now i'm bbc news it is extreme conservation turkey. i am michaela strachan, a wildlife presenter who is passionate about conservation. my work has taken me all over the world and in that time i have seen huge changes, many due to climate change. in extreme conservation, we meet inspirational people who've dedicated their lives to protecting the natural world. this time, i'm in turkey. this country's stunning forests

are facing devastating losses. but it is notjust the trees that need saving. it is also the creatures. i'm meeting the remarkable people trying to save honeybees... you are a bee whisperer! ..and those building turkey's brown bears a safe to roam. this is extreme conservation turkey. turkey is huge, a vast and varied country stretching over 1,500km. turkey is surrounded by water on three sides — the mediterranean sea, the black sea and the aegean — and then in the east, it's mountainous and rugged, and all that influences

the climate in very different ways. it is a country that is so rich in natural diversity, its sweeping pine forests are one of its key assets. but as temperatures rise, these forests are being destroyed by wildfires that are getting ever more intense. i start myjourney on turkey's western coast, a short boat ride from the coastal town of bodrum where thick pine forests stretch all the way down to the beaches. like so many places around the world, summers here have got hotter and drier, and recently, they have had horrendous forest fires that have completely changed the landscape.

all of this used to be green forest, and now look at it. here in mulga, an area bigger than 100 football fields was wiped out in a matter of days. and these most recent fires were more ferocious than any wildfire turkey has ever seen before. hussain is one of the many thousands of people who have lost almost everything in the fires.

people rely on these forests to make a living, not from the trees themselves, but from the creatures that live in them. these trees are vital for the survival of one of the most important insects on the planet, an insect you might not immediately associate with forests — the honeybee. a stroll down a street in datca, a port town in the region, and you can clearly see how central honey is to the economy. this is the honey that is pretty unique to this area, it's not flower honey, it is pine honey. it's produced from pine trees and in fact almost all the pine honey in the world comes from this little corner of turkey. i have never tried pine honey before, so i am very much

looking forward to this. apparently it tastes very different. 0oh...that is so good! mm! tastes woody, almost spicy. but pine honey isn't made by a bee alone. a small grub called marchalina hellenica has a big role to play. i am meeting yonca tokbas, a bee expert, to find out more about these intriguing insects and how they contribute to making pine honey. hello! she has dedicated herself to preserving the bees�* way of life, even running ultra marathons. what a beautiful forest. this is a healthy forest. you get the smell and the sound of the forest.

this is the bug. that tiny little thing there?! yep! it is taking the sap from the pine tree and creating this liquid — can you see that? and that is what the bee is taking from the pine tree. that tiny, tiny, tiny animal that you have so much difficulty seeing is the magic creator of the whole process. more than half of these essential grubs were wiped out by the fires. if you do not have this insect, you do not have food for bees and you don't have pine honey. with natural food sources dwindling and many hives destroyed, yonca warns that some honey producers are putting too much pressure on the remaining bees.

we encourage their sickness like treating them with chemicals or trying to feed them unnatural sugary stuff so they can produce more than they can. so basically, we are exploiting bees. exactly, it's an abuse. alpar comes from a long line of bee farmers, and to him and his family, bees are notjust a source of income, but a way of life. they are not even bothering you. they clearly know you. you are a bee whisperer! he uses traditional methods to look after his 10 million bees. that's amazing. wow, look at all those bees!

alpar�*s way is simple — he believes the bees should be left to do what they do naturally — collect the nectar from the wild and return to the hive to make honey. this is not the optimum production method. intensively farmed bees just come out of their hives and drink the sugar water left for them, and then go back in to produce what alper calls �*false honey�*. they do not travel around the ecosystem as they should, pollinating plants, including our fruit and vegetables. he says they get unhealthy and die sooner. this is a pot of alper�*s honey, naturally produced... ..and it really does taste delicious. it is interesting, isn�*t it, how we are all familiar with battery farming, exploiting chickens for eggs and meat, but how many

of us have thought about the exploitation of bees with intense beekeeping and the damage that that�*s doing? it seems to me that the extreme conservation for bees is to go back to basics, go back to this, the traditional way of beekeeping. for alper, the recovery of the pine forests is crucial. until then, these bees have limited resources to survive. what are the main things that people need to understand about bees for their future conservation? plant, for example, some of the flowers they love, it is a food resource for them. this is the amount of honey that a bee can produce in a lifetime. for one bee?! just in that — do not waste it.

