Around The Web

Animal rights groups declared the move a "landmark order" that would protect against exploitation.

Animal rights groups declared the move a "landmark order" that would protect against exploitation.

Near flooding of Henley-on-Thames building prompts decision to tell the story of climate crisis

From the reconstructed riverside of The Wind in the Willows to an historic Georgian rowboat used in the inaugural Oxford-Cambridge race, the exhibits at the River and Rowing Museum celebrate the importance of British rivers.

But the award-winning building in Henley-on-Thames – designed by the modernist architect David Chipperfield – is facing a significant threat from the very river beside which it resides.

Continue reading...

The country’s 13 million dogs create a lot of mess that’s hard to dispose of, dangerous and harmful to the environment

An unlikely folk hero has emerged in the Venice beach area of Los Angeles. Their identity is unknown, but their popularity is down to their homemade flags on cocktail sticks stuck into piles of dog faeces with messages like “Lazy. Pick. Up. Your. Dog. Poo”. The message is going down well. “I’m a big fan,” said one local. “No one wants to see a dog poop everywhere.”

These are the exact tactics that were used in Britain back in the 1980s, when dog faeces on the streets first began to be seen as unacceptable. Campaigners stuck little flags with similar messages aimed at getting dog poo off streets and public play areas. In many ways it was a successful campaign. There’s now widespread consciousness of the dangers to children of toxocara disease caused by accidentally ingesting excrement via their hands. And there are very few who would put up a public defence that a faeces-littered pavement is a sign of the healthy freedom of its citizens.

Continue reading...

London minister Greg Hands embroiled in congestion and pollution debate with constituents over scheme in election battleground

When the Tory minister Greg Hands criticised a trial scheme in his constituency to block the use of residential roads as rat runs, he might have expected to win some votes and boost his party’s pro-car agenda.

Instead, he finds himself embroiled in a charged and divisive debate in his Chelsea and Fulham constituency, with a backlash from some Tories who back measures to curb traffic and introduce clean-air neighbourhoods.

Continue reading...

Whyalla steel owner Sanjeev Gupta flags interest in buying green hydrogen from the city's new electrolyser, but signals he will source gas from fossil fuel giant Santos in the interim.

The post Gupta puts hand up for Whyalla green hydrogen, but will take Santos gas first appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The company tasked with building and operating the New Manila International Airport has launched the first project in the Philippines aimed at offsetting the loss of natural and critical habitats from a major infrastructure project.

Froglets from species classed as near-threatened arrive for the second time at Cotswolds wildlife park

A frog species that is in a “perilous state” due to an infectious disease has been successfully bred at a wildlife park in Oxfordshire.

Keepers at the Cotswold wildlife park in Burford have again bred the near-threatened cinnamon frog, four years after it became only the second zoological collection in Europe to breed the species.

Continue reading...

‘Tricky’ Nicholls has pulled decades’ worth of Sydney’s rubbish out of the sea by hand – but he still has hope for our oceans

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Every morning a tractor rolls over Manly’s picture-perfect beaches, scraping away the signs of the day before. But below the water’s pristine surface, where council clean-up teams struggle to scour, a jumble of plastics tell a different tale.

It is a story Richard Nicholls knows well. Over three decades, the 63-year-old “Tricky” Nicholls has led thousands of divers and snorkelers on monthly clean-up dives while tracking trends in Sydney’s marine plastics.

Continue reading...

Charity blames the decline of invertebrates on farming, sewage and run-off from roads and homes, months after the Environment Agency told them the water in Wiltshire river was clean

A citizen science programme has revealed the decline of one of the country’s most significant chalk streams after claims by Environment Agency officials that it had not deteriorated. The SmartRivers programme run by the charity WildFish, which surveys freshwater invertebrates, reported “strong declines in relation to chemical pressure” on the River Avon in Wiltshire. It said its data indicated a decline in the condition of the river over the last five years.

The charity compiled a report on its findings after the conservation groups say they were told at a meeting by the Environment Agency in August that “the Avon has not deteriorated in water quality in the last five years”. David Holroyd, head of water quality for Wiltshire Fishery Association, said the numbers of invertebrates collected in spring and autumn samples from 2019 and 2023 at 11 sites on the upper Avon had shown a decline.

Continue reading...

Researchers say toxic chemicals pose a pollution risk as oil and gas companies are allowed to leave pipelines to rot

Decaying oil and gas pipelines left to fall apart in the North Sea could release large volumes of poisons such as mercury, radioactive lead and polonium-210, notorious for its part in the poisoning of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, scientists are warning.

Mercury, an extremely toxic element, occurs naturally in oil and gas. It sticks to the inside of pipelines and builds up over time, being released into the sea when the pipeline corrodes.

Continue reading...

Meyer Burger says it will up panel production in Germany, citing “grave market distortion” and better investment conditions in the US.

The post Europe’s largest solar module plant faces shutdown as company shifts focus to US appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A startup that monetised individual actions to reduce personal emissions has stopped offering the resulting offsets to businesses, citing the practice as a questionable solution to the climate crisis.

Financial players continued to take profits across North American carbon markets, as opposed to regulated entities that built net length in California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) and RGGI allowances (RGAs), while Washington Carbon Allowances (WCAs) remain out of favour in both groups, weekly data from the US Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) release Friday showed.

Hunted for years in NSW’s Pilliga, Rambo has now disappeared. In his place is an explosion of native species. But why will no one call Rambo ‘dead’?

There is a baby boom of critically endangered native species happening in north-west New South Wales. For the first time in more than a century, the Pilliga scrub – the largest native forest west of the Great Dividing Range – is crawling with multiple generations of greater bilbies, bridled nailtail wallabies, brush-tailed bettong, plains mice and Shark Bay bandicoots.

“All the animals are thriving and most of the females are breeding,” says the Australian Wildlife Conservancy ecologist Vicki Stokes, who monitors the colony’s progress via camera traps and transmitters attached to their tails. “And because the bandicoots have a gestation of just 18 days and the plains mice around 30, it’s happening fast. Some of them are on their third or fourth litters already.”

Continue reading...

Flooding is now so frequent that the water course shifts endlessly. In northern NSW, flood-PTSD is rife

This summer, despite a shift to El Niño, my region – northern New South Wales – has been plagued by flood warnings. We are, of course, thankful it is not fire. Flooding here, especially in the warmer months, is normal, though nothing feels normal after the “one-in-one-hundred-year” flood in 2017 that swept away a cabin on my property, or the “one-in-one-thousand-year” flood in 2022 that submerged many of our low-lying townships and reduced much of our highlands, through landslips, to rubble.

Since then, the warning system app Hazards Near Me has been updated, and my phone now pings with flood warnings. It is hard to assess how seriously to take these pings when they are so frequent. If there is a flood warning, and it gets late, should I try to sleep or should I pace about in the pouring rain with a torch attempting to gauge the danger?

Continue reading...

The Canadian government is gathering information about the supply and brokerage services of domestic carbon credits, as it looks at creating a platform to help federal departments and agencies offset their emissions.

The history-making robot likely caught its foot on contact with the lunar surface and fell sideways.

The history-making robot likely caught its foot on a rock and fell on its side, US operator says.

Construction of the Sizewell C nuclear project in southeast England could start later this year, provided that the government gives the greenlight and financial close is reached, said executives on a webinar about the UK’s nuclear agenda on Friday.