Around The Web
Wildlife photographer of the year people's choice award - in pictures
The Natural History Museum has chosen 24 of the best images from its Wildlife photographer of the year competition shortlist. Members of the public can vote for their favourite by 5 February 2018.
Country diary: self-sufficient ponies open up the wetlands for wildlife
Waltham Brooks, West Sussex A burst of loud, profane whistles announce the presence of a Cetti’s warbler, darting through the rushes in search of food
The early morning rain has lifted but there is still damp in the air. Konik ponies watch me between their mouthfuls of grass as I make my slow way through the dark, water-logged mud. The small, brown horses – descendants of the wild Tarpans that once roamed Europe – are a hardy, self-sufficient breed, perfectly adapted to grazing wetlands. They are used increasingly by conservation bodies in the UK, as here by the Sussex Wildlife Trust, to control young trees, shrubs and plants that would otherwise grow and dominate habitat like this. The ponies’ grazing clears channels and pools, opens up patches of grass, and creates new opportunities for diverse species of plants, insects, birds and animals to thrive.
Related: Hoof hardy in the snow
Continue reading...Plastic microbeads ban enters force in UK
Manufacturing ban means the tiny beads which harm marine life can no longer be used in cosmetics and personal care products
Plastic microbeads can no longer be used in cosmetics and personal care products in the UK, after a long-promised ban came into effect on Tuesday. The ban initially bars the manufacture of such products and a ban on sales will follow in July.
Thousands of tonnes of plastic microbeads from products such as exfoliating face scrubs and toothpastes wash into the sea every year, where they harm wildlife and can ultimately be eaten by people. The UK government first pledged to ban plastic microbeads in September 2016, following a US ban in 2015.
Continue reading...BBC's Antiques Roadshow to review ivory objects policy
Higher electricity bills if Snowy 2.0 hydro not built, says Frydenberg
Despite costing up to $4.5bn, the feasibility study for ‘Australia’s biggest battery’ finds it would still be economically viable
Australians would pay more for electricity and have more volatile supply if the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydropower project is not built, Josh Frydenberg has said.
The energy and environment minister has strongly argued for the necessity of the scheme in an opinion piece for the Australian Financial Review, despite the feasibility study revealing that its estimated cost had blown out by more than $2bn to between $3.8bn and $4.5bn.
Continue reading...Energy agency rejects Trump plan to prop up coal and nuclear power plants
The unexpected decision by the Republican-controlled body is a blow to the president’s high-profile mission to revive the struggling US coal industry
An independent energy agency on Monday rejected a Trump administration plan to bolster coal-fired and nuclear power plants with subsidies, dealing a blow to the president’s high-profile mission to revive the struggling coal industry.
The decision by the Republican-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was unexpected and comes amid repeated promises by Trump to rejuvenate coal as the nation’s top power source. The industry has been besieged by multiple bankruptcies and a steady loss of market share as natural gas and renewable energy have flourished.
Continue reading...Olam signs long term Renewable Corporate PPA with Flow Power
El Nino's long reach to Antarctic ice
Most expensive year on record for US natural disasters
Great Barrier Reef: rising temperatures turning green sea turtles female
‘Complete feminisation’ of northern population is possible in near future, researchers find
Rising temperatures are turning almost all green sea turtles in a Great Barrier Reef population female, new research has found.
The scientific paper warned the skewed ratio could threaten the population’s future.
Continue reading...Confessions of a Deliveroo rider: get fit by delivering fast food
Carlton Reid picks up burgers and pizzas, but he doesn’t eat them - he delivers them. In just a few months he has lost weight and saved cash for the Giro d’Italia
There’s a way to get healthy from fast food: the trick is to deliver it, not eat it. I’m 52, but am now fitter than I was at 22. As a gig-economy food delivery rider I’m getting paid to melt my middle-age spread. I started in November, but have lost 5kg. Although I only do a few evening hours per week, I have already banked enough cash to pay for a trip to see the Giro d’Italia in May.
I get paid £4.25 for every drop, and the faster I pedal, the more drops I can fit in. Students are the mainstay of the food delivery business, and on a good night – when the students are flush – I can pocket £20 an hour. Not bad for time I’d otherwise waste trawling Twitter.
Puppy dog eyes influence dog choice
Mikhail Gorbachev's legacy and life
Calls for EU to reinstate ban on 'destructive' electric pulse fishing
Campaigners say it causes unnecessary suffering but those in favour of method say it is less damaging than trawling
Groups representing small-scale fishing fleets across Europe have called on the European Union to reinstate a ban on fishing using electrical pulses, which they say is a destructive method.
However, others have called for the technique to continue, saying it causes less disturbance than methods such as trawling the bottom of the seabed.
Continue reading...Closing the loop on e-waste
Country diary: limestone heath is a piece of ecological magic
Goblin Combe, Somerset This is one of those rare habitats where lime-hating and lime-loving plants suck together from the same earth, roots entangled
There is no doubt when you are on the carboniferous limestone. Crags jut out as if the rock is struggling to release itself from its turfy skin, shedding broken stones. Sheep’s fescue, rockrose, kidney vetch and many more lime-loving species form the distinctive close-knit grassland. The signature of this rock is written all over the hill.
At Goblin Combe we cross the limestone turf, heading for my favourite slope. Melted frost has touched every leaf with diamonds and pin-cushioned the anthills with rainbow spangles. And then – so suddenly – wine-dark mounds of bell heather. Lime-hating heather, among all those lime-lovers!
Continue reading...Country diary 1968: a meeting with the bracken-red fox
8 January 1968 The fox was completely absorbed in its own affairs and very catlike in its stance, it stood motionless and its sharp nose pointed at a tuft of winter-pale grass
KESWICK: The first week of the new year often brings strange weather as if it is undecided as to which season it belongs to and one milder morning lately, with soft clouds resting on the snowy fells, there was a smell of growing things in the air. It was an indefinable smell – not the flowering witch hazel, the swelling daphne, or even the balsam poplar whose buds, though furled, can send out sweetness. It was, rather, the exhalation of the earth itself and a promise of growth to come. There were a few wintry daisies in the grass but they are as scentless as snow.
Related: 21st-century fox: how nature's favourite outsider seduced the suburbs
Continue reading...Pollutionwatch: reducing sulphur emissions saves lives – and forests
We used to worry more about acid rain than about climate change. It took years but the agreements made in the Gothenburg Protocol have made a difference
Today we focus our concern on climate change, but 40 years ago it was acid rain and forest die-back that dominated our air and environment debate. In 1977, a new measurement programme showed that the sulphur landing in Scandinavia was far greater than the countries were producing. Industrial coal burning and westerly winds meant that the UK was Europe’s largest exporter of sulphur air pollution. Moving power generation to the countryside and building tall chimneys had reduced local air pollution but did not prevent sulphur being transported over thousands of kilometres.
This was at the height of the cold war. Warsaw Pact countries offered 30% reductions in their sulphur emissions and watched as the western allies were split. The UK was isolated and Canadian provinces were pitched against upwind industrial states in the US.
Continue reading...Frequency and intensity of heatwaves increasing
Pages
