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Buzzards back in hunters’ crosshairs over threat to UK pheasant shoots
Tim Boxall points at a shape in the field bordering the seven-acre wooded pen where he keeps 1,500 pheasants. “Here you are,” he says. “Look! There’s one over here.” He bends down and prises the remains of a pheasant from the long grass. “That’s a buzzard kill, you can tell by the way it’s been eaten.”
Boxall is a gamekeeper, raising 10,000 pheasants a year to be killed in commercial shoots on the land he rents in Gloucestershire. This year, however, the pheasants have something other than Boxall’s clients to fear: the buzzard.
Continue reading...The 20 photographs of the week
The ongoing violence in Syria, the Rio Paralympics, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, New York fashion week – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week
Continue reading...Shades of yellow on the baking heath
New Forest The heather is studded with yellow tormentil, and mixed with dwarf gorse so tight to the turf that it’s knee-high to a grasshopper
A grey minibus pulls up behind me as I’m changing into my walking shoes. Five young people get out and hitch their packs. ”We’ll be there at five,” says the driver, and goes. They set off along the concrete perimeter road of the old airfield, with a two and a half hour walk ahead of them. I cut through some trees and, by the time I’m on the same road, they’re a speck in the distance.
It’s been too dry, and a little early yet, for autumn fungi to show, but a whitish dome in the grass under the trees suggests it will not be long before they do. It’s hot, the car thermometer registers 26°, and I’m hoping to find shade in the Inclosure.
Continue reading...Pacific Ocean's hidden wonders revealed on dive to underwater volcano
US scientists find possible new coral species and rare Dumbo octopus on expedition to previously unexplored extinct volcano off Hawaii
Scientists believe they have identified a new species of coral and found a rare Dumbo octopus during an expedition 3,000ft (900m) down in the Pacific Ocean.
Diving in a submersible to the previously unexplored Cook seamount, an extinct volcano at the bottom of the sea 100 miles south-west of Hawaii’s Big Island, the three-person team was hoping to examine the rich variety of marine life that collects around the nutrient-rich volcanic waters.
Continue reading...Conservation and the act of the kill
Tech innovations combat wildlife crime
Wildlife meeting to tackle global poaching crisis
Norway plans to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population
Environmental groups criticise plan that will allow hunters to shoot up to 47 of an estimated 68 wolves living in wilderness
Norway is planning to cull more than two-thirds of its remaining wolves in a step that environmental groups say will be disastrous for the dwindling members of the species in the wild.
There are estimated to be about 68 wolves remaining in the wilderness areas of Norway, concentrated in the south-east of the country, but under controversial plans approved on Friday as many as 47 of these will be shot.
Continue reading...Solar-powered tuk-tuk completes India to UK trip
Peter Cubbage obituary
My father, Peter Cubbage, who has died aged 91, was a leading gas forensic research scientist. He led a team that was responsible, among other things, for pioneering the flame-release chamber, a safety innovation used in offshore oil rigs and pipelines, which was compared to the miners’ Davy lamp for its significance.
He was appointed by the crown in 1988 to write the report into what happened during the first two seconds of the Piper Alpha rig explosion.
Continue reading...Senate passes Everglades restoration measure to fight toxic algae blooms
The Central Everglades Planning Project, hailed as a ‘huge victory’, will redirect water to undernourished Florida wetlands affected by manmade developments
US lawmakers have voiced hopes that the ailing Everglades will start to recover after the Senate overwhelmingly approved a nearly $2bn measure to combat the toxic algae blooms that have devastated Florida’s waterways.
The Central Everglades Planning Project, touted by proponents as landmark legislation, passed the Senate on Thursday as part of a broader $10bn water resources bill by a vote of 95-3. The series of engineering projects are designed to collect water around Lake Okeechobee and channel it south to nourish the Everglades wetlands, America’s largest tropical wilderness, rather than have it run off into the ocean.
Continue reading...Marine life, nuclear power and clever crows – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...Undercover bike cops launch 'best ever' cycle safety scheme in Birmingham
Campaigners hope the operation, that sees plain clothes police on bikes pull over drivers that pass too close, will be taken up across the country
When Mark Hodson gets on his bike in the morning, like many cyclists in the UK, he has come to expect a few close calls. Perhaps drivers will whizz past him too close, or someone will even try a ‘punishment pass’.
Luckily, Hodson is a West Midlands Police traffic officer, albeit in plain clothes, and just yards up the road a colleague in a police car is waiting to pull over drivers that give him less than 1.5m space when overtaking (a distance that increases for faster speeds and larger vehicles).
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A whale shark, Masai Mara migration and wild boar on a seaside visit are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...How Indonesia's rare birds are facing extinction
Latest UK flood plans fail to address growing risk of flash floods
Flash flooding is a far greater threat to homes, railways and roads than river or coastal floods but is completely excluded from government plans to deal with increased rainfall
Flash flooding, which struck a swathe of southern and eastern England on Friday, is a greater threat to homes, roads and railways than river or coastal flooding. Yet it was completely excluded from the government’s National Flood Resilience Review, published last week.
Worse, the risk of flash flooding is rising, as climate change leads to more intense, more frequent rainstorms: the Met Office has shown that extremely wet days have become more common. On Friday, half a month’s rain was dumped in one day.
Continue reading...New inhaler protects lungs against effects of air pollution
Inexpensive over-the-counter product could help millions of people avoid worst health effects of breathing toxic air, say scientists
An inhaler that protects the lungs against air pollution has been developed by scientists and could help the many millions of people affected by toxic air to avoid its worst effects.
The inhaler delivers a molecule, first found in bacteria in the Egyptian desert, which stabilises water on the surface of the lung cells to form a protective layer. It is expected to be available as an inexpensive, over-the-counter product.
Continue reading...Arctic sea ice shrinks to second lowest level ever recorded
‘Tremendous loss’ of ice reinforces clear downward trend towards ice-free summers due to effects of climate change
Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level since scientists started to monitor it by satellite, with scientists saying it is another ominous signal of global warming.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 4.14m sq km (1.6m sq miles). That’s behind only the mark set in 2012, 3.39m sq km.
Continue reading...The day we collared Tim, the great tusker
Paula Kahumbu: The latest satellite tracking technology is helping to keep elephants safe from poachers— and away from farmers’ crops
On a beautiful sunny day in Amboseli National Park, against the backdrop of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, a small group of cars was gathered at a safe distance around the prostrate bull elephant. The elephant lay still in the dust, head on the ground, his enormous tusks and trunk stretched out in front of him. Tension rose among the onlookers as the minutes passed.
Then the huge elephant flapped his ear, got up gently, shook his head vigorously in a vain attempt to dislodge the strange object around his neck, and walked off. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The operation to attach a tracking collar to Tim had gone perfectly.
Continue reading...Calls to halt NT light festival over fears for vulnerable rock wallaby
Parrtjima festival will see art beamed onto a 2.5km area of the MacDonnell Ranges, raising concerns for a struggling species
Concerns that a light festival in central Australia could affect a vulnerable population of rock wallaby has led to more than a thousand people signing a petition calling for it to be stopped, and to the federal Department of the Environment and Energy examining the festival’s plans.
Parrtjima – A Festival in Light is planned to go for 10 days at the end of September. Each night a four-hour light show will project Indigenous art onto a 2.5km stretch of cliff in the MacDonnell Ranges.
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