20 Years On, ‘baby 81’ of Indian Ocean Tsunami Embraces His Unique Identity

A 20-year-old man, once known as "Baby 81" after being rescued from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and reunited with his family through a court battle, now dreams of pursuing higher education. Jayarasa Abilash's story offers hope in the face of tragedy that claimed over 35,000 lives in Sri Lanka. Despite challenges and public attention, he remains determined to study information technology at university while embracing his unique past. Abilash's father hopes their family's survival story will inspire kindness and help for others in need.

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Firefighters Revive 4 Cats Rescued From Jurupa Valley Apartment Fire

In the middle of an apartment fire in Jurupa Valley, firefighters searching a damaged unit found four cats, and three of them were not moving. The fire broke out at an apartment building on Emma Street, where crews with Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department were working to contain the flames when the search turned into an animal rescue. “When I looked under the bed, I found the first one,” Engineer Ray Guillen recalled to CBS LA. “As soon as I went to grab it, it fell over. So, I knew something was wrong.” The cats were taken outside right away. Firefighters and Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Maldonado then began trying to revive them with CPR, chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “We started CPR, started giving them chest compressions,” Maldonado said. “I know from holding my cats that their hearts beat pretty fast. So, I knew it needed to be pretty deep and pretty fast.” Oxygen tanks were brought in as crews kept working on the animals. “We just treated it like we would treat a pediatric patient that was unresponsive and not breathing,” Firefighter Salvador de La Cruz said to CBS LA. “It's small, press hard and press fast and breathe into them.” After several minutes, the cats began to respond. Their eyes opened, their bodies moved, and they came back to life. With water and continued care, the cats were soon walking around. For Maldonado and de La Cruz, the rescue hit close to home because both said they understand the bond people have with their pets. “They treat them like their kids,” de La Cruz said. “We just couldn't leave them there.” 📸 CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire Department

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Philadelphia Airport Sets World Record With 1,200-Foot Cheesesteak Line

It took an airport, a stack of rolls and a lot of steak to pull it off. Philadelphia International Airport has set a Guinness record for the longest line of cheesesteaks, with 366 metres of the city’s signature sandwich stretching across the B/C connectors at PHL. The airport reached the mark on Tuesday with help from more than 100 employees and volunteers, who assembled foot-long rolls using 449 kilograms of Philly’s Best Steak and 102 kilograms of cheese sauce. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the full line took about an hour to complete. Several airport restaurants helped build the line, including Chickie’s & Pete’s, Geno’s Steaks, Jim’s South St Famous Cheesesteaks, Passyunk Steaks and Tony Luke’s. After the build, Guinness official Michael Empric authenticated the event and confirmed that every roll was touching, which was required for the attempt to count. “What I love about this is that it’s so specific to the Philadelphia community,” he said. He added: “To do this in the airport and to donate so many of the cheesesteaks to TSA is really incredible. It’s such a community spirit sort of thing,” CBS reported. PHL marketing and guest experience manager Dana Krawchuk told CBS the airport has more restaurants serving cheesesteaks in one location than anywhere else in the city. “The airport is really the entry point for everybody coming into the city … so we wanted to really start off really big,” Krawchuk said. After the record was officially recognised, the cheesesteaks were handed out to airport staff, including TSA officials, many of whom have gone weeks without a paycheck because of the ongoing partial DHS shutdown that began last month. Chickie’s & Pete’s chief executive Pete Ciarrocchio said the record mattered, but so did where the sandwiches went. “Breaking the world record is always awesome … But one of my favorite things today was feeding the TSA with the cheesesteaks because this city is the City of Brotherly Love and these people are working without pay. Without them, nobody can be in this airport,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. 📸credit: PHL Newsroom

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Neighbors Rally Around Local Barista Who Has Autism After Thief Steals Tip Jar

