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There’s so much we still don’t know about whales. Here’s 3 amazing new things we’ve learnt about whales lately: how humpback whales have sex and give birth – and how baleen whales sing underwater. Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Other endangered animals rescued in 2023 included a burrowing parrot, an African spurred tortoise and a blood-eared parakeet

Specialist wildlife police in eastern Spain have rescued an exotic list of endangered animals over the past year, including a pair of Nile crocodiles, an African spurred tortoise weighing 25kg and a two-metre Burmese python.

The Seprona division of the Guardia Civil said in a statement on Sunday that its officers had recovered “numerous examples” of species protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora during 2023.

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Former UN climate chief warns of global impact of a possible regression in US green policies

Victory for Donald Trump in the US presidential election this year could put the world’s climate goals at risk, a former UN climate chief has said.

The chances of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels are already slim, and Trump’s antipathy to climate action would have a major impact on the US, which is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and biggest oil and gas exporter, said Patricia Espinosa, who served as the UN’s top official on the climate from 2016 to 2022.

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Smalltooth sawfish are behaving oddly, eliciting a first-ever plan to rescue and rehabilitate species from wild

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is launching what the agency described as an emergency response effort in south Florida after emerging reports of smalltooth sawfish spinning, whirling and displaying other abnormal behaviors.

In a statement released last Wednesday, NOAA said that in addition to the abnormal behaviors, there have been reports of fish deaths in the lower Florida Keys, including more than 28 smalltooth sawfish as of 24 March.

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Urban seagulls get a bad press but we must learn to live alongside them, say conservation experts.

Countries failed to reach an agreement on a consolidated text on commercial deep sea mining regulations at the first part of the 29th Council of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), as metal companies are pressing to apply for permits even in the absence of a framework.

Japan has released a Nature Positive Economy Transition Strategy, taking aim at creating impact well outside its own borders and including the use of carbon and biodiversity credits.

The first deliverables from a collaboration between some of the world’s largest voluntary carbon market (VCM) standards are expected to arrive in Q3 this year, and “more complicated pieces” to come in 2025, but the alliance faces larger challenges - some existential - on the road ahead.

A Southeast Asian carbon consultancy has teamed up with a Malaysian university to drive the creation of a wide range of nature- and technology-based offset projects, with resulting credits to be made available on the domestic carbon exchange.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has proposed including a separate article on biodiversity in the UN global plastics treaty, ahead of the fourth round of negotiations to be held later this month.

Washington state's Department of Ecology (ECY) will offer a higher number of current year volumes at its quarterly carbon allowance auction in June, as well as a smaller amount of future vintage allowances, according to a notice published by the agency Friday.

Labour party analysis of figures since 2010 shows raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours last year

Waterborne diseases such as dysentery and Weil’s disease have risen by 60% since 2010 in England, new figures reveal.

Analysis of NHS hospital admissions by the Labour party has found that the number of people admitted to hospital with diseases transmitted via waterborne infection has increased from 2,085 in 2010-11 to 3,286 in 2022-23.

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Methane emissions from US landfills are on average 40% higher than what has been reported to the EPA, according to a study released Thursday.

A scheduled increase to Canada's revenue-neutral 'backstop' carbon tax on fossil fuels will go ahead on Apr. 1, despite pleas to abort the rise from several conservative provincial premiers and other populist politicians.

Germans want to ban ‘torture breeding’ for extreme characteristics. Plus: don’t even think about swimming in British waters this Easter

I’ll say this for the Germans: when they’re right, they’re so right. Word reaches us that dachshunds are to be banned in Germany.

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An historic coal mine is being transformed into Australia’s first dedicated recreation resort park for motoring enthusiasts.

The post Hunter Valley coal mine gets second life as motorsport park appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Descendants of enslaved miners who dug up gold, silver and emeralds worth billions call on Colombia to halt plan to lift cargo

Indigenous communities in Bolivia have objected to Colombia’s plans to recover the remains of an 18th-century galleon believed to be carrying gold, silver and emeralds worth billions, calling on Spain and Unesco to step in and halt the project.

Colombia hopes to begin recovering artefacts from the wreck of the San José in the coming months but the Caranga, Chicha and Killaka peoples in Bolivia argue that the excavation would rob them of their “common and shared” heritage.

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Exclusive: Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territory’s trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s ecosystems has made the area unlivable

In a dilapidated warehouse in Rafah, Soha Abu Diab is living with her three young daughters and more than 20 other family members. They have no running water, no fuel and are surrounded by running sewage and waste piling up.

Like the rest of Gaza’s residents, they fear the air they breathe is heavy with pollutants and that the water carries disease. Beyond the city streets lie razed orchards and olive groves, and farmland destroyed by bombs and bulldozers.

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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

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Poor harvests in extreme weather conditions have led to a tripling of cocoa prices – but farmers have seen no benefit

Around the world this holiday weekend, people will consume hundreds of millions of Easter eggs and bunnies, as part of an annual chocolate intake that can exceed 8kg (18lb) for every person in the UK, or 5kg in the US and Europe. But a global shortage of cacao – the seed from which chocolate is made – has brought warnings of a “chocolate meltdown” that could see prices increase and bars shrink further.

This week, cocoa prices rose to all-time highs on commodity exchanges in London and New York, reaching more than $10,000 a tonne for the first time, after the third consecutive poor harvest in west Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together produce more than half of the global cacao crop, have been hit by extreme weather supercharged by the climate crisis and the El Niño weather phenomenon. This has been exacerbated by disease and underinvestment in ageing plantations.

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