The songbird’s dramatic decline in an ancient Cambridgeshire woodland is a story repeated across the UK as human activity drives species towards extinction

Richard Broughton has been nosing around this neighbourhood for 22 years. He gossips about inhabitants past and present, reeling off information about their relationship status, openness to visitors, brawls and neighbourly disputes. “They used to have a big punch up in spring here,” he says, pointing out where one family’s territory ends and the next begins.

Some areas are eerily quiet, with popular old haunts lying uninhabited. “I always get a bit of a pang now, walking through here and it’s empty. It’s like walking down your local high street and seeing your favourite shops are closed and the pub is boarded up.”

Loss of intensity and diversity of noises in ecosystems reflects an alarming decline in healthy biodiversity, say sound ecologists

Read more: No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent

Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent action to halt environmental destruction, international experts have warned.

As technology develops, sound has become an increasingly important way of measuring the health and biodiversity of ecosystems: our forests, soils and oceans all produce their own acoustic signatures. Scientists who use ecoacoustics to measure habitats and species say that quiet is falling across thousands of habitats, as the planet witnesses extraordinary losses in the density and variety of species. Disappearing or losing volume along with them are many familiar sounds: the morning calls of birds, rustle of mammals through undergrowth and summer hum of insects.

What can sound tell us about nature loss? Guardian biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston tells Madeleine Finlay about her visit to Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire, where ecologist Richard Broughton has witnessed the decline of the marsh tit population over 22 years, and has heard the impact on the wood’s soundscape. As species lose their habitats across the world, pioneering soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause has argued that if we listen closely, nature can tell us everything we need to know about our impact on the planet

Find more reporting from the Age of Extinction team here

Woodland grant schemes bring the potential for many ecosystem benefits, writes Dr Robert Mills

It is of deep concern to see the core funding for national parks fall, and it is widely known that the UK has a considerable challenge to tackle nature depletion and the biodiversity crisis ( National parks in England and Wales failing on biodiversity, say campaigners, 9 April ).

There should be an overhaul of how parks are funded to emphasise these issues, and how actions by all interest groups, from landowners to tenant farmers, can be supported towards positive outcomes and maintaining livelihoods.

Their diggings aerate soil, recycle organic matter, boost microbial activity and support plant growth

• Invertebrate of the year 2024: all hail Earth’s spineless heroes

The people have spoken and the choice of Guardian readers for the final nominee for UK invertebrate of the year is resounding: all hail Lumbricus terrestris , the common earthworm.

The common earthworm – also known as the lob worm , dew worm, nightcrawler and, in Germany, the rain worm – is the soil-maker. Without its labours, we would struggle to feed ourselves.

Chamonixia caespitosa found during rewilding project in west Highlands while removing non-native Sitka spruce

Naturalists have found a very rare type of truffle living in a Scottish forestry plantation which is being cut down so a natural Atlantic rainforest can grow in its place.

The discovery of the globally rare fungus near Creagan in the west Highlands has thrown up a paradox: the work to remove the non-native Sitka spruce, to allow rewilding by native trees, means the truffle will be lost.

Millions of years ago, animals adapted to become warm-blooded amid huge climactic changes. Now scientists hope these clues from the past could help us understand what lies ahead

In Chicago’s Field Museum, behind a series of access-controlled doors, are about 1,500 dinosaur fossil specimens. The palaeobiologist Jasmina Wiemann walks straight past the bleached leg bones – some as big as her – neither does she glance at the fully intact spinal cord, stained red by iron oxides filling the spaces where there was once organic material. She only has eyes for the deep chocolate-brown fossils: these are the ones containing preserved organic matter – bones that offer unprecedented insights into creatures that went extinct millions of years ago.

Wiemann is part of the burgeoning field of conservation palaeobiology, where researchers are looking to the deep past to predict future extinction vulnerability. At a time when humans could be about to witness a sixth mass extinction , studying fossil records is particularly useful for understanding how the natural world responded to problems before we arrived: how life on Earth reacted to environmental change over time, how species adapted to planet-scale temperature changes, or what to expect when ocean geochemical cycles change.

Leaders need to persuade others of the need for environmental measures rather than capitulate in the face of political headwinds

Last month, a survey of public opinion in Germany, France and Poland found that a majority in each country would support more ambitious policies to tackle the climate emergency. The same study also found unexpectedly widespread support for pan-European action linking green goals to other priorities such as economic security. Who knew, at a time when warnings of a popular “green backlash” are rife?

Unfortunately, Europe’s politicians are now on a very different page. Rattled by farmers’ protests – which radical-right parties have swiftly co-opted as a new front in their culture wars – Brussels and national governments have been busily sounding a disorderly, panicked retreat on environmental targets. Since the turn of the year, the U-turns and capitulations have come thick and fast.

Now only found on the Norfolk Broads, Papilio machaon britannicus is in trouble as its breeding habitat is lost

• Invertebrate of the year 2024: all hail Earth’s spineless heroes
• Nominate your UK invertebrate species of the year

The swallowtail is Britain’s largest and most spectacular butterfly. Most British butterflies are adapted to surviving gruelling, cold, wet, capricious summers, which is why many of them are small and brown.

But with tigerish stripes, dashes of iridescent blue and red, and dapper tails, this magnificent animal looks like it escaped from a tropical butterfly house.