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'Haywire' seasons lead to freak year for nature, says National Trust
Warmer weather has been good for some of the UK’s flora and fauna, while others have suffered or almost disappeared completely
“Haywire” seasons caused by global warming are having a worrying effect on flora and fauna, a leading conservation charity has warned.
In its annual wildlife and weather review, the National Trust said mixed-up seasons and warming seas in 2017 had led to a “freak” year for nature.
Continue reading...You might be Christmassed out, but these Australian birds are festive all year
Clarets fans can avoid blue passport misery | Brief letters
The global plastic binge (Report, 26 December) needs more than “serious source reduction efforts”. I have just completed a dry-season 10-day voyage along the Irrawaddy river in Myanmar, and did a similar trip down the Mekong river in Vietnam last year. The river banks are sadly festooned with plastic waste tipped there in the absence of municipal refuse collection. Come the rainy season the whole lot will be swept into the sea.
Giles Youngs
Drinkstone, Suffolk
• My front garden has become a repository for rubber bands. Does the Post Office do an annual audit of them?
Cleo Sylvestre
London
Prince Charles: 'Technology won't solve climate change'
How the plight to save a bird species shows how to bridge the red/blue divide
A plan to save the sage grouse was a rare instance where ranchers, the timber industry, scientists, landowners and environmentalists all agreed on something
At 5am, the day is black, and resounds with the steady drum of rain. My husband Rich is getting ready for work. He oils his leather gloves and fills a Thermos. He’ll spend a 10-hour day in the downpour: tramping through thorny salmonberry and wading through the roaring creeks.
We live in the Oregon Coast Range, a region that’s been in steady economic decline since the sawmills began shutting down in the late 1980s. Before Rich got this job we were living hand to mouth. Now things are looking up. It won’t make us wealthy, but Rich has scored one of the best jobs in our remote neck of the woods.
Continue reading...Back from the brink
'Coral bleaching is getting worse ... but the biggest problem is pollution'
Conservationists are battling to save the 700-mile Mesoamerican Barrier Reef in the Caribbean suffering the effects of mass tourism and global warming
The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef is the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere – an underwater wilderness stretching over 700 miles along the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.
One of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Americas, the reef is home to a dazzling variety of coral and more than 500 species of fish, and provides a livelihood for more than a million people. But now, a combination of mass tourism and poor waste management has left the reef increasingly vulnerable to climate change, placing this natural wonder in serious trouble.
Continue reading...'I have a lot of enemies': the Honduran marine park rangers facing death threats
The tropical island of Roatán is a gold mine for tourism and fishermen but those protecting the reef want tougher laws to turn the area into a no-take zone
“I’m like one of those old-school gangsters,” says Ralston Brooks, a park ranger on the island of Roatán off the coast of Honduras. “If you’re going to do it, do it. Pop a cap.”
The 37-year-old boat captain says he faces regular death threats from local fishermen because of his work patrolling the island for illegal fishing. “I have a lot of enemies. But you’ve got to suck it up: if we don’t do this, the reef will be gone.”
How did half of the great Florida coral reef system disappear?
Overfishing, development and pollution have all contributed to the reef’s decline, but climate change is its biggest threat. UN targets must be met to stop ocean acidification
The great Florida coral reef system stretches hundreds of miles down the eastern seaboard of the US. It is the world’s third largest, and nearly 1,400 species of plants and animals and 500 species of fish have been recorded there.
But last year marine scientists found nearly half the reef was missing. They took the latest satellite images, compared them with precisely drawn 250-year-old British admiralty charts and found them nearly identical.
The Amazon town, a coral reef, big oil, and a catastrophe waiting to happen
Oiapoque, surrounded by mangroves and close to a recently discovered 600-mile reef, is divided over what BP and Total might bring and what they might destroy
Anchored in shallow, cloudy waters just a few hundred yards from the mangrove swamps that dominate this wild and empty coastline, the fishermen rolled in their nets. The three men had spent five days at sea and their catch glittered on the deck.
“It’s good fishing,” said Cleyton Celeiro, 26, who feeds his wife and two children with money earned on trips to the Amapá state coast, on the far north-eastern corner of the Amazon. “It’s beautiful, I like it. I’m proud to be a fisherman.”
