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Source: The Conversation – UK – By Esther Kettel, Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

England’s last recorded pair of golden eagles lived in the Lake District. After the female died in 2004, the male was left alone for 12 years before his death in 2016.

This marked the end of golden eagles across English skies. Though they have lived on in Scotland, the birds were largely wiped out across England about 150 years ago, with only a few nesting attempts during that time.

However, the UK government recently announced it will support reintroducing the species and has identified eight potential “recovery zones” across northern England and the south-west. This is good news for lots of reasons.

Reintroducing lost species aligns with the government’s 25-year environment plan to restore and recover nature. Golden eagles also have an important heritage as symbols of wilderness, freedom and power. We may even have a moral duty to return them to the landscape, since humans were largely responsible for their loss.

Reintroducing golden eagles would also benefit England’s natural environment, helping return it to a healthier and more dynamic state.

Restoring balance to the food chain

Golden eagles are apex predators, occupying the top of the food chain with no natural predators. The removal of a species like this can cause major shifts in ecosystems, as they exert top-down control.

When apex predators are missing from ecosystems, the middle predators of food chains – or “meso-predators” – become dominant. With its native bears, lynx and wolves long gone, England has a high number of meso-predators. These include badgers, red foxes and other birds of prey. These predators, in turn, can limit some populations of prey like seabirds, waders and gamebirds.

Meso-predators typically avoid areas where apex predators are due to fear of competition or being eaten themselves. So, if golden eagles return then the predation pressure from smaller birds might be altered. For example, on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, meso-predators like kestrels and buzzards tend to steer clear of areas where golden eagles are.

Controlling prey numbers

Golden eagles also have an important role in the ecosystem by regulating their prey species. They hunt various prey, mostly medium-sized birds and mammals like rabbits, hares and occasionally, young deer.

When not controlled by predators, prey populations can boom. This can lead to greater competition for resources and a higher risk of disease spread among these prey species. Prey populations may also overuse resources, which can negatively affect plant growth.

Because apex predators are absent in England, humans must take up the role of controllers. Deer are shot where they are preventing woodland regeneration and rabbits are widely controlled in agricultural landscapes, costing £5 million a year. Although golden eagles are unlikely to reduce deer and rabbit numbers substantially, they may bring some balance back.

Keeping the environment clean

In addition to being excellent predators, golden eagles also scavenge carcasses – the remains of dead animals. Researchers in Spain found that 90% of the golden eagles in their study fed on carcasses.

Carcasses can quickly become disease and toxin reservoirs that may enter the wider environment if left uneaten. This can have consequences for other species, including humans. So scavengers have a crucial role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem.

If reintroduced back to England, golden eagles would join the cleaning crew, which also includes species like red kites, crows and red foxes.

Indicators of a healthy ecosystem

If a pollutant is in an environment, this could affect top predators through a process called biomagnification, where the concentration of the pollutant increases the further up the food chain. If in high concentrations, the pollutant may become toxic and the predator may fail to reproduce, become unwell, or die.

In the 1960s, birds of prey played a pivotal role in making the environmental dangers of certain agricultural pesticides clear in the UK and globally, leading to the widescale ban. Golden eagles could do something similar today.

A complex picture

If golden eagles are successfully reintroduced in England, they could restore balance to food chains, control prey numbers, scavenge carcasses and act as indicators of environmental dangers.

They will join other birds of prey that have been successfully reintroduced to England, such as red kites, ospreys and white-tailed eagles, all of which have been deemed a success.

However, ecological systems are not straightforward and predicting the consequences of the return of golden eagles is complex. As indicated by the risk assessment conducted by Forestry England, at worst the impacts on biodiversity of golden eagles will be neutral. At best it will be beneficial.

Esther Kettel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Golden eagles in England? Here’s the ecological case for bringing them back – https://theconversation.com/golden-eagles-in-england-heres-the-ecological-case-for-bringing-them-back-281040

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

The idea that fruit and vegetables might cause cancer sounds bizarre. For decades, studies have shown that people who eat more plants tend to live longer, healthier lives, with lower rates of heart disease, stroke and several common cancers.

Lung cancer is no exception: in many large studies, higher intakes of fruits and vegetables are linked with lower risks, especially in smokers.

Against that backdrop, a new suggestion that fruit and veg might be driving lung cancer in young adults is surprising.

The story behind this latest wave of anxiety doesn’t come from a definitive, landmark trial. It comes from a brief presentation at a scientific conference, based on 187 people with early‑onset lung cancer.

Most had never smoked. When researchers asked about their diets, a lot of them reported eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains – the sort of pattern most of us would call “healthy”.

