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Saving freshwater mussels and Roly's last delivery run
Know your NEM: AGL’s gas play assumes a lot more renewables
The NEG, and what it means for Australia’s carbon credit market
Can society function without plastics?
Millions of trees at risk in secretive Network Rail felling programme
Exclusive: Plan to stop leaves and branches falling on lines has already led to thousands of trees being chopped down
Millions of trees are at risk in a secretive nationwide felling operation launched by Network Rail to end the nuisance of leaves and branches falling on the line.
Thousands of poplars, sycamores, limes, ash trees and horse chestnuts have already been chopped down across the country from Yorkshire to Dorset, and the scale of the potential destruction outlined in a Network Rail blueprint involves 10m trees growing within 60 metres of track.
Continue reading...The Climate Fetish
Solar plant built at site of Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Blackcap, redstart, yellowhammer: what’s in a bird’s name?
It’s easy to assume, with bird names, that we know what they mean, and often that assumption is quite correct. Woodpeckers peck wood, bee-eaters feed on bees, and whitethroats are indeed white around the neck.
Other names seem almost wilfully obscure: what on Earth does the name puffin mean? Or hobby? Why are turtle doves named after reptiles? And don’t get me started on some of the more bizarre bird names found around the world – from oleaginous hemispingus to zitting cisticola, leaflove to hardhead, and bananaquit to bearded mountaineer.
Continue reading...Best laid plans: The Murray-Darling Basin in crisis (Part 1)
Budget earmarks $500m to mitigate Great Barrier Reef climate change
The money will help try to save the crown-of-thorns starfish and reduce pollution, Malcolm Turnbull to announce
The Turnbull government will allocate $500m to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.
The funding, to be unveiled on Sunday and confirmed in the May budget, follows a recent study finding that 30% of the reef’s corals died in a catastrophic nine-month marine heatwave in 2016.
Continue reading...Australia gets UN to delete criticism of Murray-Darling basin plan from report
Exclusive: Co-author of study expresses shock at ‘complete ineptitude’ of government’s intervention
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The federal government has successfully put pressure on the United Nations to delete all criticism of Australia’s $13bn effort to restore the ailing Murray-Darling river system from a published study, according to the author of an expert report.
The so-called “Australia chapter” has been removed from the UN report “Does Improved Irrigation Technology Save Water?” published online by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Continue reading...Health warning as toxic hairy caterpillars take over woodlands
An infestation of caterpillars that can trigger asthma attacks, vomiting and skin rashes has appeared in south-east England.
Oak processionary moths, in their larval stage now, have been spotted in areas that include Croydon, Twickenham, Epping Forest, Watford, Ealing and several London suburbs. Other infestations have been spotted in Bracknell Forest, Slough and Guildford.
Continue reading...Rescued bald eagle released into the wild in Canada
Health warnings after toxic caterpillar outbreak in London
Country diary: the mind's associations with moors run dark and deep
Beldoo Moss, Cumbrian Pennines: Brontë, bog-body, Baskerville, Brady – it’s as if we are impelled to fill all that bare, bleak, vacant space
Think of this place and most people see the road: the high crossing road that climbs one side of England’s back and descends the other. A second thought might be of the Roman road that once ran this way, itself over the course of an already ancient bronze age pass.
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