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Public to vote in contest organized by Katmai national park to see which bear looks to have put on most pre-hibernation weight

Fat Bear Week, the annual competition to see which Alaskan bears can pack on the most pounds before hibernation season, begins this week, with a combination of fan favorites and newcomers vying for the title of the state’s most rotund bear.

The contest, which has become increasingly popular in recent years, will see 12 bears in the Katmai national park in Alaska face off against each other, in an online vote.

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Paper reveals scientists’ concerns that single-species carbon plantations threaten native flora and fauna, while delivering negligible benefits

Monoculture tree-planting schemes are threatening tropical biodiversity while only offering modest climate benefit, ecologists have said, warning that ecosystems like the Amazon and Congo basin are being reduced to their carbon value.

Amid a boom in the planting of single-species plantations to capture carbon, scientists have urged governments to prioritise the conservation and restoration of native forests over commercial monocultures, and cautioned that planting swathes of non-native trees in tropical regions threatens important flora and fauna for a negligible climate impact.

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Establishing a worldwide system of biodiversity networks sharing harmonised data is critical for society, an academic has said.

The group also wants governments to develop a plan to electrify all existing properties

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All state and territory governments should introduce bans on gas connections in new homes and develop a clear plan to electrify existing properties and small businesses, according to an organisation representing energy consumers.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry examining Australia’s residential electrification efforts, Energy Consumers Australia urged the government to consider mandatory information disclosures to warn consumers about “the potential economic consequences” of buying a new gas appliance.

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The felling of this much-loved tree reflects a society that has become utterly disconnected from the non-human world

At some point during Wednesday night last week, when Britain was being battered by Storm Agnes, a person – or perhaps more than one – walked up to one of the country’s most famous and beloved trees, fired up a two-metre chainsaw and began to cut.

In as little as half an hour, the Sycamore Gap had been reduced to a gap. The tree that filled that little U-shaped dell in Hadrian’s Wall and was thought to be up to 300 years old was gone. What was left was a gaping, empty hole. Not only in that sweep of tree-scarce Northumberland landscape that once demarked the Roman empire’s northern limits, but in the lives of the many people from all over the world who had taken that lone tree, defiantly clinging on to those windy northern moors, to heart. People who grew up, as I did, wrapping arms around it on long walks along the wall in waterproofs and who later returned with their own children to do the same. People who scattered the ashes of their loved ones around its roots. People who visited it religiously through the seasons and sought shelter from sun and showers under its canopy; who saw its leaves fire in the autumn and its stark silhouette scratched black into a cold, winter sky.

Rob Cowen is a writer and author

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Exclusive: Analysis says under Labor’s revamped safeguard mechanism some coalmines could more than double their emissions and still benefit financially

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Ten coalmines could increase their greenhouse gas pollution until 2030 while being financially rewarded under an Albanese government climate policy that is meant to cut industrial emissions, according to a new analysis.

The analysis of how different facilities are treated under the safeguard mechanism – the government’s main policy to deal with major polluters – has prompted calls for changes to deal with this “perverse outcome” and require every coalmine to take additional steps to cut emissions.

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It’s believed there are fewer than 20 of these ‘little birds of the spinifex’ – and their future hangs in the balance

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It’s hard to say precisely when I became a card-carrying bird nerd. Perhaps it was when I began keeping a pair of binoculars in my bag (you know, “just in case”). Maybe the time I taught bush kinder children the local bird calls so we could chat to our feathery friends out on country. Most likely though it was the point at which I became hopelessly obsessed with a little bird named mukarrthippi and its entanglement with my family history.

Mukarrthippi (pronounced mook-waa-tippy) captured my heart, not just because of its charismatic rufous-brown eyebrows, alert upturned tail and striking white streaked body, but also for the rather dubious honour it holds of potentially being Australia’s rarest bird. A recent survey estimates that fewer than 20 individuals exist in the world, most of whom reside in a single small area of sandhill in what is now known as Yathong Nature Reserve.

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A carbon credit ratings agency has for the first time awarded a score to a project that has yet to issue any credits, as it seeks to expand its role from the secondary to the primary voluntary carbon market.

European carbon prices declined for the sixth time in the last seven days, dropping to their lowest in four months, as weakening margins for coal-fired power plants depressed demand for EUAs, while German baseload power fell to its lowest since March 2022 and natural gas prices also fell sharply.

Property developers should take advantage of the economic value of nature and integrate biodiversity into their projects, rather than just offsetting their impact, according to software and consultancy company Endangered Wildlife OU.

We sampled 118 rivers and creeks before and after the Black Summer bushfires, searching for platypus DNA. Here’s what we found. Emily McColl-Gausden, Research fellow, The University of Melbourne Andrew Weeks, Associate Senior Research Scientist, The University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A startup reforestation company with plots in Ghana has estimated that its breakeven costs could be as low as $6 per credit, as it eyes the potentially lucrative market for buyers of correspondingly adjusted ITMO credits in Singapore, while the African nation continues to advance its work to export units. 

A UK-based tech company on Tuesday launched a first of its kind cloud-based platform powered by environmental DNA to “equip business for [the] nature reporting boom”, it said.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics rewards research into electrons in "flashes of light".

NSW steal the prize for best performing solar state in September as negative prices in other states slash output.

The post NSW dominates big solar output as other states switch off due to negative prices appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Taiwan is planning to introduce an offset methodology for blue carbon, as the island aims to secure more carbon credits from nature-based projects following the launch of a government-backed voluntary marketplace.

Australia has released its future gas strategy paper for consultation, via which the government hopes to support Australia's gas industry of both users and producers, its vast LNG exports to allies, and its 43% emissions cut to 2030.

Global carbon standard Verra on Tuesday released its new methodology for afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) projects for its VCS programme that will allow the use of dynamic performance benchmarks for the first time.

A conservation group has called on the Australian government to apply stricter integrity principles to the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) scheme, saying recently proposed measures “appear to serve optics more than material outcomes”.

Enel X wins huge demand response contract as W.A. looks to smarter ways to address the growing impact of rooftop solar and the impending closure of coal generators.

The post Massive demand response contract to boost flexibility in world’s most isolated grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.