly, allowing the juvenile birds safe passage to the ocean.
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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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Oxford Street is now traffic-free
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A young woman takes advantage of the recently pedestrianised Oxford Street. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
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Oxford Street is Europe’s busiest shopping street, but it’s also become one of its least inviting, populated by empty stores and mysterious vape shops. On Sunday evening, almost a kilometre of the street became officially “traffic free”. Over the next few months, it will be planted with new trees and redesigned around public plazas and spaces for music and art events. The idea, the mayor of London Sadiq Khan wrote in the Guardian yesterday, is to “restore this beloved street to its former glory.”
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Gen Z is fighting back against big tech
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Young people are increasingly sceptical of social media. Photograph: Iryna Khabliuk/Alamy
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Amid the unrelenting tales of woe regarding social media’s impact on young minds, some enterprising gen-Z’s are working on fixes for their peers. As younger users become increasingly wearied by the attention-splicing, joy-sapping demands of social media, a growing number of companies are offering means to digitally detox while individuals are likewise getting creative.
Nineteen-year-old Shreya Nallamothu, for example, a computer science student at Duke University, has invented her own DIY Brick device to block selected apps.
“Everyone deserves to have a good relationship with technology, and it shouldn’t be cost-prohibitive,” Nallamothu says. “Often the tech companies’ best interests aren’t in the users’ best interests. Social media has gotten away from what good technology can do, and people have noticed.”
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Rebuilding old mosques is bringing Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims together in Punjab
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Jaspal Sharma, 48, who is Hindu and donated a piece of his land for the construction of a Mosque. Photograph: Cheena Kapoor
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Bibi Rajinder Kaur, a 77-year-old Sikh woman, persuaded her grandson to donate some of his farmland to build a mosque. She did so, she says, because Muslims were the only faith in her Punjab village that did not have a place to gather.
Kaur isn’t alone in her generosity. Over the past decade, several rural Sikh and Hindu communities have worked to help restore the hundreds of mosques that were destroyed during the sectarian violence of British India’s partition in 1947. The effort has brought Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus together in this part of northern India.
“There is no deed better than giving someone a place to worship,” Kaur says.
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A new wave of electric ferries are in action in the US. Some even fly
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An electric ferry in New York. Photograph: Climate Central
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Moving away from diesel-powered ferries to electric vessels has not been an easy task. Batteries are heavy, which means more power is needed to propel electric boats forward through significant resistance. But more companies are finding solutions to the problem and creating workable vessels that reduce emissions.
One such company is Vessev, whose electric ferries rely on underwater wings called hydrofoils that lift the boat above the water. This dramatically reduces drag by up to 66%, making their boats more energy-efficient. Swedish company Candela are designing boats, they claim, which can reduce energy use by 80% compared with conventional vessels of a similar type. “I think in a more sustainable future we’re likely to see more and more vessels like this around the world,” Eric Laakmann, the chief executive and co-founder of Vessev, said.
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