Feed aggregator
Bear cubs spending longer with mothers
Elephant seen 'smoking' in southern India – video
Footage of an elephant blowing ash has baffled wildlife experts, who say they've never seen behaviour like it before. The video released by the Wildlife Conservation Society may be an example of zoopharmacognosy, animal self-medication
Continue reading...Labor and Greens fail in first attempt to disallow Coalition's marine park plans
Parties have the option of redrafting the disallowance and resubmitting it as soon as Wednesday
A first attempt by Labor and the Greens to disallow controversial new marine park management plans proposed by the Turnbull government last week has failed in the Senate after the government flipped the order of business and brought on the chamber debate.
The Turnbull government on Tuesday night pulled its proposal to lower the tax rate for big business to 25% and abruptly changed the order of business in the Senate to force consideration of Labor’s disallowance motion on the marine parks.
Continue reading...Call for post-Brexit trade deals to safeguard against invasive species
Conservation charities estimate cost of dealing with predators at £2bn a year, and warns this may spiral without strong prevention measures
Invasive species such as Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and New Zealand flatworms must be subject to stronger safeguards after Brexit, a group of conservation charities has urged, or the cost of dealing with them may spiral.
They fear that future increased international trade outside EU rules could threaten further invasions, while the status of safeguards under potential trade deals could be put in doubt.
Continue reading...Hotting up: how climate change could swallow Louisiana's Tabasco island
With thousands of square miles of land already lost along the coast, Avery Island, home of the famed hot sauce, faces being marooned
Avery Island, a dome of salt fringed by marshes where Tabasco sauce has been made for the past 150 years, has been an outpost of stubborn consistency near the Louisiana coast. But the state is losing land to the seas at such a gallop that even its seemingly impregnable landmarks are now threatened.
The home of Tabasco, the now ubiquitous but uniquely branded condiment controlled by the same family since Edmund McIlhenny first stumbled across a pepper plant growing by a chicken coop on Avery Island, is under threat. An unimaginable plight just a few years ago, the advancing tides are menacing its perimeter.
Continue reading...Country diary: conflicted by the regimented lines of coppicing
Barford Wood and Meadows, Northamptonshire: Yes, the trees have established beautifully, but a randomness to the planting pattern would be more aesthetically pleasing
Again the landscape is etched with snow. The footpath to Barford Wood and Meadows from Rushton village crosses first under the Midland mainline, emerging on to a wide and exposed field where the chilled wind bites, before passing over the Corby branch line and on to the nature reserve; a tapering wedge of land, bound on the west by the railway and by the thundering A43 on the east.
Continue reading...Good climate policy is beyond the Australian government – and maybe it should be
This is how baseload gets replaced by renewables and storage
How renewables trumped brown coal and gas over Australia’s summer
Solar plus storage spells doom for gas peakers
Redflow recruits new skills for next phase of growth
Baker McKenzie advises on the A$350 million project financing of Neoen’s Bulgana Green Power Hub – an integrated wind farm and Tesla battery storage facility located in regional Victoria
LONGi Solar Wins TUV Rheinland PV module energy yield simulation award
Big Oil sets sights on Australia’s transitioning energy market
Nissan LEAF arrival in Australia may be pushed out to 2019
Victoria calls on federal government to fund fresh reviews of forestry agreements
A row between state and federal ministers has thrown Victoria’s long-term native forest logging agreements into disarray
The future of long-term native forest logging agreements in Victoria is uncertain because of a row with the federal government over the need to carry out fresh scientific assessments.
Three of Victoria’s regional forest agreements (RFAs) – in east Gippsland, the central highlands and the north east regions – were extended on Monday on a short-term basis, to 31 March 2020.
Continue reading...