If British prime ministers were a species of wildlife, they would be fruit flies. Whatever the rate at which they falter, another pops up to take their place: Liz Truss has gone, and Rishi Sunak is now the UK’s fifth prime minister in six years.
There is no such certainty for the natural world, however. In the 18 months that it took Beatrice Forshall to research The Book of Vanishing Species, published this month, 107 species were declared extinct. From the ivory-billed woodpecker to the splendid poison frog, distinct and awe-inspiring lifeforms are disappearing. On Thursday 13 October the Living Planet Report, by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London, announced an average 69 per cent decline in the world’s monitored wildlife populations since 1970.
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