Around The Web

Cambridge punting idyll disguises crisis in flow of chalk streams, campaigners warn

It’s a beautiful day on the river Cam in Cambridge. As the sun sparkles on the water at Jesus Green lock, tourists line up for ice-cream and prepare to take a punt around the university’s most celebrated colleges. Few notice how pathetic the flow of water is over the lock.

It is a clear sign that this ancient waterway is faring badly, says Stephen Tomkins, emeritus fellow and former head of the science faculty at Homerton College. “That little bit running through here is the total flow from the whole of south Cambridgeshire,” he says, pointing at an unimpressive trickle. There just is not enough water, he adds: “The river Cam is drying up.”

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Lancashire-based operation, Britain’s only active fracking site, has magnitude 1.05 tremor

The UK’s only active fracking site experienced a magnitude 1.05 tremor on Friday night.

It came two days after a magnitude 1.55 tremor, which was the largest ever tremor at the site run by Cuadrilla in Preston New Road, Lancashire.

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Fires in the Amazon rainforest have prompted concern around the world.

President Jair Bolsonaro orders soldiers to be sent to the region, after pressure from EU leaders.

The space agency is reportedly looking into an allegation against astronaut Anne McClain.

We may clean and scrub, but our homes remain full of chemicals. We bring them in and spread them around. Cleaning products, personal hygiene products, and cooking all introduce chemicals often as volatile gases. But how do they interact?

They are the most trafficked animal in the world. New methods will help trace their origins.

President uses TV speech to criticise ‘disinformation’ about fire crisis, saying it cannot be used as pretext for sanctions

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has professed to feeling “profound love and respect” for the Amazon as fires continued to rage in the world’s biggest tropical rainforest and criticism of his environmental policies intensified.

In a televised address to the nation – met with pot-banging protests in several Brazilian cities – Bolsonaro said he was “not content” with the situation in the Amazon and was taking “firm action” to resolve it by deploying troops to the region.

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Sharks and rays pushed towards extinction by the shark fin trade are hot on the agenda at key wildlife talks.

Management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante, downsized by Trump administration in 2017, criticized as ‘a giveaway to fossil fuel’

A new US government plan had cleared the way for coal mining and oil and gas drilling on land stripped from Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante monument by the Trump administration two years ago.

The plan, released by the Bureau of Land Management on Friday, would also open more lands to cattle grazing and recreation and acknowledges there could be “adverse effects” on land and resources in the monument.

Trump drastically shrank the southern Utah monument in 2017, as well as the nearby Bears Ears national monument, in what represented the largest elimination of public lands protections in US history. Some 800,000 acres were removed from the Grand Staircase.

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How should you travel to reduce your carbon footprint?

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Researchers have introduced three dozen hybrid helmeted honeyeaters into the wild in an attempt to prevent the critically endangered bird from dying out because of inbreeding. On Friday, the juvenile birds were released into the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, which holds the only wild population of critically endangered helmeted honeyeaters, in an unusual attempt at genetic species rescue. The researchers say that without interbreeding, fertility rates within the 230-strong wild population could drop so low that the species would not survive.

• With a little help from its relatives: hybrid plan to save helmeted honeyeater from extinction

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Oregon Senate Democrats will look to amend the constitution next year to prevent Republicans from denying the majority party a quorum to conduct legislative business, a feat that helped sink the US state's WCI-modelled cap-and-trade proposal this summer.

Only 230 of the sub-species remain in the wild, a population that will become unsustainable without interbreeding

• The Guardian Australia/Birdlife Australia bird of the year poll will return in October

• Hybrid helmeted honeyeater introduced to save bird from extinction – video

Researchers have introduced three dozen hybrid helmeted honeyeaters into the wild in an attempt to prevent the critically endangered bird from dying out because of inbreeding.

On Friday, the juvenile birds were released into the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, which holds the only wild population of critically endangered helmeted honeyeaters, in an unusual attempt at genetic species rescue.

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California regulator ARB’s proposal to implement a firm maximum price and borrowed credits mechanism in the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) has generated further suggestions to treat multiple crediting pathways fairly and improve environmental integrity, according to public comments.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are opening wheelie bins and turning trash into treasure.

Nasa astronauts have been sampling the spacecraft experience at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas.

Simon Surtees says the burning Brazilian forest is redolent of the plot of Lord of the Flies; Stefan Simanowitz writes that it’s time ecocide joined genocide as a named crime; while John Charlton despairs at the race in aviation to fly longer and faster

Eliane Brum’s passionate attack on the Amazon clearances is well made (In the burning Amazon, all our futures are now at stake, 23 August). In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the war between Ralph and Jack leads to the burning of the jungle. The boys are rescued by a naval crew attracted by the smoke and flames. But it is worth noting that Golding had to be persuaded by his editor to change the ending, which was considered a bit bleak for the 1950s, when it was written. He would have been quite happy for readers to take in the consequences of their selfishness and stupidity; the destruction of the place where they live. How he must be chuckling now.
Simon Surtees
London

• In 1944, Winston Churchill described German atrocities in Russia as “a crime without a name”. Later that year, the term “genocide” was coined. Today the Amazon rainforest – the lungs of the world – is ablaze, with thousands of fires deliberately lit by land-grabbers keen to clear the forest for logging, farming and mining. This destruction, which has increased massively since Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s deregulated deforestation, threatens an area that is home to about 3 million species of plants and animals and 1 million indigenous people.

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State’s highest court rejects attempt to derail project by opponents who want to force developer to reapply for state approval

Nebraska’s highest court lifted one of the last major hurdles for the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday when it rejected another attempt to derail the project by opponents who wanted to force the developer to reapply for state approval.

The pipeline faces intense resistance from environmental groups, Native American tribes and some landowners along the route who worry about its long-term impact on their groundwater and property rights. But in Nebraska, many affected landowners have accepted the project and are eager to collect payments from the company.

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