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Coral bleaching has hit two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef within two years, surveys show.

Originally published in the Guardian on 13 April 1967

NORTH DEVON: At the time of writing no oil from the Torrey Canyon has reached local beaches. On the other hand one has never had to look very far for oil waste in its coagulated state during recent years. It occurs in tiny pulverised fragments, indistinguishable from some of the constituents of shingle till it adheres to one’s foot, and in lumps up to the size of a football. The oiled carcass of a gannet or an auk is an only too familiar sight on the high water mark.

The Atlantic drift which brings oil on to our coastline also carries less objectionable material: seeds, skeletons and bodies of sea creatures, shells, many of which have travelled a very long distance. Among these are seed cases and fruit from trees which are native to the banks of the Amazon; the flat, purple Entada scandens, the Sacoglottis amazonica, Mucuna the fruit of a climbing plant; objects which are of the size of a marble or golf ball. At the other end of the scale whales and sharks in addition to ships are sometimes cast up. What appeared to its discoverers to be the exceptionally well-preserved bones of “an extinct prehistoric reptile” turned out to be the skeleton of a whale buried by locals, as the simplest method of disposing of its bulk, earlier in the century. And when an expert hurried out to inspect an “Elizabethan canon” uncovered by the tide, he found it to be the rusted end-section of an old sewer!

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The big lie propagated by government and big business is that it is possible to turn things around for the reef without tackling global warming

Once upon a time, in the distant 60s and 70s, the Great Barrier Reef faced imminent destruction. Tenement applications for drilling and mining covered vast swathes of the reef, with both government and industry enthusiastically backing the plans for mass exploitation.

In the face of the reef’s impending doom a motley collection of ordinary Australians shared a common determination that something had to be done. But the odds didn’t look good. The poet turned campaigner Judith Wright wrote that “if it had not been for the public backing for protection of the reef that we knew existed, we might have given up hope”.

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Aerial surveys of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef conducted in late 2016 and early 2017 show the Unesco world heritage site has suffered severe coral bleaching for the second year in a row. According to Prof Terry Hughes, who conducted the surveys, the bleaching is caused by ‘record-breaking temperatures driven by global warming’

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‘Last year was bad enough, this is a disaster,’ says one expert as Australia Research Council finds fresh damage across 8,000km

Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found.

The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover.

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‘The combined impact of this bleaching stretches for 1,500km, leaving only the southern third unscathed,’ says Prof Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, who undertook aerial surveys in 2016 and 2017. He has warned Australia faces a closing window to take action on climate change in time to save the reef

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Warmer days are welcome, but this is often our most polluted time of year, with agriculture one of the biggest culprits

Longer days are here at last, but in terms of air quality, spring is often our most polluted time of year. Pollutants left over from the northern hemisphere winter cause increased ozone at ground level. Coastal areas are most vulnerable and the problem tends to move south through spring.

During March, ozone on Shetland reached four on the UK’s 10-point warning scale. Heavy fertiliser use and spreading manure that was stored over winter causes big releases of ammonia each spring. This reacts chemically with pollution from traffic and industry to create particles that can stay in the air for a week or more. These caused pollution to reach eight on the UK’s 10-point scale across England in February, and six during March.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s response to the looming east coast gas shortage has been to secure a promise from gas producers to increase domestic supply.

In a televised press conference last month, he said:

We must continue the pressure on state and territory governments to revisit the restrictions on gas development and exploration.

But if an onshore gas boom is indeed in the offing, my research suggests that gas companies should tread carefully and take more seriously the social context of their operations.

Shell chief executive Erik van Beurden, one of the big players in the Australian gas industry, recently admitted that “social acceptance [for our industry] is just disappearing”, while Shell Australia’s chairman Andrew Smith last year urged the industry to be less hubristic and more willing to collaborate.

Industrial developments have social consequences, particularly in the case of unconventional gas extraction. But my analysis of the social research done by gas firms in the Darling Downs – Queensland’s coal seam gas heartland – indicates a lack of rigorous research to identify community attitudes.

I looked specifically at the “social impact assessments” carried out for Arrow Energy’s Surat Gas Project. I evaluated this assessment against the academic literature on best-practice methods and the results of my own anthropological fieldwork on coal seam gas developments in the Darling Downs, including interviews and participant-observations among a broad variety of residents. This included farmers with and without gas wells on their land, town residents, Indigenous people, activists, and those who viewed the industry favourably.