Instead of measuring pesticides in their food or blood, the team estimated probable pesticide exposure using average residue levels from other sources. From there, they speculated that pesticides on otherwise healthy foods might help explain why some young non‑smokers develop lung cancer.

That is a very long way from proving that fruit and vegetables themselves are harmful. Studies like this are meant to raise questions – “could pesticides be part of the story in young lung cancer?” – not to rewrite dietary advice on their own.

Crucially, this particular study looks backwards from people who already have cancer, rather than following healthy people forwards over time, so it cannot tell us whether their diet played any role in causing the disease. Nor does it show that these patients had higher pesticide exposures than comparable people without cancer. It only shows that they ate foods that, on average, can carry residues.

The bigger picture

When you zoom out from this single, tiny study to the broader body of evidence, the picture changes from alarming to reassuringly familiar. Large studies have followed tens or hundreds of thousands of people over many years, asked them what they ate, then waited to see who develops lung cancer. Time and again, those eating more fruit and vegetables either do better or, at very worst, no differently from those eating less.

Meta‑analyses that combine data from multiple studies find reductions in lung cancer risk with higher fruit intake and benefits from vegetables, too. These are the studies that inform official guidelines. They are not perfect – no nutrition study is – but they are far more informative than a single unpublished study of 187 patients.

So why do small studies like this latest one sometimes seem to say something different? One reason is simple statistical noise.

With small numbers, chance plays a huge role. If, for whatever reason, the particular group of young adults who turned up to that clinic happened to be unusually health-conscious, then fruit and vegetable intake will look high among people with lung cancer, even if diet has nothing to do with their disease.

Another issue is what scientists call “confounding”. People who eat more plants often differ in many other ways. They may exercise more, drink less, have different jobs, live in different neighbourhoods, or be more on the ball about seeking medical help.

When you start from patients and look backwards, it is very hard to disentangle these overlapping factors. That is why we place more weight on large, prospective studies that follow people forward in time and can better account for these differences.

Pesticides

Then there is the question of pesticides – the part of the story that understandably unnerves people. It is true that many conventionally grown fruits and vegetables carry measurable pesticide residues, and that people who eat a lot of produce tend to have higher levels of some pesticide breakdown products in their urine.

It is also true that farm workers who handle pesticides regularly and at high doses have higher rates of certain cancers, including some lung cancers. That tells us pesticides are not benign. But what it does not tell us is that eating sprayed apples or lettuce at normal dietary levels causes lung cancer in the general population.

That doesn’t mean we should be complacent: there is an ongoing discussion about cocktails of many different chemicals, about vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women, and about longer‑term hormone or brain effects that might not show up in crude cancer rates. However, these are arguments for improving how we farm and regulate pesticides, not arguments for abandoning fruit and vegetables.

If you are still uneasy about pesticides, there are practical, proportionate things you can do that don’t involve swapping an orange for a packet of crisps. Washing produce under running water helps remove surface residues and soil, and varying the types of fruit and veg you eat means you are not relying heavily on any one item that tends to carry higher residues.

If your budget allows, choosing organic versions of a few “high‑residue” foods can make sense. But the key point is that these are tweaks at the margins. They don’t change the central message that a diet rich in plant foods is overwhelmingly associated with better health.

Perhaps the most important lesson from this episode is about how to read nutrition headlines. Whenever you see “X food causes cancer” or “Y ingredient is the next miracle cure”, it helps to ask a couple of simple questions. How big was the study? Was it in healthy people followed over time, or patients looked at after the fact? Did the researchers actually measure what they are claiming (like pesticide levels)? And how do the new findings sit alongside decades of existing research?

In the case of the early-onset lung cancer study, the answers are sobering: it was small, it was retrospective, it used indirect exposure estimates, and its suggestion that fruit and vegetables might be harmful sits awkwardly with a much larger body of work pointing the other way.

None of this means we should ignore the possibility that pesticides contribute in some way to cancers in non‑smokers, or that diet is irrelevant to lung health. But we should be wary of turning one provocative conference talk into a reason to fear the very foods that consistently show up as markers of better health.

Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Eating fruit is linked to lung cancer? Here’s what you need to know about that new study – https://theconversation.com/eating-fruit-is-linked-to-lung-cancer-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-that-new-study-281003

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Nagle, Professor in Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast

As the tentative ceasefire in Lebanon holds, people are returning to their homes in the south to find widespread destruction. Whole villages laid waste, roads and bridges ruined, hospitals and other civic infrastructure flattened. And the Israeli army still very much in evidence in many areas.

The most recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people and displaced more than a million more. Israel’s stated aim is to destroy Hezbollah, which it describes as an Iranian proxy. But this is a misleading framing of the situation. And trying to destroy Hezbollah by attacking and occupying Lebanon is a dangerous misreading of the situation.

