Feed aggregator

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...

A baboon squaring up to a leopard, white-tailed eagles, and a cauliflower jellyfish are among this week’s pick of animals from the natural world

Continue reading...

The La Hacienda hotel collapses into the swollen waters of the Sicra river in the Peruvian town of Lircay on Thursday. The foundations of the three-storey tourist hotel, which is built on the river’s edge, eroded due to the constant rainfall over the past week and the rising waters. According to local media, no injuries were reported as all guests had been evacuated before it fell

Continue reading...

US scientists draw controversy as they claim to have fulfilled the decades-long quest to turn hydrogen into a state where it behaves like a metal.

Participants in the world’s biggest wildlife survey this weekend could see droves of charismatic waxwings arriving from Scandinavia, says RSPB

Unusual migrant birds could be seen in UK gardens in the cold snap, experts said as they urged people to take part in the world’s biggest wildlife survey.

More than half a million people are expected to take part in this year’s RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, which is taking place over three days for the first time.

Continue reading...

Would you be game enough to catch a funnel-web spider if it saved a life?

Eric Pillot photographs animals in captivity, amid poorly approximated backdrops of their natural habitats, for his award-winning series In Situ

Continue reading...

MPs from across the political spectrum say the UK prime minister must urge the US president to remain in the global Paris agreement

Prime minister Theresa May must challenge President Donald Trump’s “contempt” for environmental protection and urge him to remain in the global agreement to fight climate change, according to MPs from across the UK’s political parties.

May will meet Trump on Friday in Washington DC and has been warned by MPs that the US president’s approach to global warming could determine whether or not people around the world suffer the worst impacts of climate change, such as severe floods, storms and heatwaves.

Continue reading...

Meet the Sellafield engineer who says playing with pink toys will not deter girls from science careers.

Old Hall Marshes, Essex: Outside the seawall the sombre estuarine mud is densely carved into curled knolls

A tongue of land borrowed from the mouth of the Blackwater estuary. Inside the mile-long V of grassy banks that exclude the sea the tamed land is riven by the contorted veins of once-tidal channels, now filled with freshwater. Today they are frozen into wide, snaking sheets of white. The khaki reeds that fringe the ice blend into fields of dead grass dotted with the greener humps of ancient yellow meadow ant hills.

Outside the seawall the sombre estuarine mud is densely carved into curled knolls by the dendritic tidal excavations. The higher areas are carpeted with a wiry mat of grey-leaved sea purslane, while the exposed mud in the channels is criss-crossed by probing redshank, grey plover and curlew. Between these two zones horizontal rims of salty ice mark the last two nights’ high tides. The air is largely still, under a blue sky, but bears the rich salty reek of saltmarsh, a mixture of whisky, earth and algae.

Continue reading...

QUT and Japan's Sumitomo open pilot plant for concentrating solar photovoltaic technology in Brisbane's southeast.

Canada has unearthed the biggest diamond ever found in North America - the Foxfire.

Researcher says new coal plants aimed at reducing emissions would cost $62b, while the cost using renewables would be $24-$34bn

A plan for new coal power plants, which government ministers say could reduce emissions from coal-generated electricity by 27%, would cost more than $60bn, a new analysis has found.

Achieving the same reduction using only renewable energy would cost just half as much – between $24bn and $34bn – the report found.

Continue reading...

Western Australian Labor party - currently leading in the polls ahead of state election - proposes solar plant and biomass facility in Collie, at the heart of the state's coal industry.

Monstrous, or just misunderstood? National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Fans of the movie Finding Nemo may remember the terrifying fish that scares Dory (a blue tang) and Marlin (a clown fish) at the bottom of a trench.

But in reality this “monster”, a black seadevil, is only about 9 cm long, which would make it about a third of the size of Dory and potentially smaller than Marlin or Nemo.

In 2014, researchers at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute began studying a single black sea devil. It was caught and moved to a special darkroom laboratory designed to simulate its dark and cold natural habitat.

While this misconception or inaccuracy may seem harmless, it could pose problems for future conservation efforts, as people are more likely to support conservation of cute rather than creepy-looking animals.

While the angler fish is easily turned into a scary monster, the similar-sized tiny Pac-Man looking octopus is cute and popular with the public.

