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New watchdog to protect environment after Brexit, Gove says
Independent body will be backed by law requiring ministers to ‘have regard to’ core principles
A new environmental watchdog to maintain standards and hold ministers to account is to be set up under plans for a green Brexit, the government has announced.
Measures from improving air and water quality and protecting endangered species are currently overseen by the European commission and underpinned by green principles across the EU, such as “the polluter pays”.
Continue reading...Hun migrations 'linked to deadly Justinian Plague'
Maasai herders driven off land to make way for luxury safaris, report says
Tanzanian government accused of putting indigenous people at risk in order to grant foreign tourists access to Serengeti wildlife
The Tanzanian government is putting foreign safari companies ahead of Maasai herding communities as environmental tensions grow on the fringes of the Serengeti national park, according to a new investigation.
Hundreds of homes have been burned and tens of thousands of people driven from ancestral land in Loliondo in the Ngorongoro district in recent years to benefit high-end tourists and a Middle Eastern royal family, says the report by the California-based thinktank the Oakland Institute.
Continue reading...Chinese CO2 verifiers under pressure as disgruntled traders, consultants join fray
China spends CDM cash to help ease natural gas shortage
'The best bat experience in Britain': Cambridge's nocturnal punting safaris
A trip following bats along the river Cam has become one of the hottest tickets in town – and raised money for their protection
It’s an impossibly idyllic early summer evening on the Backs of Cambridge. A blackbird flutes as a man pressure-washes a table outside a hotel. Mating flies drift on the breeze, alongside a whiff of marijuana. A student lies flat on the riverbank, feet in the water.
Punting on the river Cam has stopped for the night but one boat slips into the gathering dusk: the Bat Punt Safari.
Continue reading...Daylight robbery: grey squirrels stealing millions of pounds of bird seed a year
New video analysis reveals the furry thieves are looting up to half the seed put out in feeders, leaving gardeners and birds short-changed
Daylight robbery worth millions of pounds is taking place in gardens across the country with grey squirrels raiding bird feeders on a huge scale, new research has revealed.
The crimes were caught on video camera by scientists, who said grey squirrels are also known to raid birds’ nests for eggs and chicks. So people putting out food for birds are inadvertently supporting a species that harms them.
Continue reading...Trimmed CEFC budget signals end of renewables boom
South Australia’s second big battery suffers another delay
Country diary: the pond is a hive of activity
Sandy, Bedfordshire: I lean forward and the skater darts away in a series of fitful starts. A water measurer beneath my gaze stays put at the pond’s edge
A pond skater’s feet feel prey landing on the drumskin-tight surface of the water. Just how can this skater skate on thin “ice” while a fly the size of its eye falls through? Though the fly tries to drag its legs free, surface tension binds it to a sheet of elastic glue.
I lean forward and the skater darts away in a series of fitful starts. A water measurer beneath my gaze stays put at the pond’s edge. An aquatic stick insect, Hydrometra stagnorum could easily be mistaken for a strand of dark human hair. My eyes are just a handspan away, so I can observe the detail of alternating light and dark strips along its abdomen, which remind me of a ruler. However, it gets its name from the way it walks over the surface with a measured tread.
Continue reading...Pumped hydro slowly starts to put its head up
California mandates solar PV on all new residential buildings
The stunning hypocrisy of US automakers
Bonn morning brief: Bangkok climate session is on
Volcano erupts at end of man's garden
SolarEdge announces first quarter 2018 financial results
Was Donald Trump right to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?
Love bites on hairy bums: wombats' sex lives revealed
Researchers hope that insights into reproductive behaviour will help save endangered species
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A whiskery love bite on a hairy bum. It may sound like a perturbing form of foreplay but scientists believe it could help save critically endangered wombat populations in Australia’s north.
Scientists have spent two wombat breeding seasons seeking to better understand the sex lives of vulnerable southern hairy-nosed wombats, using 24-hour infrared cameras and urine samples.
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