Hezbollah, the so-called “Party of God”, is not the same thing as Lebanon. Yet the party is deeply embedded in Lebanese politics. The group emerged during the Lebanese civil war and in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 invasion. It grew rapidly by combining armed resistance with political representation and services for Shia communities that had long been neglected by the Lebanese state.

In the southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, and across the south, it became a provider of services. Hezbollah built schools, clinics and welfare networks that helped it convert resistance into social legitimacy. That presence built loyalty and dependence that outlasted its original resistance role.

Lebanon’s postwar political system is built on sectarian power sharing. Hezbollah entered parliament in the 1990s and built alliances well beyond its core Shia base, which enabled it to join coalition governments.

But unlike other major Lebanese factions, it retained its weapons after the civil war. This allowed it to combine formal political participation with an armed capacity that was outside the control of the state. Its alliance with Christian groups, most significantly Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon’s largest Christian party, gave it cross-sectarian legitimacy and protection against isolation.

Hezbollah’s ability to shape Lebanese politics has often rested less on governing than on stopping other groups from governing. The clearest illustration was the presidency. After Michel Aoun completed his term in October 2022, Lebanon went without a president for more than two years. Hezbollah blocked every candidate that threatened its interests. Parliament failed to elect a successor 13 times.

Lebanon drifted without a head of state through the 2024 war with Israel. Its caretaker government could not take major decisions. Desperately needed economic assistance was withheld by international donors. It was Hezbollah’s blocking power made visible. Lebanon’s caretaker government could not take major decisions or enact the reforms international donors required. Desperately needed economic assistance was withheld as a result.

Hezbollah’s political weakness

This current conflict has caught Hezbollah in a weaker political position than it once enjoyed. The anti-government protests of 2019, economic collapse and the Beirut port explosion has deepened public anger at Lebanon’s ruling class — and at Hezbollah as part of it. Hezbollah’s attempts to obstruct the judicial investigation into the explosion deepened that anger further.

The 2022 elections confirmed the shift. Hezbollah and its allies lost the majority they had held since 2018. Independents and reformists who emerged out of the protests took seats in a more fragmented legislature.

The Arab Barometer’s 2024 survey found that just 30% of Lebanese expressed significant trust in Hezbollah, with 55% saying they had no trust at all. Hezbollah’s claim to speak for Lebanon — or even for all Lebanese Shia — is now more contested than at any point in its modern history.

The 2024 war, with the devastating pager attacks of September 17 and 18, substantially degraded Hezbollah’s military and further weakened its political standing. Assad’s fall in Syria in December removed a key source of regional support.

In January 2025, the Lebanese parliament finally elected Joseph Aoun as president — something that would have been unthinkable when Hezbollah was at its peak and was able to use its influence to exclude him. Aoun, a former army commander, has always insisted it was the army – not Hezbollah – that should be the defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Operation: destroy Hezbollah

Israel’s stated objective for many years has been to create a more durable security order along its northern border by weakening or dismantling Hezbollah. But, at the same time, Israeli strikes have inflicted devastation far beyond Hezbollah itself, hitting civilians, infrastructure and communities across the country.

The destruction of places such as Dahiyeh reflects a broader logic of warfare in which dense urban space is treated as part of the battlefield. UN experts have argued that the destruction of homes and mass displacement amount to collective punishment in violation of international law.

The argument echoes broader legal debates about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where UN experts have made similar findings.

That is also why the simple frame of “Israel versus Hezbollah” erases so much. Many of those driven from their homes in the south or in Dahiyeh had grown critical of Hezbollah, or had not chosen this war at all. Yet they found themselves bombed out of neighbourhoods that had been designated as legitimate targets, because of an assumed association with Hezbollah. The civilians killed and displaced are not bystanders to somebody else’s conflict. They are among its principal victims.

A ceasefire was announced on April 17, and – while Hezbollah has not formally endorsed it – the group appears to be observing it for now. Yet the truce leaves the central political question unresolved. Israeli officials have made clear they do not regard it as settling the question of southern Lebanon’s demilitarisation.

Expecting the Lebanese army to dismantle Hezbollah by force is unrealistic. If Hezbollah resisted — and it would — the result could be open civil conflict. It would fracture the army, deepen sectarian tensions, and drive Shia communities back behind the very organisation whose grip had begun to loosen, leaving it politically stronger than it was before the latest round of hostilities.

Any lasting settlement will have to reckon with the reality this war has exposed: Hezbollah is not Lebanon. But at the moment it’s Lebanon which is being punished.

John Nagle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Israel’s onslaught against Lebanon may strengthen Hezbollah – just when it’s at its weakest – https://theconversation.com/israels-onslaught-against-lebanon-may-strengthen-hezbollah-just-when-its-at-its-weakest-281031