In my experience, the industry’s social impact assessments do not generally meet the benchmark of good social anthropological research. They are largely completed using computer surveys, with limited amounts of direct local fieldwork and relatively little real attention paid to the particular issues raised by vulnerable groups or what actually matters to local communities.

Social impact assessments should be participatory and take into account the unequal distribution of the impacts among local populations. Some people will feel the impacts more than others – this means that in-depth research in the region is required.

A desktop analysis of census data, complemented with information obtained during a few “consultation” meetings, is unlikely to reveal the variety of impacts caused by industrial projects. The conclusion is that such studies, combined with a regulatory agenda that prioritises economics, have created problematic “silences in the boom”.

Conflicting priorities

In Australia, policies governing extractive industries such as onshore gas are mostly viewed in terms of economic cost and benefit – or to use the current mantra, jobs and growth. The projects themselves, meanwhile, are seen chiefly as a series of technical challenges to be overcome by scientists and engineers.

Public concerns about the effect on quality of life or uncertainties about underground impacts are commonly dismissed as irrational, emotional or uninformed. But the main problem faced by onshore gas producers is not an engineering one.

Social research has shown that the fundamental problems include lack of trust between gas producers and local communities, as well as differing views on livelihoods, culture and the environment.

In the coal seam gas fields of the Darling Downs – a rural and agricultural area – the effects on the ground, including concerns about extraction techniques such as fracking really matter. While individual gas wells typically have a relatively small footprint of about one hectare, the cumulative regional footprint of numerous connected gas fields and associated infrastructure is considerable.

The management of the impacts is negotiated in individual agreements with landholders as well as indigenous groups with traditional connections to country. Dealing with this social world is relatively new to many oil and gas companies that have previously focused mainly on offshore projects.

Unconventional gas and fracking developments have led to demonstrations, blockades, and the rise of vocal anti-fracking groups both in Australia and around the world. Gas producers in Colorado, for example, seem to have been shocked and surprised at the level of protest against fracking, a technique they have used for decades.

Instead of dismissing public concerns as irrational or ill-informed, politicians and gas producers could look carefully at why their proposals provoke these reactions. Just calling for more gas, more science, and less red tape is unlikely to diminish anti-fracking sentiment.

Invisible gas

Gas can be scary. It is everywhere and nowhere. You can’t feel it, see it, hear it or smell it unless you add something to it or measure it with an expensive device. Gas doesn’t have the same cultural symbolism as coal, the black gold of our settler history, or the Snowy Mountains, scene of the great “nation-building” hydroelectric project that Turnbull has pledged to make even bigger.

Anti-fracking activists, meanwhile, have sought to imbue gas with a cultural symbolism that draws on the underground world of demons and danger. Footage of burning tapwater is a potent example of “matter out of place”. No matter that methane is sometimes found naturally in water. Cultural anxieties are rarely be eased by natural science.

So while the federal government and industry figures call on states and territories to ease restrictions on gas exploration, they should bear in mind that unconventional gas can provoke strong anxiety and opposition. The architects of Queensland’s coal seam gas boom were slow to recognise this.

Energy is fundamental to our ways of life, and social support is crucial for the companies that provide this energy. Such support is not earned with desktop studies or by dismissing non-economic concerns. It is earned with genuine engagement and social policies that take seriously the experiences and diverse views of people now on fractured and uncertain ground.

Kim de Rijke works for The University Queensland and intermittently undertakes contract native title research for Indigenous groups around Australia. He received funding for his postdoctoral research on coal seam gas and fracking disputes in Queensland and the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales from The University of Queensland.

Leaving the EU could make moving animals abroad for breeding programmes a lot harder. But how easy is it to transport zoo inhabitants across the continent anyway?

In the latest warnings about the effects of a post-Brexit future, it isn’t just humans who could be affected. The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums has said that leaving the EU without a deal could threaten already endangered species, whose survival depends on easy access to Europe-wide breeding programmes.

At the moment, breeding progammes in Europe are overseen by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), and work efficiently thanks to shared resources and free movement. “I think the lack of clarity [over post-Brexit legislation] is the largest concern for us,” says Zak Showell, animal records registrar at Twycross zoo. “There are more than 400 breeding programmes operated by EAZA. These breeding programmes are there to ensure the genetic and population survival of those species we have in captivity.”

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Government will also instruct councils to end charging at tips, and issue on-the-spot fines for motorists caught throwing rubbish

Fly-tippers could be forced to pick up litter as part of community service, the environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, has said.

The government will also instruct councils to end the “unfair” practice of charging people to use tips, which Leadsom said could be a lead factor in the rise of fly-tipping.