finding out each bee produces just 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey has made me think about how much we use. for yonca, she is determined to save the bees by inspiring the next generation. the youth is amazing, they are much more aware than we are, and they are working on trying to help nature more than our generation i would say. when we think of forests, we think of their importance to fight climate change. but they are equally important for biodiversity. so much of our wildlife lives and thrives in a forest. as we have seen here with a honeybee and that tiny little bug — the marchalina hellenica — it would not survive if it was not for all these trees. it�*s a precious ecosystem that desperately needs protecting.

continuing myjourney of extreme conservation, i am in the mountains of eastern turkey. i have travelled 1,400 kilometres from the aegean coast to sarikamis on the armenian border. in winter, this area is popularfor skiing, but it is mainly a farming region. over time, lots of forests have been felled for pastures, leaving just a patchwork of trees behind. but i am here as this is home to turkey�*s majestic migrating brown bear. naturally, the bears would live in these mountains during the spring and summer, and then when food becomes harder to find in the autumn, some of them travel over 100

kilometres to the black sea reagion when they fatten up and come back to hibernate for winter. but this natural pattern of behaviour has now been disrupted. researchers aysegul and emrah have been observing the bears for over a decade, and have dedicated their lives to protecting them. i am joining the duo in the hope of getting a glimpse of these magnificent creatures. hello! hi! so, you�*re listening for the bears, hey? yes, we are searching for the signals of one of the collared bears. emrah and aysegul have been collecting detailed data on the bears to understand how human activity is impacting their migration habits. the forests they live in have become fragmented,

dramatically changing their behaviour. we are here before dusk to increase our chances of seeing them. and we are in luck. this has been really exciting, we have seen seven bears come out of this forest including two cubs but the only reason we are seeing so many of them together is because they are on their way to this, the dump site and they are going there to feed. the bears are here to scavenge. some of their forests have been overtaken by urban development, so they�*re forced to feed on our rubbish.

oh, my word. look at them, there�*s so many of them, and there�*s cubs as well. 18. is that what you counted, just in this bit? yeah. this is really depressing. look, you can see the cubs even. for me, it�*s exciting to see bears, but not like this. this is really, really sad. now, here is too much food. they are not fighting, they�*re trying to eat leftover, but many times they eat the plastics. the young cubs copy the adults, and so learn this scavenging behaviour. cub learning eat in the garbage. yeah, he�*s walking off with a whole bag of rubbish. some bear is very fatty and very lazy because bear

is not moving too much. this is a really sad sight, and it is all—too—familiar sight across the world as habitats are being destroyed. wild animals forced to come into built—up areas to find food. a massive problem that needs a massive solution. the team has come up with an ambitious plan to lure the bears away from the dump. they want to create a new travel route for the bears. taking existing patches of forest, they�*re planting 11 million trees to fill in the gaps. this forested route will stretch over 160 kilometres,

right up to the georgian border, creating turkey�*s first wildlife corridor. they hope it will entice the bears to migrate once again. this is perfect for bears. it�*s thick, healthy forest, but then it just stops and there�*s this vast expanse of nothing. and the next forest is 1a kilometres away, so this habitat has become really fragmented. the bears have a big role to play in this ecosystem. they keep the balance amongst the animals that roam these forests — the lynx, the wolves, even the rabbits. these all have a kind of silent agreement with each other. if you take out one species out, we could think the health and balance agreement would not exist anymore.

we are tracking along their route looking for any clues to show at least some of them are still trying to make the journey. look. 0h, are they the prints? yeah, this is footprints. this is our rubbing trees. you can see, so this is where the bears come and rub. yes, some hairs and scratching here. i can see that. yeah, like this. yes, some bears scratch but most bears like this, this. oh, that must be great to see. quirky music. this is the sort of information emrah and aysegul have been painstakingly collecting for ten years. this is like the— our eyes in the forest. they have installed around

50 of these cameras, which help them document the animals natural behaviours and their relationships with each other. and they�*ve also collared some with gps trackers so they can map how they move around in this patchwork of forest and see where they are running into trouble. this is the bear movement. it is recorded every hour. we have the information of their movement, their behaviour, the time they are spending in the spot. it tells us that these animals need more space to move, to go further. also in the way are the pastures cleared forfarming.

these are the gaps that are planned to be planted. aysegul and emrah�*s data shows some of the braver bears do still move between forests, and they hope that more tree cover will encourage others to migrate. the initial trees in

the project were planted only a few months ago. i�*m joining bulent aydin to plant one of the first saplings in this area. hey! she laughs well, i�*ve played a tiny part of a huge and exciting project. it�*s going to take years before it�*s finished. but wouldn�*t it be amazing to come back here and see this whole area forested, full of bears and lynx and wolves and so much other wildlife, and become an incredibly precious ecosystem? only when the wildlife is roaming freely in the forests and can find food in nature can this dump be safely shut off to bears.