What stung Michael Coyne was not the $20. It was who took it. Coyne, an autistic barista at Red White and Brew in Warwick, Rhode Island, was left "speechless" after customers and local leaders rallied around him when a day's worth of tips was stolen from his coffee shop. Coyne knows most of the people who come in for coffee, so the theft felt personal. The shop is also operating at a loss while covering the costs of a recent move to a larger location, and the tip jar is his only source of free cash flow. Coyne has autism, ADHD, and bi-polar disorder. Sheila Coyne fostered him when he was 10 and later adopted him. She opened Red White and Brew with her retirement savings as a way to guarantee her son fulfilling employment. The shop hit a major challenge in its first year, when enforced business closures during COVID-19 began, but it still became a success. It employs workers with mental disabilities and sells products made by people with mental disabilities. Over time, it also became a regular part of the Warwick community. "He was really interested in food service, and I thought, what better way to connect him to a community than a coffee shop?" Sheila told The Washington Post's Sydney Page. "To me, it just made sense." When Coyne realized the tips he had collected through the day had been taken, he was deeply upset. The next day, Warwick's police chief stopped by for coffee. After hearing what had happened, he brought materials for a new tip jar with a lid and told the Coynes he would investigate. Sheila then posted a Facebook video about the theft and warned people to stay alert. The response was immediate. Commenters said they were angry that someone would steal from the shop, and Warwick Mayor Frank Picozzi was among them. "Red White and Brew is a very special place … run by wonderful people," Picozzi wrote in a post sharing Sheila's video. "I've come to know Michael very well and believe me, it's not the money that's bothering him, he's hurt." The day after that, people began streaming into the coffee shop and leaving money in the tip jar. One woman left $100 after telling Michael that her own son is autistic, and that he inspires her to believe her son can have a decent life as a working adult. The same thing happened again the next day. The mayor came by too. Before long, Michael had received $900 in tips. For Sheila, the money mattered less than the way people showed up. "That was the most special part," she said. "It was truly just one person after another, leading with such kindness and grace that it renewed my love for humans and humanity." Michael said the response left him speechless. Red White and Brew was opened by Sheila Coyne with her retirement savings and employs workers, while also selling products made by, people with mental disabilities. 📸 credit: www.redwhitebrewri.com

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He Slept In A Tent Through Winter — Now He Has A Place To Call His Own

For Matthew Stone, winter in Bloomington meant trying to get through nights in a tent with his dog as temperatures dropped well below freezing. "It was very horrible, a very horrible experience," Stone told NPR. "I was living in a tent with my dog. It was just, all in all, a horrible experience, very cold this winter." A few months later, Stone is living at The Bridge, Bloomington's first shelter village. The tiny house community opened three days before temperatures fell below minus 18 degrees Celsius. In central Illinois, temperatures averaged about minus 7 degrees Celsius, with a low of about minus 22 degrees Celsius in January. The Bridge gives people experiencing homelessness a private place to sleep and store their belongings in a city that has been dealing with a housing shortage and rising homelessness. Bloomington's housing shortage became dire in 2021 after more people moved to the city looking for jobs at a new manufacturing company. There was not enough new housing to meet demand, and homelessness increased. Matt Burgess, CEO of Home Sweet Home Ministries, said many residents did not see the scale of the problem until 2023, when people without permanent housing began living in a tent encampment in a downtown church parking lot. "Literally hundreds of people would drive by it every single day," Burgess told NPR. "And that's when the community started to say, 'you know, it's not okay that we have people who are stuck outside.'" In Illinois, people living outside can face snowstorms, cold snaps, tornadoes and flash flooding. Burgess said those conditions can make outdoor living difficult and even deadly. "We started to say very loudly, 'it's not acceptable that our neighbors don't have any other legitimate options than to try and survive in a tent in a parking lot,'" Burgess said to NPR. The city later shut down the encampment, but many of the people who had been staying there kept living outside in different parts of the community. "We wanted to find a solution that has been proven to work in other communities across our country, that we could maybe try here," Burgess said. Home Sweet Home Ministries was in a position to build that alternative, Burgess said, because the nonprofit has served people living on the margins of society in Bloomington for more than 100 years. He said the idea for The Bridge came after he researched shelter villages in Burlington, Vermont; Denver, Colorado; Missoula, Montana; and Austin, Texas. "I actually physically visited the Missoula, Montana shelter village," Burgess told NPR. "They call it a 'temporary, safe outdoor space.' And so, I got to see that in action, talk to the people that were running that program, personally, as part of our development of The Bridge." Finding a location was one of the biggest hurdles. Burgess said accessibility mattered because residents needed to be able to ride bikes to appointments or catch a bus. Zoning also had to be worked out. "Truly the bigger of the challenges was dealing with hesitancy from the community about this being too closely located to where existing residential spaces were," Burgess said. "Of course, that's the classic concern that gets expressed by near neighbors: 'What's it going to do to my property values to have a place like that right next door?'" Home Sweet Home Ministries decided to buy a plot of land directly across the street from its building. The owner, the local transit company, was hesitant at first to sell. Burgess said the ministry held public forums to address concerns. He said zoning issues were eventually resolved, and the ministry reached an agreement with the transit company. The Bridge opened six months after the lot was purchased. The site is a fully enclosed campus with a bathhouse and community center. It has 48 tiny sleeping cabins and space for 56 adults. The shelter village cost $2.7 million. Two-thirds of that came from private donations, and the other third came from a county grant. Unlike traditional shelters, The Bridge has few restrictions on who can stay there. People convicted of sex offenses are prohibited. Housing advocates in Bloomington said last year that about 100 people were living outside. Burgess said the ministry's street outreach team is now finding fewer people in that situation. In the first month, 55 people moved into the shelter. Stone was one of them. He now stays in a sleeping cabin with his dog, Tank. "We got our bed over on the far wall. We got our microwave and refrigerator behind the door. We got our armoire over here that we can put all of our clothes in, and then we got our desk and our chair." Stone said alarm clocks in each cabin help residents keep up with appointments and stay on track. As he prepared to ride his bike to a doctor's appointment, he also praised the services offered at The Bridge. Burgess said meeting basic needs gives people the bridge they need to leave homelessness behind. One person who had been living in the village has already moved into permanent housing. Burgess said, "We've seen people's attitudes shift from asking with dread, 'what am I going to do tomorrow?' To asking the same question with hope, 'what am I going to do tomorrow?' It's the same words, totally different type of question."