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Not so long ago, they were the pests that made a mess on the lawn. But now they have crept into our homes – their images on mugs, cushions and tea towels – into TV adverts, fashion and literature

British cities are full of foxes. Within a mile of my home in east London, there is one with an organic gastro menu, one stuffed with feathers that, when plumped, makes my desk chair more comfortable, and another, in pen and ink, on the masthead of the Hackney Citizen. There is one on a mug, another on a toast rack, one on a poster advertising the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. And then, of course, there are the two – one a little mangy, the other fine and bushy – that visit my back garden. I say “visit”, but I doubt they see it like that.

Foxes are having a moment in popular culture. Admittedly, I have a highly sensitive fox radar, because four years ago I started to write a novel, called How to be Human, about a woman who sees a fox on her lawn one day, and thinks he winks at her. She becomes obsessed with him – she never doubts he is a he – and undergoes a, let’s say, emotional rewilding. I had only written two chapters when Sarah Hall won the BBC short story award with Mrs Fox, and the Norwegian duo Ylvis released their song The Fox (What Does the Fox Say)? I remember feeling aghast that the fox was finished.

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With the Trump administration poised to roll back rules on smog and drilling off Alaska and the east coast, environmental campaigners are ready for legal action

Environmental campaigners promised on Saturday to wage fierce and protracted legal battles against “outrageous and wrong-headed” Trump administration moves to open Atlantic and Arctic waters for drilling and loosen smog limits.

Related: Environmentalists sue EPA for reversing Obama-era move to ban pesticide

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Australian rooftop solar installations reached record number for the first quarter, as consumers reacted to soaring electricity bills.

The UN’s 17-point plan to save the planet is ambitious but will keep humanity on track

It’s important to have goals (I’m sure that’s what life coaches say). But even if you’re laidback about your own prospects there is no reason to lack ambition for the planet and humanity.

On the face of it the 17 Global Goals (also called Sustainable Development Goals) ratified by the UN and adopted by all countries in 2015 are moon-shootingly ambitious. They aim to “end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all” by 2030.

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SENG Vic News April 2017

See the animals born since the world's been watching for April the giraffe to give birth

Human activity has put wildlife around the world at risk, but many creatures are now thriving thanks to conservationists

The saiga antelope makes a strange pin-up for the conservation world. With its odd bulbous nose and spindly legs, it is an unlovely looking creature – particularly when compared with wildlife favourites such as the polar bear or panda.

But the survival of Saiga tatarica tatarica is important, for it gives hope to biologists and activists who are trying to protect Earth’s other endangered species from the impact of rising populations, climate change and increasing pollution. Once widespread on the steppe lands of the former Soviet Union, the saiga has suffered two major population crashes in recent years and survived both – thanks to the endeavours of conservationists. It is a story that will be highlighted at a specially arranged wildlife meeting, the Conservation Optimism Summit, to be held at Dulwich College, London, this month and at sister events in cities around the world, including Cambridge, Washington and Hong Kong. The meetings have been organised to highlight recent successes in saving threatened creatures and to use these examples to encourage future efforts to halt extinctions of other species.

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Director of CEDIB in Cochabamba says they’re being punished for criticising natural resource exploitation and other government policies

One of Bolivia’s leading social and environmental organisations has been plunged into crisis after being told it must clear out of its current premises storing millions of records and tens of thousands of books and other publications.

The Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB) runs one of the biggest and most important libraries in the country, but was told recently it had just two days to leave. The order came from the new rector of the state-run University Mayor de San Simon (UMSS), where CEDIB has been based since 1993. Here CEDIB’s director, Marco Gandarillas, in Cochabamba, tells the Guardian, via email, what has been going on:

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Scientists at University College London are working on a project to capture aromas for their historic value.

South Uist The plumage of the few birds present seems to be in harmony with the muted colours of the day

The hail shower begins within seconds of the car coming to a halt. Driven by furious gusts, the ice pellets ping off the roof and rattle against the windscreen, sliding down the glass to obscure the sight of the sand and the sea beyond. Then, departing as swiftly as it arrived, the squall is past, the wind subsiding again to a stiff breeze. Getting out for a walk, which had seemed so unlikely just a few minutes before, now becomes a certainty.

Down on the beach there is a curious quality about the day, for it is both bright and simultaneously without clarity. After yesterday’s gale the pale sea still shows line after line after line of foam-topped waves, which, despite the falling tide, are still surging as far up the sand as their diminishing energy will allow.

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