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Notice of intention to vary the Ambient Air Quality NEPM
Portfolio Budget Statements 2014-15
Public consultation: draft approval bilateral agreement between the Commonwealth and Queensland
Traces of cocaine in our tap water don't prove we have a problem
According to various headlines this weekend, we Brits use so much cocaine that traces of the drug have been found in our water supply. A study by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) aimed at assessing the danger from pharmaceutical compounds in drinking water revealed that even after intensive purification treatment, minute quantities of benzoylecgonine – the metabolised form of cocaine – were found at four sites in Britain. So are we a nation of coke-heads? And does the presence of something related to a class-A drug in the water we drink actually matter?
The answer to the first question, says Sue Pennison of DWI, the independent body that ensures the water companies supply water fit to drink, is not clear. Benzoylecgonine, she notes, "is also an ingredient in a popular muscle-rub, and there's no way of telling which it came from".
Continue reading...Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds
The mysterious vanishing of honeybees from hives can be directly linked to insectcide use, according to new research from Harvard University. The scientists showed that exposure to two neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used class of insecticide, lead to half the colonies studied dying, while none of the untreated colonies saw their bees disappear.
"We demonstrated that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering 'colony collapse disorder' in honeybee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter," said Chensheng Lu, an expert on environmental exposure biology at Harvard School of Public Health and who led the work.
Continue reading...Behind the rise of Boko Haram - ecological disaster, oil crisis, spy games | Nafeez Ahmed
The kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian school girls, and the massacre of as many as 300 civilians in the town of Gamboru Ngala, by the militant al-Qaeda affiliated group, Boko Haram, has shocked the world.
But while condemnations have rightly been forthcoming from a whole range of senior figures from celebrities to government officials, less attention has been paid to the roots of the crisis.
Continue reading...Emissions Reduction Fund exposure draft legislation
Emissions Reduction Fund exposure draft legislation
Invitation to comment on six species listing assessments
The goblin shark: a rare glimpse of something truly hideous
Name: The goblin shark.
Age: You'd have to ask it.
Continue reading...ASC NEPM ERRATA update
Invasion of albino snakes threatens Gran Canaria wildlife
Invasive species experts will gather in Gran Canaria this week to offer their advice on how best to control an albino variety of a popular pet snake whose population has exploded across the island in recent years, decimating local bird and lizard species.
Originally brought to the island as pets, the albino California king snakes were set loose or escaped decades ago, said Ramón Gallo, a biologist who is spearheading the effort to control the population through a project called LIFE+Lampropeltis.
Continue reading...Chris Packham: Why I'm fighting to stop the slaughter of Malta's wild birds
When it comes to life and death I'm probably more stoic than most. But last week I cried in front of more than 20,000 viewers on YouTube. Like all our team, I was close to exhaustion – we'd been on four hours sleep a night for days. I was also clearly depressed by the daily slaughter we had been witness to and the relentless attrition that had been mounting with every dead bird I'd seen blasted from the Maltese skies. But in truth from the moment I reached into the cardboard box that held a shot Montagu's harrier and gently felt its badly broken wing, as soon as I saw the blood of this beautiful and rare raptor on my fingers and looked at the defiance and confusion in its brilliant yellow eyes, it was a predictable reaction.
I like birds, and this was a very special bird. That morning I had been out with a team of observers from BirdLife Malta, patrolling the dry fields of this tiny island where about 10,000 hunters wander and wait to shoot at turtle doves and quail. It's their highly controversial spring hunting season, the only such in the European Union, of which Malta has been a member since 2004.
Continue reading...Exposure draft of the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Amendment Regulation 2014
New threatened ecological community listing
NEPC Annual Report 2012-13
Meeting of Environment Ministers - Agreed Statement
Chris Packham: Malta is a bird hell
The BBC presenter talks of confrontations with hunters and police while making films to highlight the cruelty of the annual bird shoot
When Chris Packham announced he was heading to Malta to report on the island's annual spring bird shoot as if he was a war correspondent covering a conflict, even his admirers probably thought he was guilty of hyperbole.
But after a week in which the naturalist has detained by police for five hours, shoved to the ground by gunmen and witnessed the illegal killing of dozens of endangered birds, his mission to raise awareness of the annual slaughter of migratory birds has been more like a battle than he imagined.
Continue reading...B31: huge Antarctic iceberg headed for open ocean
Iceberg that calved from the Pine Island glacier last year is headed for the open ocean, scientists say
An enormous iceberg half the size of Greater London that broke off an Antarctic glacier last year is headed for the open ocean, scientists said on Wednesday.
B31, which calved from Pine Island glacier last November, is large enough at 33km long and 20km wide to lead Nasa to monitor its movements via satellite. It is up to 500 metres thick.
Continue reading...Emissions Reduction Fund White Paper released
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