BBC Wildlife Magazine

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(Max Barattini/Alamy) Sometimes it’s amazing how well wildlife adapts to the obstacles we humans throw at it. Witness our photo story on page 68 that shows how the animals of the Italian Alps co-exist with the country’s most intensive marble workings. More often, though, nature needs a helping hand, and for accidental, as well as intentional, damage to be put right. On page 40, a scientist who worked on Gough Island in the South Atlantic relates what was involved in assessing the scale of seabird destruction by non-native mice, and what will be done about it in the coming years. And on page 32, we look at the salvation from extinction of the world’s only truly wild horse, as well as, on page 62, the innovative solutions to curbing the…

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Buy a digital edition of BBC Wildlife Magazine for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, PC or Mac. Visit iTunes, the Google Play store, Amazon or www.zinio.com to find out more.COVER: Otter: Brydon Thomason; tortoise: Teigler/blickwinkel/Alamy;horse: Valeriy Maleev/naturepl.com; lionfish: Shane Gross ■…

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the people behind our stories

SALLY HUBAND Sally is a writer and naturalist living in Shetland. “The onset of winter is an exciting time,” she says. “I find myself longing for the arrival of the long-tailed ducks, or ‘calloo’ as they are called here.” See p18 MARY COLWELL Mary is leading a campaign to introduce a GCSE in natural history. “Nature has to be at the heart of our education system,” she says. “We need to give it the gravitas and respect it deserves.” See p28 KAREN LLOYD Writer Karen went in search of the Przewalski’s horses on the Hungarian steppe. “Previously hunted almost to extinction, it was uplifting being close to a herd of over 270 horses,” she says. See p32 LORENZO SHOUBRIDGE Photographer Lorenzo…

wild month

1 | COMMON TOAD Marching orders Countless warty bodies will soon be stirring. Unlike frogs, toads only visit water to breed, and the timing of their annual migration varies enormously from year to year, according to the weather in early spring. The ‘big push’ – when toads move en masse to ancestral breeding ponds and lakes – occurs on damp, drizzly evenings when the temperature at sunset hovers at or above 7–8°C. The event usually occurs in March or April in northern England and Scotland. All too often, the peak movement clashes with rush-hour traffic, leading to amphibian carnage. John Lewis-Stempel, in his new book about ponds, Still Water (published by Doubleday this March), describes the sickening moment when toads and drivers meet: ‘Stationary, they are…

mike dilger’s wildlife watching

MIGRATION IN MARCH Let’s face it, by March many of us have had enough of winter and are desperate for spring to bring some light back into our lives. For expectant naturalists, the seasonal signposts are all around us. Nothing says spring to a botanist, for example, quite like the burst of yellow provided by primroses, celandines and daffodils. However, for the birders out there, the arrival of this season of rebirth is surely defined by the return of the first of our summer migrants after a winter spent in warmer climes. Little ringed plovers can be seen from hides at Dungeness. (Beachy head: Martin Beddall)Data collated over decades, by organisations such as the British Trust for Ornithology, has revealed that arrival dates of our summer…