Alluring corridors

environmental campaigners have recently begun to pay as much attention to marketing as to science, having realised that a one-line idea can be as powerful as a dozen learned papers in gaining support for their cause. An example of imaginative use of marketing is the move to provide a green corridor for squirrels in Spain. The idea being sold is that the squirrels "need not touch the ground from the Bay of Biscay down to the Mediterranean'. Such a conservation corridor is more appealing than a succession of isolated nature reserves, and setting it up challenges the ingenuity of people and local government in designing the links.