David Campion

The ruminant family, and the one job each of them does that nothing else on earth can. The cow turns a wet hillside into beef and milk, and leaves the soil better than she found it. The sheep grows a fireproof, waterproof, compostable coat every year, out of grass and rain, and then gives it away for the price of a haircut. The goat eats the bramble, the scrub and the invasive weed that strangles everything else, and asks only for a weak point in the fence. The water buffalo makes the milk that becomes real mozzarella, standing in marsh a cow would sink in. The yak gives milk at an altitude that would kill a lowland animal in a week, and carries your bags up there as well. The reindeer feeds and clothes entire peoples above the Arctic Circle, on lichen and moss, in the dark, for months. The bison built the deepest soil on the planet by walking across it and eating. Seven animals, one gift each, and not one of them can be replaced by a crop, a machine or a sachet. Every one of them is classed, this decade, as a liability on a spreadsheet by somebody who has never been cold.

En 1975 a Bon Scott, cantante de ACDC, se le ocurrió meter gaitas en el tema It's a long way to the top. Las tocó él mismo, había aprendido de niño. Fue la primera vez que se hizo en un tema de Rock. Nadie lo ha podido igualar después.

1/5 Esta semana no consigo sacarme una pregunta de la cabeza: ¿y si Trump cierra el grifo? España importa de EEUU el 25% del gas el 15% del crudo y el 16% del gasoil refinado. Cambiamos la dependencia de Moscú por la de Washington. Y Washington tiene elecciones en noviembre 🧵

Hoy @FMAzcarate y yo publicamos en @elpais_eco una tribuna sobre cómo pastar zonas quemadas puede contribuir a cambiar el estado del ecosistema, pasando de uno con propensión a quemarse violentamente, a otro regulado por la herbivoría. Son prácticas... elpais.com/clima-y-medio-amb…

In 1979 Britain's most beautiful butterfly went extinct because the country had killed its rabbits and taken its sheep off the hills, and the scientist who worked out why had to put a flock back to bring the insect home. The large blue is a thing of chalk and limestone downs, and it has the strangest life of any animal in these islands. The caterpillar feeds on wild thyme for a few weeks, then drops to the ground and does an impression of an ant grub so convincing that a red ant carries it underground, where it spends ten months eating the ant's own young. Only one species of ant will do it, and that ant only lives in turf cropped so short the sun can warm the soil to the depth of its nest. Short turf means grazing. For a thousand years the grazing was sheep, and from the eighteenth century it was rabbits as well, millions of them, mowing the downs to a lawn. In 1953 myxomatosis arrived and killed ninety-nine rabbits in a hundred. Hill sheep were already coming off the downs as the farms went to the plough or to subsidy. Within a few years the turf grew long and cool, the ant died out of it, the caterpillar was carried underground by the wrong ant and eaten, and the butterfly dwindled through the sixties and seventies while everyone blamed collectors. The last British colony, in Devon, died in 1979. Jeremy Thomas spent the decade on his knees in the grass before he understood it. The whole chain ran back to a mouth cropping a hillside. In 1983 the butterfly was reintroduced from Sweden onto a Somerset slope where the first thing the project did was put the cattle and sheep back on, hard, and the ants returned, and the large blue came after them. It is now on thirty sites, every one of them grazed on purpose. A butterfly the colour of the summer sky disappeared from England for want of a sheep, and the people who saved it did not plant a flower or build a fence. They hired a grazier.

Los neandertales cuidaban de sus enfermos, dignos herederos de mi tribu: El neandertal que murió atravesado por una lanza hace 75.000 años y que muestra cómo cuidaban de sus heridos y sus muertos elpais.com/ciencia/2026-10-1… vía @el_pais

💤 El sueño de Alsina 💭 "Lamenté que hubiera comentaristas que se exhibieran incapaces de abordar la historia de Maricarmen con una sensibilidad de mínimos" 👉 Una experiencia onírica donde aparece la recientemente fallecida mujer de 87 años desahuciada hace unas semanas

Hace una década, cuando estalló el 15M, @pbustinduy dejó su puesto de profesor en Nueva York para participar de la protesta en la Puerta del Sol. Volvió a irse de España para no estar en medio de la pelea cainita de la izquierda que enfrentaba a quienes habían sido amigos. Y que abrió paso a la extrema derecha. Hoy, que la gente vuelve a estar en las calles, hace un vibrante discurso en el parlamento que me recuerda la importancia de no olvidar que el pueblo está por encima de cualquier interés particular. Porque vienen elecciones y enfrente está el abismo.

Lanzamos la iniciativa "Alerta el Niño" para exigir a las administraciones una respuesta efectiva delante mayot reto climatico de los próximos meses. Con la colaboración de Adam McKay, (Don't Look Up), Peter Kalmus, @FernandoVallada o @JuanBordera alertaelnino.com/

Comemos combustibles fósiles. La dependencia que sostiene el cereal. La semana pasada estuve en el Congreso 'El Futuro del Cereal 2026' en Palencia. Hay una frase que resume bien de qué estamos hablando. 🧵👇