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Archaeologists Find 40,000 Ancient Egyptian Pottery Shards Used As Scrap Paper

Broken pottery usually looks like rubbish. At Athribis in Egypt, it has turned into one of the richest written records of daily life from the ancient Mediterranean. Researchers working at the archaeological site have excavated 43,000 ostraca over the past two decades. Ostraca are sherds or small pieces of pottery used as slates for writing, and the term comes from the Greek word for "shell". “The ostraca show us an astonishing variety of everyday situations,” says archaeologist Christian Leitz, director of the Egyptology department of the University of Tübingen in Germany, in a statement from the school. “We find tax lists and deliveries, along with short notes about everyday activities, exercises by schoolchildren, religious texts and priestly certificates attesting the quality of sacrificial animals.” Athribis was built in the fourth century B.C.E., about 70 miles, or about 113 kilometres, northwest of Luxor. Researchers from the Tübingen Athribis Project, a collaboration between the university and Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, have been studying its ruins since 2003. They started by trying to excavate the buried rooms of the city’s main temple, which was erected for Ptolemy XII, father to Cleopatra, in the first century B.C.E. In 2018, while excavating a settlement west of the temple, the team found mud-brick buildings, living quarters, storage structures and a large deposit of ceramics, including ostraca. In 2023, the researchers expanded their excavation area further west. There, they unearthed between 50 and 100 sherds each day. That haul, together with ostraca found elsewhere at Athribis, brought the site’s total to 43,000 inscribed fragments. According to the statement, Athribis is now the “most productive site for ostraca to date,” surpassing Deir el-Medina, an ancient working-class village in the Valley of the Kings known for its large number of ostraca. Ancient Egyptians often reused cheap, accessible materials as scrap paper. Older examples of ostraca were fragments of limestone, including a 280-day record of employee attendance dating to around 1250 B.C.E. The oldest ostraca found at Athribis date back to the third century B.C.E. They are tax receipts written in Demotic script, an ancient Egyptian cursive used by administrators during Egypt’s Ptolemaic and Roman eras. Most of the ostraca found at Athribis are inscribed in Demotic, but a significant portion were written in Greek. Others carry figurative and geometric designs. Researchers also found some written in Hieratic, hieroglyphic and Coptic. The newest examples from the site are inscribed in Arabic and date to the vessels’ ninth to 11th centuries C.E. According to the statement, many of the ostraca contain personal notes and lists, recorded accounts and copied texts. Others are pictorial ostraca, showing people, geometric figures, gods and animals including scorpions and swallows. “This mixture is what makes the find so valuable,” Leitz says in the statement. “This everyday content gives us a direct insight into the lives of the people of Athribis and makes the ostraca an important source for a comprehensive social history of the region.” Ostraca have long been useful to historians studying ancient Egypt. About a third of all discovered ancient Egyptian documents are written on pottery or stone ostraca. Experts once assumed people turned to ostraca only when papyrus was unavailable, but some researchers believe select scribes intentionally cut and wrote on pieces of pottery. The oldest known ostracon, in its singular form, is believed to be a limestone flake dating to the 15th century B.C.E. Leitz said the work at Athribis is still growing. “We expect to find many more ostraca,” he says. “The high and ever-growing number of objects is encouraging, but it also presents us with challenges.” Leitz says in the statement that he wishes to digitize the growing collection of Athribis ostraca. 📸 Credit: Tübingen Athribis Project

