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Drones, AI and one long fence: Kangaroo Island’s war on a clawed predator that kills 1.5bn Australian animals a year
Feral cats are a menace to wildlife but South Australia’s KI has taken a stand in a bold eradication program that is now at a critical point
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The cat-proof fence drops off a sheer cliff on one side of Kangaroo Island, and disappears into the ocean on the other.
The top section is floppy and electrified – a rude shock for wily cats seeking to climb over – and the bottom is burrow-proof.
Continue reading...State lawmaker in Puebla, Mexico proposes carbon tax
Area burned by UK wildfires in 2025 already at annual record
Scientists have birthed a ‘super cannibal’ that never grows up. Could it be key to combating Australia’s cane toad menace?
There’s quiet optimism that gene-edited ‘Peter Pan’ tadpoles could help control one of the world’s worst invasive species
The toad’s eyes seemed to glow red, its warty and poison-soaked skin – normally splodged in browns – instead a porridge of creamy whites. This albino toad was produced by a team of scientists with one foot in a Sydney university laboratory and the other in a research station on the vast tropical savannahs and wetlands far away to the north near Humpty Doo.
It was September 2023 and for the man who dreamed it into being, the toad was but an opening act in a radical new play against one of the world’s worst invasive species.
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Continue reading...Fears Trump’s deep-sea mining order will irreparably harm ecosystems
Environment groups say Thursday order ignores effort to adopt rules to prevent harmful mining of ocean floor
Environmental groups are decrying an executive order signed by Donald Trump to expedite deep-sea mining for minerals, saying it could irreparably harm marine ecosystems and ignores an ongoing process to adopt international rules for the practice.
Trump’s Thursday order directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fast-track permits for companies to mine the ocean floor in both US and international waters.
Continue reading...London councils yet to spend £130m in local climate funds
Exclusive: Local authorities have spent less than £40m out of £170m collected since offsetting scheme began in 2016
London councils are sitting on more than £130m that should be funding local climate action, the Guardian can reveal.
More than £170m has been collected through the mayor of London’s carbon offset fund, which developers are required to pay into to mitigate emissions from new projects, since it was introduced in 2016. However, the capital’s 33 local authorities have spent less than £40m between them. Some have said they do not have the resources, expertise or time to decide how to spend it.
Continue reading...How space exploration can improve life on Earth | Leigh Phillips
There is a cynical, ‘anti-space’ ideology emerging, especially on some parts of the left. But this is misguided
John F Kennedy once called space-faring “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which Man has ever embarked”. We go to space because, he said – like George Mallory said of his reason to conquer Everest – “it is there.”
While it is truer to say that the race for space between Washington and Moscow was driven as much by cold war competition as by humanity’s pioneering spirit and the imperatives of scientific exploration, billions of ordinary people around the world recognized as much at the time and still were able to marvel at our species’ accomplishments in the heavens regardless of the flag under which they were achieved, from Sputnik to the moon landing.
Continue reading...More than 100 landfills in England may be leaching ‘highly hazardous’ waste
Inadequate record keeping means councils do not know whether former waste sites contain toxic substances
More than 100 old landfills in England that may be contaminated with toxic substances have flooded since 2000, potentially posing a serious safety risk, it can be revealed.
Some of these former dumps containing possibly hazardous materials sit directly next to public parks and housing estates with hundreds of households, the analysis by the Greenpeace-funded journalism website Unearthed , in partnership with the Guardian, found.
Continue reading...Pacific island states urge rich countries to expedite plans to cut emissions
Developed countries pressed to submit national plans well before Cop30 as time runs out to avoid 1.5C temperature rise
Rich countries are dragging their feet on producing new plans to combat the climate crisis, thereby putting the poor into greater danger, some of the world’s most vulnerable nations have warned.
All governments are supposed to publish new plans this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but so far only a small majority have done so, and some of the plans submitted have been inadequate to the scale of action needed.
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