Feed aggregator

Wheat rust has re-emerged in recent years, causing huge crop losses in Africa and Europe — and raising global concern about food security.

We need balanced media reporting about bat-borne diseases to help avoid vilification of Australia's under-appreciated creatures of the night. Justin Welbergen, President of the Australasian Bat Society | Senior Lecturer in Animal Ecology, Western Sydney University Kyle Armstrong, Past president of the Australasian Bat Society | South Australian Museum, University of Adelaide Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Researchers plotted temperature rises against the number of asylum applications and are predicting that as the southern hemisphere heats up the number of people migrating to the EU each year will triple

Climate change will drive a huge increase in the number of migrants seeking asylum in Europe if current trends continue, according to a new study.

The number of migrants attempting to settle in Europe each year will triple by the end of the century based on current climate trends alone, independent of other political and economic factors, according to the research. Even if efforts to curb global warming are successful, the number of applications for asylum could rise by a quarter, the authors predict.

Continue reading...

Almost twice as many badgers have been killed this autumn, after massive expansion of the cull zones

Nearly 20,000 badgers were culled this autumn as part of the government’s attempt to reduce bovine TB in cattle, in what critics called the largest destruction of a protected species in living memory.

The 19,274 dead badgers is almost twice as many as last year after 11 new cull zones were added to a swath of the West Country worst-hit by bovine TB. While some badgers were trapped before being shot, the majority – 11,638 badgers – were killed by free shooting, a method judged inhumane by the British Veterinary Association.

Continue reading...

UK government should make 100-fold increase in the amount of aid spent on dealing with plastic waste, says Tearfund

The British government should divert hundreds of millions of pounds from its aid budget to help developing countries clear up their waste and reduce marine plastic pollution, a charity has said.

The development charity Tearfund is in talks with senior government figures, and hopes to persuade ministers to increase the spending on waste and rubbish collection in the developing world from a few million pounds to hundreds of millions a year.

Continue reading...

Camera footage of road traffic offences can be uploaded onto the Welsh police website Operation Snap

Head to your favoured social media platform and at some point you’ll come across footage or photos of poor and illegal behaviour on the UK’s roads. Among the inevitable comments of outrage and armchair verdicts will inevitably be a discussion about whether the police saw this footage, and if so what action they took.

But with 45 police forces operating across the UK, the biggest problem most people will face is an inconsistency of approach both over how to submit evidence and which forces will accept it.

Continue reading...

Research shows antibiotic use is uneven between farms, making behaviour change a tantalising prospect

A small number of the UK’s dairy farms account for an outsized proportion of antibiotic use, according to new research, suggesting that closer scrutiny of antibiotic prescribing practices could help bring down their use.

A study published in the BMJ publication Vet Record found some farms were using “extremely high levels” of antibiotics in their cattle. While most of the dairy farms surveyed showed lower than average use compared with the averages for all livestock reared in the UK, some outlying farms with high levels of use stood out.

Continue reading...

Mini-ponds have formed in the surface roots of an ancient tree and provide an environment for minute organisms to thrive

The beech that stands at the end of the stepping stones across Waskerley beck is an elephantine presence, dwarfing surrounding trees. The scarred grey bark of its bole has the colour and texture of pachyderm skin. Its moss-covered surface roots seem to be melting into the earth under the massive burden they support. Over decades they have grown and coalesced, creating hollows between them that retain water, fed by rivulets of rainwater trickling down the trunk.

There is a name for these mini-ponds that form on the surface of plants and are habitats for small aquatic organisms: phytotelmata, which translates from the Greek root as “plant ponds”. The best studied are those contained by leaf bases of urn plants or bromeliads that live on branches in rainforest tree canopies. They are breeding sites for frogs, dragonflies and even land crabs.

Continue reading...

Adam Bandt says analysis of emissions targets for electricity sector ‘shows the cost of caving in to the climate deniers’

The Turnbull government’s proposed emissions targets for the electricity sector would mean every car would need to be taken off the roads immediately, or every cow would need to be taken off farms from next year, for Australia to reach the targets it committed to as part of the Paris agreement, according to analysis conducted by the Greens.

While neither measure is a plausible course of action, the Greens say it reveals the significance of the gap left by the weak ambition of the government’s plans for the national energy guarantee.

Continue reading...

2017 has been an impressive year for renewables, but ends with a major cloud hanging over it: what happens once the RET is sorted?

Snowy 2.0 only makes sense if Australia has a much higher share of renewables than contemplated under the NEG.

We asked Josh Frydenberg, Mark Butler and Adam Bandt to share their predictions for 2018 and what's important. This is what they said.

It's been a stellar year for news, readership, podcasts and feedback. We'd like to thank our readers and supporters. We'll be back soon.

Three local banks agree to finance 530MW Stockyard Hill wind project in western Victoria, validating its record low price for wind project in Australia.

Telstra, ANZ lead consortium to buy output from new 429MW wind farm, and lock in similar low price achieved by Origin earlier this year.

Tesla big battery's dramatic intervention after Loy Yang trip, and a separate 0-100MW injection in just 140 milliseconds, illustrates yawning gap between technologies and market rules. The future is here, but market rule makers are not ready for it.

Snake populations worldwide may already be infected with a potentially deadly disease, say scientists.

Chocolate poisoning is a risk to the family dog over the festive season, vets are warning.

A new study warns if the degradation rate continues, all wilderness areas will be at risk over the next 50 years

The world’s last great wildernesses are shrinking at an alarming rate. In the past two decades, 10% of the earth’s wilderness has been lost due to human pressure, a mapping study by the University of Queensland has found.

Over the course of human history, there has been a major degradation of 52% of the earth’s ecosystems, while the remaining 48% is being increasingly eroded. Since 1992, when the United Nations signed up to the Rio convention on biological diversity, three million square kilometres of wilderness have been lost.

Continue reading...

Snowy 2.0 or Snow Job? Costs for Turnbull's pet scheme more than double, the economics are kept secret, and project may do little more than use coal power to push water up hill unless Coalition seeks more wind and solar.