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Meet the Tiny Pony That Overcame a Serious Illness and Learned To Stand Again

A tiny pony that was too weak to stand and struggling to breathe is now winning over visitors after a rescue that nearly came too late. Pickle, a one-year-old U.K. Pony standing 28 inches tall, was found critically ill at a site in the West Midlands in March last year after a welfare concern was reported to World Horse Welfare. The then nine-month-old foal was so weak he could not stand and needed urgent veterinary care. Tests showed he was suffering from several diseases, including strangles, equine flu and salmonella, which World Horse Welfare said could have proved fatal if left untreated. Charlotte Melvin, 36, a World Horse Welfare Field Officer, said, “As soon as I saw Pickle, I could tell he needed veterinary care urgently – he was really struggling to breathe. When he tried to stand as I walked up to him, he just couldn’t get up." “He tested positive for multiple illnesses, including strangles, equine flu, and salmonella, and was so weak that he kept collapsing. The team worked so hard to nurse him back to health and his vet said she’s never known a pony to test positive for salmonella as many times as he did. "He very nearly didn’t make it, but eventually turned a corner and started to recover." Following what was described as a multi-agency response, Pickle was rescued from the site along with a number of other horses. Staff said he was so small when he was found that one person was able to carry him to the horsebox alone. He was then taken to a private holding yard for what World Horse Welfare described as immediate and intensive treatment. The charity said his small size worked in his favour because it made it easier for those caring for him to get him back on his feet. Once he was well enough in December 2025, Pickle was transported to Penny Farm Rescue and Rehoming Centre in Blackpool, Lancashire, because it was the closest centre with space for him. After completing a two-week quarantine period, Pickle, who weighs 52 kilograms, joined the other horses and ponies on the main yard at Penny Farm. Charlotte said, “Hearing that he’d been signed over and was finally well enough to travel to our Penny Farm was amazing. I went and collected him with one of my colleagues and it was just incredible to see how bright he’d become." "The contrast from that tiny foal who was too weak to stand and could barely breathe was extraordinary.” Pickle is now living at Penny Farm until he is ready to find a home of his own. Adam Cummins, 43, Penny Farm Centre Manager, said, “At a year old, Pickle is still only a teeny seven hands high (28 inches) so it’s no surprise that our visitors fall in love with him as soon as they set eyes on him. He’s both extremely cute and a really lovely character." “There’s going to be a long list of people wanting to rehome him when he’s ready – but that’s a long way off yet. For now, he’s enjoying being a happy young pony playing with his friends – he’s got a lot of fun to catch up on after being so ill at such a young age.” Pickle has since made a best friend in his stablemate, a pony named Cheddar. Staff said the pair enjoy grazing and playing in the field together. The foal also “loves a fuss” and enjoys meeting visitors to Penny Farm. His size has created some practical problems too. Staff said Pickle was so tiny that the Penny Farm team struggled to find a headcollar small enough for him. World Horse Welfare said its corporate partners LeMieux stepped in and supplied him with a “super mini” headcollar. Staff at the farm said Pickle will be available for rehoming later this year, once he has completed his rehabilitation.

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Astronaut Snaps Stunning Selfie During Spacewalk

Even in the middle of a spacewalk, there was time for a selfie. NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, 48, shared a smiling photo of herself after stepping outside the International Space Station, and also captured a picture of fellow astronaut Chris Williams, 42, during his first spacewalk. Meir said on Monday, "Last week I had the privilege of conducting my fourth spacewalk, venturing out to deploy a bracket to hold a new solar array to augment the power system of the Space Station. "This spacewalk felt even more special than my previous ones because I shared the experience with a first-time spacewalker, NASA astronaut Chris Williams! "It is a tremendously powerful feeling to pass the torch to the next generation of explorers that will keep this space station running." The spacewalk formed part of NASA’s ongoing work to upgrade the station’s solar power system.