Continue reading...'We don’t have time to wait and see': air pollution protesters resort to direct action
Campaigners vow to continue to block traffic at sites across London until their demands are heard and political action to reduce pollution levels is taken
As the green man appeared on the pedestrian crossing a couple of dozen people dressed in Santa hats and tinsel shuffled into the road at one of London’s busiest roundabouts.
Moments later, in the early morning gloom, a banner was unfurled and the small group of pensioners, students and workers – armed with home-made road signs and leaflets – had blocked both lanes of the dual carriageway.
Continue reading...Brushes with the wild: readers' best wildlife photographs of 2017
As the year draws to a close, we celebrate the finest wildlife photos our readers’ have snapped this year – from fantastic foxes to thirsty chamois calves
Continue reading...Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution | Dana Nuccitelli
“Technocognition” proposes that we use technology and psychology to break through the mental barriers that make people deny threats like climate change
People are very good at finding ways to believe what we want to believe. Climate change is the perfect example – acceptance of climate science among Americans is strongly related to political ideology. This has exposed humanity’s potentially fatal flaw. Denying an existential threat threatens our existence.
But that’s exactly what many ideological conservatives do. Partisan polarization over climate change has steadily grown over the past two decades. This change can largely be traced to the increasingly fractured and partisan media environment that has created an echo chamber in which people can wrap themselves in the comfort of “alternative facts” (a.k.a spin and lies) that affirm their worldviews. We’ve become too good at fooling ourselves into believing falsehoods, which has ushered in a dangerous “post-truth” era, with no better example than the subject of climate change.
Does this croc found in Australian suburb belong to you?
County diary: lines made by walking
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire Thawing snow highlights the paths people – and animals – take through the landscape
A thin white track up the field marked where footsteps of schoolchildren, dog walkers and ramblers had compacted the snow and turned it to ice. When the thaw came only the narrow ice track remained: white, opalescent, slippery and dangerous to walk on. People took to the sides of the path, already claggy from before the snow, making the white line through dark earth even more pronounced.
I was reminded of the work of the land artist Richard Long. A Line Made by Walking (1967), Long’s photograph of a simple line that he had walked through short grass, had been really inspiring for me – as enigmatic as a ley line, a ghost image, ephemeral and transient. It had an important influence on how I saw marks in the landscape as a kind of writing.
Continue reading...Summer snake catchers
Don't let your pet accidentally get drunk this silly season (sorry Tiddles)
It’s time to join the renewables revolution | Letters
The government’s decision to allow pension funds to dump investments in fossil fuels (Boost for fossil fuel divestment as UK eases pension rules, 18 December) is a major step forward but, with such progress on the issues around “fiduciary duty”, it is increasingly puzzling that MPs are still denied a say over where our pensions are invested – and blocked from holding our trustees to account. Over the last few years, I have repeatedly urged ministers to take action to clean up the MPs’ pension scheme, but they’ve been consistently obstructive. A failure to clean up this fund would be a dereliction of duty.
If the government is serious about handing people control over their investments, they should urgently get their own house in order, by forcing the parliamentary pension fund to be more transparent – and to lead the way by divesting our savings from climate-wrecking fossil fuels.
Caroline Lucas MP
Green, Brighton Pavilion
Sea smoke phenomenon on Lake Superior, Minnesota
Ian Langford obituary
Ornithologist, conservationist and publisher with a special interest in wildlife art
Ian Langford, who has died of oesophageal cancer aged 61, was a conservationist and publisher with a special interest in wildlife art. He showcased the work of artists who were also passionate about conservation, such as John Threlfall and Carry Akroyd. The Langford Press art books he issued were sumptuous large-format volumes packed with pictures and sketches based on the patient observation of natural landscapes and animals.
Modest, generous, always brimming with ideas, Langford was a man of many parts. He was first and foremost an ornithologist, but served a long apprenticeship as a trainee craftsman, and also spent some time as a community tutor in Scotland. For several years, he and his wife, Angela, ran a specialist book shop in Wigtown, an experience that led to the establishment of Langford Press in 2001.
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