Mark Cocker

Do we really want to bring back the wolf?

2 March 2024 9:00 am

The apex predator is making a startling resurgence in Europe – many say to the enrichment of the landscape. But it’ll take a lot to convince the British of that

Life is a far richer, more complicated affair than we imagined

20 January 2024 9:00 am

Exploring the new biology, Philip Hall explains how genes do not in fact determine our fate, and how cells can be reprogrammed to perform all kinds of new tasks

The world is ablaze – yet climate chaos still takes us by surprise

5 August 2023 9:00 am

Our unpreparedness was vividly illustrated by the catastrophic Canadian inferno of 2016 – originally judged a minor brushfire beyond Fort McMurray’s city limits

Living trees that predate the dinosaurs

25 February 2023 9:00 am

The lifespans of cedars, oaks and yews are remarkable enough, but they pale in comparison to America’s bristlecone pines

Where the wild things are

11 February 2023 9:00 am

The Mesta region of Bulgaria, where the river meets the forests of the western Rhodope range, remains remarkably intact and rich in wild harvests

Finally, the Sherpas are heroes of their own story

10 September 2022 9:00 am

John Keay has for many years been a key historian and prolific contributor to the romance attaching to the highest…

The catastrophe that allowed mammals to reign supreme

4 June 2022 9:00 am

Humans are so comfortable with their self-declared dominance over the rest of life, appointing themselves titular head of an entire…

Adapt or die: what the natural world can teach us about climate change

29 January 2022 9:00 am

Climate change may be the central challenge of our century, but almost all attention has focused on its consequences for…

Beavers, not concrete barriers, can save Britain from floods

9 October 2021 9:00 am

As the start date of COP26 draws closer, and just when we are assailed by daily proof of climate chaos,…

Richard Dawkins delights in his own invective

17 July 2021 9:00 am

The late Derek Ratcliffe, arguably Britain’s greatest naturalist since Charles Darwin, once explained how he cultivated a technique for finding…

A hymn to the hummingbird — one of the most astonishing organisms on Earth

19 June 2021 9:00 am

Along with coral reefs and their fish, tropical butterflies and birds of paradise, hummingbirds must be among the most beautiful…

Bird migration is no longer a mystery — but it will always seem a miracle

13 March 2021 9:00 am

Bird migration was once one of those unassailable mysteries that had baffled humankind since Aristotle. A strange hypothesis, genuinely advanced…

Where time stands still: a Himalayan pilgrimage

7 November 2020 9:00 am

The region of Dolpo in Nepal forms part of a border zone between that country and China in the central…

The world’s largest, rarest owl is used for target practice in Siberia

1 August 2020 9:00 am

The montane forests of far-eastern Russia have given rise to one of the finest nature books of recent years, The…

Where did birds first learn to sing?

23 May 2020 9:00 am

Fieldwork can move the most rigorous scientist to lyricism, as Mark Cocker discovers

Mother nature is finally getting the art she deserves

14 March 2020 9:00 am

Exhibitions about fungi, bugs and trees illustrate the depth, range and vitality of a growing field of art, says Mark Cocker

Dangerously desirable: the white-morph gyr falcon commands sky-high prices

29 February 2020 9:00 am

The art of falconry is more than 3,000 years old and possibly as popular now as at any time. Its…

In the high Himalayas

1 February 2020 9:00 am

In my twenties I once visited a lonely spot among the western Himalayas called Zhuldok in the Suru valley. Politically…

Spooky stories for Halloween

2 November 2019 9:00 am

It is surely significant that Ed Parnell’s first novel The Listeners was an updated examination of themes latent in Walter…

Credit: Alamy Stock

Head to Berlin to hear nightingales sing

3 August 2019 9:00 am

In a sense, the song of the bird in the title of this short, hugely thoughtful and fascinating book is…

Barry Lopez. Credit: John Clark

For a passionate ecologist, Barry Lopez burns a lot of oil

29 June 2019 9:00 am

It is more than a generation since the appearance of Barry Lopez’s classic Arctic Dreams. That book’s effortless integration of…

The elusive and endangered snow leopard

In (vain) search of the snow leopard

9 March 2019 9:00 am

Alex Dehgan is clearly someone with a penchant for hazardous jobs. Even in the first few pages we find him…

Let there be light: the Atlantic footballfish dwells 3,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. [Paulo Oliveira / Alamy Stock Photo]

How to live in a world without light: Life in the Dark at the Natural History Museum reviewed

18 August 2018 9:00 am

Like most of our ape ancestors, we have really had only one response to the fall of night. We have…

The long limbs, light frame and deep chest of sighthounds, like the Borzoi or Russian wolfhound, give them the speed and endurance to outrun their quarry. Drawing by Katrina van Grouw

The selective breeding of pets: how far should we go?

11 August 2018 9:00 am

It was in his play Back to Methuselah that George Bernard Shaw honoured a lesser known aspect of Charles Darwin’s…

Forty years ago, curlews were ubiquitous on British coasts in winter. But mechanised farming and the use of chemicals have spelt disaster

The lovely curlew is wading into extinction

2 June 2018 9:00 am

Mary Colwell, a producer at the BBC natural history unit, is on a mission: to save the British curlew from…