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If US national parks are to continue to thrive they must reflect the diversity of our population
As the National Park Service turns 100, a new campaign aims to make the country’s natural spaces more appealing to all Americans, regardless of race, over the next century. It’s vital they succeed
In the sweltering heat of a summer day, I walked along the visitor trails of Yosemite national park. I had just made the five-hour drive from my childhood home in Los Angeles to glimpse a vision of the future. There in the valley surrounded by high towers of stone, I watched as thousands of tourists from all over the world marvelled at the sheer granite walls of El Capitan, Washington Column and Half Dome. Like ancient cathedrals of divine architecture, these magnificent features stand as monuments to the notion that the natural heritage of our nation must be preserved for all time.
Throughout my life I have enjoyed spending time in the outdoors. Despite having grown up in the urban heart of LA, I frequently ventured into the wild places of California, from the slopes of the San Gabriel mountains to the summit of Mount Whitney. Though I was blessed, thanks to sacrifices of my parents, with a lifetime learning and playing in nature, on this occasion, as with many visits to the valley, I noticed that I was among the very few people of colour there. And though I felt no less welcome to enjoy the splendour of this magnificent place, I wondered how it might be possible to encourage tourism to Yosemite – and other national parks – that reflects the diverse population of the US as a whole.
Continue reading...‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’
Scientist Peter Wadhams believes the summer ice cover at the north pole is about to disappear, triggering even more rapid global warming
Peter Wadhams has spent his career in the Arctic, making more than 50 trips there, some in submarines under the polar ice. He is credited with being one of the first scientists to show that the thick icecap that once covered the Arctic ocean was beginning to thin and shrink. He was director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge from 1987 to 1992 and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge since 2001. His book, A Farewell to Ice, tells the story of his unravelling of this alarming trend and describes what the consequences for our planet will be if Arctic ice continues to disappear at its current rate.
You have said on several occasions that summer Arctic sea ice would disappear by the middle of this decade. It hasn’t. Are you being alarmist?
No. There is a clear trend down to zero for summer cover. However, each year chance events can give a boost to ice cover or take some away. The overall trend is a very strong downward one, however. Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship. There will still be about a million square kilometres of ice in the Arctic in summer but it will be packed into various nooks and crannies along the Northwest Passage and along bits of the Canadian coastline. Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.
The eco guide to air pollution
We call it ‘smog’ or ‘haze’ but it’s a real killer. There are ways to find out where it’s worst, and clean air campaigns which are well worth supporting
These days fresh air is hard to find, even in parks. Nearly a quarter of London’s green open spaces now breach laws on nitrogen dioxide pollution (the stuff that spews out of diesel exhausts).
When the air in the park is worse than at the side of the road, that’s a new low. If you’re a Londoner, type in your postcode at Asi Open Data to find the nearest park where NO2 emissions don’t exceed 40 micrograms per cubic metre.
Continue reading...Yellowstone fish deaths: 183 miles of river closed to halt spread of parasite
Ban on all fishing, rafting and other river activities in the US river will remain until fish stop dying, say officials
Closures on a 183-mile stretch of the Yellowstone river and hundreds of miles of other waterways could continue for months while biologists try to prevent the spread of a parasite believed to have killed tens of thousands of fish.
The closures will remain until the waterways improve and fish stop dying, according to officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The ban includes all fishing, rafting and other river activities.
Continue reading...If we’re serious about industrial strategy, renewables is a good place to start
Cancelling the planned new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point will be a huge victory for the offshore wind industry. The word from inside No 10 is not clear yet, but there are so many Tories, including the prime minister, unsettled by the prospect of the Chinese building a plant in Britain to an untested French design that the prospects of it going ahead appear slim.
As if to emphasise the continuing success of Britain’s elegant turbines in the sea, the government cleared the way for a new array off the Yorkshire coast earlier this week.