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These Baseball Teams Lead This Year's Ballpark Food Lineup With Bold New Bites

Baseball food keeps getting bigger, sweeter and harder to ignore. Major League Baseball teams are rolling out another round of attention-grabbing concession items for the 2026 season, pushing far past the usual hot dogs, peanuts and Cracker Jack. In Miami, the Marlins are serving the "Machete" at home games, a two-foot-wide flour tortilla with melted mozzarella and Oaxaca cheese, carne asada, salsa verde and cilantro. MLB posted on X that the item is served in "a custom carrying case" and described it as "This TWO-FOOT homemade flour tortilla is griddled on the flat top with melted mozzarella and Oaxaca cheeses, house-marinated carne asada, smoky guajillo pepper sauce, salsa verde and cilantro." The Cubs are adding Chicken & Churros in Chicago. Levy Restaurants described it as crispy fried chicken thighs served with golden brown churros, ancho syrup and fresh strawberries. In Arizona, the Diamondbacks will offer the "Take Me Out to the Ballgame Shake." In a post on X, MLB said, "It's a salted caramel shake with whipped cream, peanut butter sandwich cookies, Kit Kat bars and Cracker Jack." The post said the item will be sold at D-backs games this year. The Nationals are selling the DC Monument Chicken Tower. Levy Restaurants said the sandwich is inspired by the landmark and includes grilled chicken, smoked bacon, mixed greens, chipotle ranch and Gruyère cheese on a soft pretzel bun. The Rays are adding an Oreo Brownie Milkshake. Levy Restaurants described it as a chocolate soft-serve milkshake in an Oreo-rimmed cup, a nod to the Rays' City Connect uniform, topped with a mini-ice cream cone and a brownie wedge. In Seattle, the Mariners are marking 75 years of the Washington State Ferries system and 50 seasons of the franchise with the Washington State Ferry Boat, a souvenir that can hold food too, according to the team. The Phillies are introducing the Schwarbomb Sundae. MLB said on X, "It's a mini helmet filled with soft-serve ice cream and topped with a funnel-cake-fried strawberry Uncrustable, fresh strawberry sauce and fruity cereal pieces." Some teams are also bringing back the 9-9-9 Challenge. MLB said on X that the challenge "will be available at even more ballparks in 2026" and listed Citi Field, Citizens Bank Park, Coors Field and Daikin Park among the venues. The Mets will sell a Mr. Met Chocolate Whoopie Pie at Citi Field during the 2026 season, according to Aramark. The Rockies are offering two new items through Aramark. One is the Dubai Cinnamon Roll, a cinnamon roll topped with chocolate, vanilla ice cream, pistachios, caramel puff cereal and kataifi. The other is the Glizzilla, a two-foot, one-pound hot dog designed for sharing. In Houston, the Astros will have Brisket Donuts, described by Aramark as two fried brisket "donuts" with BBQ sauce and homemade mac & cheese. The Red Sox are adding Lobstah Poutine. Aramark said it includes crispy Cavendish Farms fries, Luke’s Lobster meat, clam chowder and crispy bacon. The Pirates are going with the Heavy Hitter Dog, a footlong hot dog with cornbread coating, yellow mustard and pico de gallo, served in a special baseball bat boat, according to Aramark.

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Astronomers Say They're Watching a New Solar System Take Shape