20 years later, i hope everywhere is trees, not open area like this. the bear is not eat the trash, just the healthy food. and can you imagine these large carnivores we are working withjust hanging around here and having the fun of being in the real wildlife? yes. we hope so. during my time here, i have met incredible individuals fighting to protect the creatures living alongside them, desperately trying to manage the delicate balance between people and nature. rewilding the forest will take time, but it also takes care and consideration of all its inhabitants, big or small. we�*ve pushed so much of our

wildlife into unsustainable pockets, and we�*ve lost whole ecosystems already. climate change and our insatiable appetite for development has destroyed so many habitats, and it�*s up to us now to try to find ways to recreate them. what they�*re doing here in turkey is ambitious, but if it works, hopefully it will be an inspiration for other projects around the world.

hello there. the weather is looking very unsettled for the rest of this week. we�*ll see a number of low pressure systems streaming in off the atlantic to bring spells of wet and windy weather. generally it will be on the milder side but it will start to turn colder across the north of the uk by the end of the week, and into the following week, looks like we will all be in that colder air mass. but with all this rain piling in across the country from the atlantic, we�*ll be starting to see some issues with localised flooding in places, particularly south—west england, wales, north—west england, western scotland. we start wednesday off with some sunshine around, but it won�*t be long until the showers and long spells of rain rattle their way in from west. some of them will be heavy at times. it will be windy for all areas. gales around western coasts and over hills. slightly cooler feeling day, i think, wednesday, compared to tuesday. single figures for most. it could be up to 10 or 11 in south—east. more rain poised to push in across southern britain

as we move through thursday. and there�*s another area of low pressure, which will arrive across the northern half of the country late on thursday and into friday. so for thursday then it is wet, it�*s windy through the channel, southern britain. this next area of low pressure sends a band of rain right across the country. that will be followed by sunny spells, blustery showers. these a bit wintry over the higher ground of scotland. again, single—figure values in the north, but again it�*s been a bit milder for england and wales, we�*re up to to 10 and 13 degrees. so thursday into friday, this next area of low pressure skirts across the north of the uk. again, lots of isobars on the charts, so it�*s going to be another windy day. then we will see a mixture of sunny spells, scattered showers. most of the showers closer to the low centre, so the northern half of the uk. again, there could be some wintriness over the higher ground. temperatures in single figures in the north. 10—12 degrees further south. there could be quite a bit of sunshine across the south of the country thanks to the building ridge of high pressure. we move out of friday and into the start of the weekend. saturday, another area of low pressure will bring another spell of very wet weather, which will spread from west to east across the country. we could see some issues with

localised flooding as well. that will be followed by sunny spells, scattering blustery showers for saturday afternoon, and you�*ll notice they will be wintry in flavour, but not in the north, even further south as well, some colder air starts to move on behind the area of low pressure. as we move out of saturday into sunday, it looks like this area of low pressure will push right across the country, pulling in colder air behind it as it goes, so it�*s going to be one of sunny spells, scattered showers or even longer spells of rain across some southern and western areas. the odd heavy one, maybe rumbles of thunder. it will be windy around southern and western coasts. best of any dry and brighter weather will be across this north—east corner, but it will be a much cooler day across the board, ranging from three to seven celsius. it looks like low pressure wants to stick around even beyond sunday into the following week. high—pressure blocks in the south—west — the atlantic there — and that allows these low pressure systems to move across the uk, but they will always be

engaging some colder air, moving down from greenland and iceland. and you can see that on the air mass charts, those areas of low pressure moving through will tend to be associated with some colder air, so i think beyond the end of this week into the following week, it looks like things will be turning very much colder, both by day and by night. we�*re likely to see further wet and windy spells as well, and there will be an increasing chances of sleet and snow, notjust over northern hills — it could even be down to lower levels and also a little bit further south, as well. and yes, it will be cold by day and also cold at night, with probably a return of an overnight frosts. see you later.

hello and welcome to bbc news. with me sally bundock. we start with the conflict in ukraine and russia�*s defence ministry say fighting continues in soledar in eastern ukraine, despite earlier claims by the head of the russian mercenary group, wagner, that his forces had taken the town. the town is seen as strategically significant as it could be used by russian forces as a place from which to launch a fresh assault on the city of bakhmut which has been the scene of fierce fighting for weeks. james waterhouse has this report.