Deep sea commercial fishing nothing to celebrate

From 2000-2010, scientists described about 1,200 new species in the Census of Marine Life Program. While this figure may seem astounding, a further 5,000 individual dead creatures are in specimen jars, waiting to be described. The scientific process of describing new species is slow.

Specimens must be methodically collected, identified, and then the identity of new deep-water species must be confirmed.

People have always had a fascination for unusual creatures that they may never see. Many exotic land animals can be seen in zoos around the world, but few deep sea species are on display in aquaria. In the meantime, people on social media are hungry for images of strange and exotic animals of the sea.

As a result, a Russian fisherman working on deep sea commercial trawlers last year gained huge numbers of social media followers after posting photos and videos of some of the deep sea creatures caught on his ship, with some even stuffed by craftsmen on board.

Presumably, many of these specimens are bycatch, accidentally caught in nets trawling for other species popular with consumers. Sometimes bycatch, which includes marine mammals, is thrown back into the sea but it may end up on consumer plates.

If images are posted on social media by laypeople in a way that appears sensational and even heartless, and without any accurate information about the animals, then there is no resulting respect for these sea creatures or educational value. Simply viewing these creatures as freaks, ignores the importance of their role in keeping our oceans healthy.

A tripod fish deep below the Atlantic Ocean. NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research/Flickr, CC BY-SA Deep in danger

Most people will never spend time on a trawler fishing in deep oceans, but marine conservation and management policy depends on all of us being aware of the risks that human activities pose to marine ecosystems, such as deep water fishing, off shore mining and pollution.

If we call unusual deep sea animals monsters or demons or freaks, then we may harm their conservation as people are unlikely to connect with them or care about saving them.

On the other hand, their rarity clearly makes them popular on social media sites. For other species, this has resulted in increases in illegal trafficking for exotic pets, and aquariums. Deep sea species may potentially become illegally sourced taxidermy curiosities or food. Humans may end up eating these animals of the deep to extinction before their species are even known to science.

Rhinochimaera. NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research/Flickr, CC BY-SA Saving our ‘blue heart’

We still have so much to learn about deep marine ecosystems and their inhabitants, which have special adaptations for living in these typically cold and dark waters. With new submarines and technology, scientists are able to explore the ocean more easily.

The deepest part of any ocean is the Challenger Deep valley in the Mariana Trench, part of the Pacific Ocean, which is about 11,000 metres deep. By comparison, Mount Everest is about 8,550 metres tall.

The cold water of the North Atlantic, down to depths of about 1,800m, is home to the Greenland Shark, which can live for as long as 400 years!

A new species of beaked whale has also been discovered recently. It is smaller and darker than other beaked whales, perhaps because it forages for deep sea fish and giant squid at depths of up to 3,000m below sea level.

The public’s perceptions are often based on how ‘cute’ an animal is. NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Every habitat on earth is interconnected, and whatever we as humans do on the ground, or in the oceans has an impact on marine ecosystems. Removing deep sea predators and prey, and disturbing deep sea habitats, will change marine ecosystems in ways that we do not yet understand.

Some experts have compared the rapid global spread of unsustainable fishing technologies and practices to a pathological disease outbreak. Oceans are sometimes called the lifeblood of our planet, while rainforests are its lungs.

In reality, about 80% of our oxygen is produced by microorganisms in the oceans. This makes our oceans both the lungs and lifeblood of our planet. In fact, oceans are the blue heart of our planet and we must all try harder to save them.

Carla Litchfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

World Bank funding is being used to subsidise fossil fuel projects at the expense of cleaner options, a study reports but it is a claim strongly disputed by the World Bank.

On 27 January 1967, the crew of Apollo I were killed when the rehearsal for their mission went wrong.

The remains of a religious pilgrim shed light on how leprosy came to Europe, researchers say.

So-called "clean coal" being pushed by the Coalition government would be expensive and would not meet long term emission reduction goals.

Statement of claim lodged at federal court alleges that a general manager said company calculated it was cheaper to pay fines than comply with regulations

Origin Energy has had a deliberate policy of ignoring coal seam gas wells that have been leaking and an offshore gas well that has potentially been leaking for more than a decade, a corporate whistleblower has alleged.

The claims, filed in a revised statement of claim to the federal court and denied by Origin Energy, suggest Origin also failed to properly measure the amount of gas it was producing and therefore underpaid its royalties to the Queensland government – something the whistleblower says senior management were alerted to but also ignored.

Continue reading...