Astronomers do not often get to watch a solar system come together in real time. Most of the planets they find around other stars are about as mature as the ones circling our own sun. That is why a new result, published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, stands out. Researchers say they have confirmed only the second known baby solar system forming around another star. The system sits about 437 light-years from Earth around a star called WISPIT 2. The first confirmed case, PDS 70, was discovered in 2018. The finding adds a rare new example to a field that has seen decades of discoveries since scientists confirmed the first planet around another star. But systems this young are much harder to pin down. Planets around other stars can help answer a basic question about our own origins. Astronomers want to know how the spinning disk of material left behind by the sun’s birth produced Earth and the other seven planets in our solar system. Systems like WISPIT 2 could offer a closer look at that process. “This is a really exciting discovery,” says Jason Wang, an astronomer at Northwestern University who wasn’t involved in the research speaking to Scientific American. “In astronomy, we often joke that when we have a sample size of one, we have an anomaly, but when we have a sample size of two, we have a population.” The team behind the new study had already reported last year that WISPIT 2 hosted a protoplanet called WISPIT 2b. That result marked the first time a baby planet had been imaged in a protoplanetary disk. Now the researchers say there are two gas giant planets in the system. They say the second is about ten times the size of Jupiter. The authors also think WISPIT 2 may hold even more protoplanets. They say the star is surrounded by a more extensive, structured ring of matter than PDS 70. Farther out in the disk, they have also identified a third, smaller break in the material. That break, they say, hints that matter there may already have collapsed into another planet, this one closer to Saturn’s size. For now, that third object remains hypothetical. The new result came from observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The researchers hope its successor, the Extremely Large Telescope, will be able to take images of the possible third infant planet. “These structures suggest that more planets are currently forming, which we will eventually detect,” says Chloe Lawlor, a PhD student at the University of Galway in Ireland and the study’s lead author. Lawlor said studies like this could help astronomers build a better picture of how our own solar system formed. By comparing WISPIT 2 with other young systems, researchers hope to get a tighter grasp on the steps that turn a disk of material around a star into a family of planets. For Lawlor, the study also carries a personal weight. She said she did not expect to lead such a significant piece of research at this stage of her career. “Often there is a lot of self-doubt for people at my career stage,” she says. “I hope this discovery helps others to realize that while they might not know it all yet, they still know enough to do big things.” The discovery leaves astronomers with a sample size that is still tiny, but no longer one. WISPIT 2 now joins PDS 70 as a confirmed example of a solar system caught in the act of forming, with two gas giants identified and signs that more planets may still be taking shape.

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Volunteers are Building a 15-Mile Hedge Corridor Linking Two National Parks — Here's Why

A hedge that seems to keep going and going now links two of southern England’s best-known protected areas. From England’s South Downs National Park, a series of traditional hedgerows can be traced into the distance. That line now runs across Hampshire to New Forest National Park, stretching about 15 miles. The Hampshire Hedge has taken three years to build. Volunteers and experts in traditional hedge-making worked together to create an unbroken line of hedgerows connecting the two parks and their wildlife. The project was organised by the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s “Hedgerows Heroes” program. It was supported by conservation nonprofits and the UK’s National Lottery Heritage Fund. The project centres on a simple idea set out by its backers. Hedgerows are not only fences or barriers. The source text says they act as habitat corridors and can support wildlife even when they are narrow. From mice and hedgehogs to insects and birds, hedgerows offer what the source describes as a narrow sanctuary to 2,000 species over the course of a year. Those species use the hedges like a natural highway. That role has shaped the project’s goal in Hampshire, where the continuous hedge line is intended to improve habitat connectivity between the South Downs and the New Forest. The hedge is located in Test Valley, and local leaders marked the latest stage of the work this year. “Hedgerows are a defining feature of Test Valley’s landscape and play a vital role in supporting wildlife, tackling climate change and keeping our countryside thriving,” Alison Johnston, a councilwoman responsible for countryside affairs at Test Valley Borough Council, said to the Hampshire Chronicle. The work is now almost entirely completed. The third year of hedge laying was celebrated at the Broadlands estate during an event called “Hedgefest.” The event also marked CPRE’s 100th anniversary as an organisation. “It was fantastic to see so many people come together at Hedgefest to share skills, celebrate progress and show what partnership working can achieve.” The source text describes the hedge as being like a highway connecting the two national parks. It says the line of hedgerows should help promote habitat connectivity, a goal that is challenging in southern England because of the area’s population density. That prospect has also been welcomed by the South Downs National Park Authority. “The CPRE’s project of joining the two National Parks, the New Forest and the South Downs with these hedgerows is just such an inspiring idea,” said Vanessa Rowlands, Chair of the South Downs National Park Authority. “We’ve always wanted to have a closer link with the New Forest, and we can do it physically and environmentally for the wildlife. So we’re really excited about it!” The Hampshire Hedge brings together volunteers, conservation groups and hedge-laying experts in a single continuous project that now stretches across the county. The source text says the result is an unbroken line of traditional hedgerows between the two national parks, built over three years and designed to support species that move through these corridors over the course of the year. For CPRE and its partners, the project has also served as a public celebration of traditional hedgerow skills. Hedgefest at Broadlands marked the third year of laying and brought people together to share those skills while celebrating the progress made so far. The line begins from the South Downs National Park and runs to New Forest National Park, covering some 15 miles across Hampshire. “We’ve always wanted to have a closer link with the New Forest, and we can do it physically and environmentally for the wildlife. So we’re really excited about it!”

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