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The Department is seeking public comment on a draft assessment bilateral agreement with Tasmania. Comments close 15 August 2014

Rising demand for luxury pets in the Gulf states taking gruesome toll as two-thirds of snatched cubs are dying en route

The rising trade in cheetahs for luxury pets in the Middle East is helping to drive critical populations of the wild cats to extinction, according to new research. The report also reveals the gruesome toll of the trade, with up to two-thirds of the cheetah cubs being smuggled across the war-torn Horn of Africa dying en route. However, the nations at both ends of the trade have now agreed that urgent action is needed.

Cheetahs, famous as the world’s fastest land animal, have lost about 90% of their population over the last century as their huge ranges in Africa and Asia have been taken over by farmland. Fewer than 10,000 remain and numbers are falling. There is an ancient tradition of using trained cheetahs as royal hunting animals in Africa but, more recently, a growing demand for status-symbol pets in the Gulf states has further reduced populations.

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Research is first to find wide-ranging differences between organic and conventional fruits, vegetables and cereals

Organic food has more of the antioxidant compounds linked to better health than regular food, and lower levels of toxic metals and pesticides, according to the most comprehensive scientific analysis to date.

The international team behind the work suggests that switching to organic fruit and vegetables could give the same benefits as adding one or two portions of the recommended "five a day".

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Laptop-sized product monitors customer's energy usage and can cut it off in times of high demand – and the client gets paid for it

A small iron gate squeezed between a newsagent and printing shop off Carnaby Street in central London is not the obvious location for a business that could avert a British power crunch.

Step inside the cramped, white-painted offices of KiWi Power and it looks more like a tech startup than an energy business – as exemplified by the open shirt and beaded necklace sported by co-founder Ziko Abram.

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Industrial dust and soil, blown thousands of miles, settle on ice sheets and add to rising sea level threat

When American geologist Ulyana Horodyskyj set up a mini weather station at 5,800m on Mount Himlung, on the Nepal-Tibet border, she looked east towards Everest and was shocked. The world's highest glacier, Khumbu, was turning visibly darker as particles of fine dust, blown by fierce winds, settled on the bright, fresh snow. "One-week-old snow was turning black and brown before my eyes," she said.

The problem was even worse on the nearby Ngozumpa glacier, which snakes down from Cho Oyu – the world's sixth highest mountain. There, Horodyskyj found that so much dust had been blown on to the surface that the ability of the ice to reflect sunlight, a process known as albedo, dropped 20% in a single month. The dust that was darkening the brilliant whiteness of the snow was heating up in the strong sun and melting the snow and ice, she said.

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A new book from National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig documents the worst nuclear disaster in history with sobering but stunning images. Ludwig visited Chernobyl nine times in 20 years to tell the stories of the lives of the victims, the exclusion zone and the abandoned city of Pripyat. The book also contains an essay from former president Mikhail Gorbachev on how the accident changed the course of the world's history by accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union

Victor Gaydack is now in his 70s and lives in a Kiev suburb. In April 1986 he was a major in the Russian army, on duty when reactor four at Chernobyl exploded. He was one of tens of thousands of fit, young “liquidators” sent in from all over the Soviet Union to try to make safe the stricken reactor. Since the accident, Gaydack has suffered two heart attacks, and developed severe stomach cancer.

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SENG SA News and Events - July 2014

The Minister for the Environment has published the annual list of classes of products the Minister is proposing to consider, during the next financial year, for some form of accreditation or regulation under the Product Stewardship Act 2011.

Scientists have discovered a kangaroo's tail propels it forward with as much force as its front and hind legs combined

The role of kangaroos’ unusually large, muscular tails appears to have been definitely answered, with scientists discovering the tail propels kangaroos forward with as much force as its front and hind legs combined.

Researchers measured the force the tail exerts on the ground and found it is critical in getting kangaroos moving at slow speeds, to a greater degree than even its legs.

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In his presentation, Stuart will discuss urban sustainability design principles the Adelaide City Council is looking to incorporate into their Urban Design Strategy.

Stuart works within the Design Strategy Team at Adelaide City Councils City Design and Transport Program where they are currently updating councils urban design strategy with a focus on improving the quality of the public realm and incorporating sustainability principles. He has qualifications in Landscape Architecture and Industrial Design.

Cast: AdelaideSBN

Ehsan Sharifi graduated with a Master of Architecture (2002) and Master of Sustainable Design (2011), focusing on pedestrian friendly urban design. His research interests cover quality, livability and the sustainability of public space. Previously he worked as a Lecturer at Shiraz University, focusing on the history and theory of urban design and rehabilitation of existing urban precincts. Ehsan was the recipient of UniSA’s President Scholarship and School of Art, Architecture and Design Scholarship in 2012, and a National AAD Travel Grant in 2013 for his PhD at the sd+b Centre. Ehsan is currently an UHI researcher at Zero Waste Centre for Sustainable Design and Behaviour (sd+b) and workshop supervisor of Sustainable Urban Design at the School of Natural and Built Environment at UniSA, Adelaide.

Cast: AdelaideSBN

'Cardboard' bottle creator produces cup design aimed at cutting 25,000 tones of landfill waste a year

The world's first fully recyclable paper cup will soon make its debut on the UK high street, in a packaging breakthrough that could eventually divert millions of cups away from landfill.

More than 2.5bn cups are thrown away in the UK every year – enough to go round the world five and a half times. But few are recycled and nearly all end up in landfill, creating 25,000 tonnes of waste – enough to fill London's Royal Albert Hall.

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The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on: Natural Temperate Grassland of the South Eastern Highlands and New England Tablelands (listing review for NTG of the Southern Tablelands) ecological community assessment. Comment...

BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit concludes interview with Lord Lawson and Professor Sir Brian Hoskins on climate change and floods broke guidelines on due accuracy

Hugh Muir reports on the leaked decision by the BBC to uphold a complaint about an interview on climate change with Lord Lawson on the Today programme on 13 February.

Justin Webb interviewed both Lawson and Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, about the link between climate change and the winter floods this winter.

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The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the listing assessments of three ecological communities in the Sydney Basin Bioregion: Castlereagh Scribbly Gum and Agnes Banks Woodlands of the Sydney Basin Bioregion ...

The Australian Government reintroduced a package of bills on 23 June 2014 to repeal the carbon tax.

The Australian Government reintroduced a package of bills on 23 June 2014 to repeal the carbon tax.

One of Australia’s internationally important wetlands will receive a boost with environmental water being made available to improve the health of the Hattah Lakes Ramsar site.

Emails and meeting notes show group’s finance department has a long history of problems in its handling of the £58m budget

The handling of Greenpeace International’s £58m budget has been in disarray for years, with its financial team beset by personnel problems and a lack of rigorous processes, leading to errors, substandard work and a souring of relationships between its Amsterdam headquarters and offices around the world, documents leaked to the Guardian show.

Coming after it emerged that a staffer had lost £3m on the foreign exchange market by betting mistakenly on a weak euro, the documents show that the group’s financial department has faced a series of problems, and that its board is troubled by the lack of controls and lapses that allowed one person to lose so much money.

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The man who trained more than 66 countries in open source methods calls for re-invention of intelligence to re-engineer Earth

Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is a man on a mission. But it's a mission that frightens the US intelligence establishment to its core.
With 18 years experience working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years in commercial intelligence and training, Steele's exemplary career has spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.

Steele started off as a Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer. After four years on active duty, he joined the CIA for about a decade before co-founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where he was deputy director. Widely recognised as the leader of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm, Steele went on to write the handbooks on OSINT for NATO, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Forces. In passing, he personally trained 7,500 officers from over 66 countries.

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