Feed aggregator

The world's highest mountain poses new hazards after the collapse of a key rocky outcrop.

One of the UK’s largest battery storage schemes, built next to a windfarm, will offer vital services to the National Grid

Nestling alongside rows of conifers and wind turbines in a Welsh valley, a pioneering project will materialise this summer that could prove a blueprint for unlocking Britain’s renewable energy potential.

The Upper Afan Valley near Swansea is already home to the biggest windfarm in England and Wales, but in July work will begin there on one of the UK’s largest battery storage schemes.

Continue reading...

As Trump administration reviews 27 national monuments, conservationists fear a federally mandated effort to strip public lands of environmental protections

A decision by the Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, to ban signs to Katahdin Woods and Waters, a national monument designated by Barack Obama, has been described as “sophomoric and petty” by a member of the family that donated the 87,563-acre tract to the nation.

Related: 'This is our land': New Mexico's tribal groups gear up to fight for their home

Continue reading...

Electoral Commission says charities must declare all campaign spending since June last year, despite them not knowing a snap election would be called

UK charities face a permanent “chilling effect” on their campaigns after the Electoral Commission said they must declare any work that could be deemed political over the past 12 months to ensure they are not in breach of the Lobbying Act.

At least one charity has been warned that if it does not, it may face “civil or criminal sanctions”.

Continue reading...

Environment experts weigh up the manifesto pledges on issues such as air pollution, climate change, energy and waste

Continue reading...

Fabrics such as cotton come at a dear cost to the environment. Look for progressive alternatives made from pineapples, eucalyptus, even mushrooms

Future generations will shake their heads at our loyalty to a handful of fibres with terrible environmental profiles, such as cotton (thirsty for pesticides and water) and plastic (oil based). They’ll want to know why we didn’t display more imagination.

Many innovations in the fashion industry have a distinctly mushroomy flavour

Continue reading...

Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre says investment in keeping temperature rises below 2C would return less than $1 for every $1 spent

Experts have challenged a claim by Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre that holding global temperature rises to 2C is a poor investment.

In 2015 the education department abandoned plans for Lomborg to set up an Australian Consensus Centre, but gave the Copenhagen centre $640,000 to support its Smarter UN Post-2015 Development Goals project.

Continue reading...

The southern continents were once united as the supercontinent Gondwana, but does this explain the links between the plants of the southern hemisphere? Dr Barbara Briggs travelled to Madagascar to find out.

The southern continents were once united as the supercontinent Gondwana, but does this explain the links between the plants of the southern hemisphere? Dr Barbara Briggs travelled to Madagascar to find out.

A key component of the UK's first high-energy proton beam machine is delivered to its new home in Newport.

Measures are announced after water enters a frozen facility guarding the world's key crop seeds.

Rome has a problem with wild boar; wolves mingle with surburban Germans; mountain lions frequent LA. All around the world, city life seems increasingly conducive to wildlife

In Aesop’s fable, the town mouse turns his nose up at his country cousin’s simple fare, preferring the haute cuisine to be scavenged in the city. It appears that the wild boar of Italy have taken note, and are venturing ever more boldly into Rome.

But they are not alone: all around the world, city life seems to be increasingly conducive to wildlife. Urban nature is no longer unglamorous feral pigeons or urban foxes. Wolves have taken up residence in parts of suburban Germany as densely populated as Cambridge or Newcastle. The highest density of peregrine falcons anywhere in the world is New York; the second highest is London, and these spectacular birds of prey now breed in almost every major British city. And all kinds of wild deer are rampaging through London, while also taking up residence everywhere from Nara in Japan to the Twin Cities of the US.

Continue reading...

Mockbeggar, New Forest Tiny, parched, sorrels streak the ground with red but there is feverish activity in the ditch

From Moyles Court, a fine 17th-century house that is now a private school, we set off up the slope with paddocks on either side. Leaving the Avon Valley Path, we cut the corner of Newlands Plantation, and climb steadily uphill along the woodland edge. Rhododendron ponticum infests part of the margin, with the blooms of young plants announcing their colonisation of the adjacent open ground.

Related: For a beetle at risk, what better place to be?

Continue reading...

A Humboldt penguin chick has hatched at a sea life sanctuary for the first time in more than a decade.

Boomerang Bags is an Australian solution to plastic pollution that's gone global.

The Arnavon Islands are the largest rookery for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle in the South Pacific.

Natimuk pre-schoolers go bush for outdoor kinder; Miriwoong man David Newry goes searching for native bananas; an Irish lass swaps Belfast for an outback pub; and we go to an alpaca handling school.

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...

No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.

Continue reading...

The conflict between humans and elephants for space and resources is driving the rapid decline of elephant populations. Join us on Wednesday 24 May from 1-2.30pm BST to discuss how elephants and humans can live together

This week an elderly man was killed by a wild elephant in central India as he picked tendu leaves in the Surajpur forest. A few days earlier, a father and his son were injured after two elephants wandered into their house in Tamil Nadu. As human populations grow and communities live in closer proximity to elephants, one of the world’s most unique and beautiful animals can become the most dangerous.

But human development is also contributing to the severe decline in elephant populations. Across Asia and Africa, elephants’ natural habitats are being destroyed by rapid urbanisation and industrial and agricultural expansion.

Continue reading...