Continue reading...California wildfires: Blue Cut blaze curbed as evacuees return
The 20 photographs of the week
The Rio Olympics, wildfires in Europe, the continuing violence in Aleppo – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week
Continue reading...The secret life of a tiny pond
New Forest It’s a muddy hole that holds water all year round. We could so easily have walked by without seeing it
The walking group stop as they see me peering into a net. “Can we ask what you’re doing?” I explain that I’ve heard there were shells in this pond and have come to find out what they are. As we talk, a blue-bodied dragonfly circles over the water. I tell them what it is and say that it has chosen this mucky pool as its breeding patch, and is probably waiting for a mate to arrive. “Thanks for the nature lesson,” they say with a smile, and head on.
This pond isn’t easy to find. We have only a rough idea where to look. To get to it we cross heavily cropped grassland with tufts of heather and ground-hugging gorse in among which is petty whin. This is a member of the pea family whose yellow flowers are carried on stalks with vicious thorns. We see it because it’s still flowering, much later than the guides say to expect it.
Continue reading...Pumped hydro for the cloudy windless days and nights
Tandem solar cells to capture even more light
A replacement for plastic
Zebra finches program offspring for a hotter world
Breakfast of the Numbat King
Holmes truths for Theresa May | Brief letters
Phil Jones (Letters, 18 August) says that tidal energy cannot possibly provide baseload power, because it offers energy in “four three-hour blocks a day”. Make that 80 three-hour blocks a day: the tide is a wave that takes 20 hours to move around the British Isles. True, one tidal project can’t provide baseload on its own – but Jones asks you to believe that tidal power can’t do it, period. That’s inaccurate.
David Robjant
Bedford
• There is indeed a problem of obesity in this country, and many different suggestions for tackling it (Letters, 19 August). Isn’t it rather counterproductive that a large audience is eagerly anticipating The Great British Bake Off – a programme dedicated to making us eat cake?
Julia Reisz
Walberswick, Suffolk
Sea potatoes wash up en masse on Cornish beach
Marine experts say mysterious orbs found at Long Rock, near Penzance, are species of urchin stirred up from sandy burrows
With their biomechanical, other-worldly appearance, these orbs look like baseballs reprocessed through the imagination of HR Giger. So their appearance en masse on a beach near Penzance this week left locals uneasy.
“I took one home with me, then panicked and put it in the bin in case it attacked,” said one dog walker who found hundreds on the beach at Long Rock, between Penzance and Marazion. His spaniel refused to go near them, he said.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife - in pictures
Burrowing owls at the Olympics, a pygmy elephant with very special tusks, and a rare white mynah bird are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Study identifies key species which act as warning signs of ecosystem collapse
The success or failure of certain species can be used to predict the future health of an entire ecosystem, research says
The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today.
Conservation often focuses on the big, enigmatic animals - tigers, polar bears, whales. There are many reasons to want to save these species from extinction. But what about the vast majority of life that we barely notice? The bugs and grubs that can appear or vanish from ecosystems without any apparent impact?
Continue reading...Zebra finch 'heat song' changes hatchling development
Gas supplies to rise and secret contracts to be scrapped under Coag reform plan
States agree to develop coal seam gas and make deals more transparent in an effort to increase competition and reduce prices
Gas supplies in Australia will be expanded and suppliers forced to publish previously secret prices under reforms agreed to by state and federal ministers at the Coag energy council meeting in Canberra.
All states except Victoria, which has a blanket ban on coal seam gas, agreed to focus on expanding onshore gas activities. The state government in Melbourne agreed to consider its position.
Continue reading...Water voles to be reintroduced to England's highest lake
National Trust will release 100 of the endangered animals, not seen at Malham tarn in Yorkshire dales for 50 years
Britain’s endangered water voles will reach new heights when they are returned to Yorkshire’s Malham tarn for the first time in 50 years.
Around 100 water voles will be reintroduced on Friday to the National Trust estate in the Yorkshire dales, home to England’s highest freshwater lake, in what the trust says is the highest-altitude reintroduction of the species it has carried out in Britain.
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