If you go down to the woods today, chances are you won’t necessarily be surprised. No, surprised isn’t the right word. You’re more likely to be horrified, depressed, angry or outraged about what is happening to the UK’s wildlife. It isn’t just teddy bears that are finding life in the 21st-century British countryside no picnic – 15% of Britain’s indigenous species are considered to be in danger of going extinct, according to the 2019 State of Nature report. The report is a health check on the country’s wildlife, put together using wildlife data from a group of 50 conservation organisations.

A combination of climate change, urbanisation, use of pesticides and chemicals, and changing agricultural practices, is decimating wildlife. Not only that, but the law of unforeseen consequences has meant that introduced species, such as the grey squirrel and the American mink, are hastening the demise of native species – 48% of extinctions that we know the cause of involve non-native species. What to do? Read the article and the report it links to. As with climate change, societal change is also needed and it needs to happen quickly.

Something else that is also threatened at the moment is democracy in Hong Kong. Thirty years after China showed how brutally it could suppress dissent on Tiananmen Square, the world is holding its breath after a young demonstrator was shot at point blank range this week. Fortunately he survived. From our colleagues in Australia, we have an interview with the so-called “grandfather of Hong Kong democracy”, Martin Lee Chu-ming.

This week we’ve also been talking about the decision of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to sue the Mail on Sunday, how Taiwan became a global powerhouse in whisky production and the forgotten benefits of a “bad"memory.

From our colleagues around the world, we’ve been reading about the abortion debate in Canada and how Donald Trump’s Nixon impression could cost him the presidency.

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