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Mikhail Gorbachev's legacy and life
Calls for EU to reinstate ban on 'destructive' electric pulse fishing
Campaigners say it causes unnecessary suffering but those in favour of method say it is less damaging than trawling
Groups representing small-scale fishing fleets across Europe have called on the European Union to reinstate a ban on fishing using electrical pulses, which they say is a destructive method.
However, others have called for the technique to continue, saying it causes less disturbance than methods such as trawling the bottom of the seabed.
Continue reading...Closing the loop on e-waste
Country diary: limestone heath is a piece of ecological magic
Goblin Combe, Somerset This is one of those rare habitats where lime-hating and lime-loving plants suck together from the same earth, roots entangled
There is no doubt when you are on the carboniferous limestone. Crags jut out as if the rock is struggling to release itself from its turfy skin, shedding broken stones. Sheep’s fescue, rockrose, kidney vetch and many more lime-loving species form the distinctive close-knit grassland. The signature of this rock is written all over the hill.
At Goblin Combe we cross the limestone turf, heading for my favourite slope. Melted frost has touched every leaf with diamonds and pin-cushioned the anthills with rainbow spangles. And then – so suddenly – wine-dark mounds of bell heather. Lime-hating heather, among all those lime-lovers!
Continue reading...Country diary 1968: a meeting with the bracken-red fox
8 January 1968 The fox was completely absorbed in its own affairs and very catlike in its stance, it stood motionless and its sharp nose pointed at a tuft of winter-pale grass
KESWICK: The first week of the new year often brings strange weather as if it is undecided as to which season it belongs to and one milder morning lately, with soft clouds resting on the snowy fells, there was a smell of growing things in the air. It was an indefinable smell – not the flowering witch hazel, the swelling daphne, or even the balsam poplar whose buds, though furled, can send out sweetness. It was, rather, the exhalation of the earth itself and a promise of growth to come. There were a few wintry daisies in the grass but they are as scentless as snow.
Related: 21st-century fox: how nature's favourite outsider seduced the suburbs
Continue reading...Pollutionwatch: reducing sulphur emissions saves lives – and forests
We used to worry more about acid rain than about climate change. It took years but the agreements made in the Gothenburg Protocol have made a difference
Today we focus our concern on climate change, but 40 years ago it was acid rain and forest die-back that dominated our air and environment debate. In 1977, a new measurement programme showed that the sulphur landing in Scandinavia was far greater than the countries were producing. Industrial coal burning and westerly winds meant that the UK was Europe’s largest exporter of sulphur air pollution. Moving power generation to the countryside and building tall chimneys had reduced local air pollution but did not prevent sulphur being transported over thousands of kilometres.
This was at the height of the cold war. Warsaw Pact countries offered 30% reductions in their sulphur emissions and watched as the western allies were split. The UK was isolated and Canadian provinces were pitched against upwind industrial states in the US.
Continue reading...Frequency and intensity of heatwaves increasing
Agricultural policy under Michael Gove | Letters
Please don’t use the word “subsidy” for payments to farmers who manage land for biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides (Report, 3 January). A subsidy is generally considered a temporary assistance and often comes with an undertone that is negative and undeserved. There is now a large body of analysis and evidence to support paying for services that the market cannot supply. We don’t talk about subsidising nurses for health services, or teachers for educational services. So let’s pay for environmental services on a similar basis.
It is good that Michael Gove is supportive of this approach, but there is no need to leave the EU to do it. With strong UK leadership, the common agricultural policy has been adapted for over 20 years to enable governments to pay farmers for environmental services, and to do this under their own locally devised schemes. The resources allocated for this purpose have been decided domestically, and we could have done much more of this had we chosen. Let’s hope Mr Gove now delivers on his rhetoric.
Allan Buckwell
Professor emeritus of agricultural policy, Imperial College, London
Mesmerised by the mole that dug up my garden | Letters
We had a mole a few years ago that made 17 molehills on our back lawn in as many days (Country diary, 4 January). I watched from the kitchen window each morning as the new hill was being excavated, the earth moving with clumps falling away. A blackbird would stand beside it, watching carefully and taking the worms and insects dislodged – fascinating! This was another wild creature to add to our garden list of frogs, grass snakes, lizards, slowworms and so on and we loved having it, though I must confess to trying to catch it by standing over it when the earth was moving one day and grabbing at the soil, without success. How did it move so quickly? Instead of collecting the soil we raked it back into the grass and eventually the mole departed (to the flower beds) and the area returned to its meadow-like state.
Sallie Bedford
Henfield, West Sussex
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Continue reading...Heading back to the office? Bring these plants with you to fight formaldehyde (and other nasties)
Government pledges £5.7m to develop new northern forest
Plan to plant 50m trees along 120-mile stretch of land next to M62 to provide new habitat for wildlife as well as manage flood risk
The government has pledged £5.7m to kickstart the creation of a new northern forest which would stretch from Liverpool to Hull.
The plans, which are being led by the Woodland Trust, include the planting of 50m new trees along a 120-mile stretch of land running next to the M62. The project is expected to cost £500m over 25 years, with the remaining money being raised by charity.
Continue reading...Northern Forest: Plan to plant 'ribbon of woodland' across England
The eco guide to pensions
Vast amounts are paid into Britain’s pensions schemes and, sadly, much of it still goes into supporting fossil fuels
I have great hopes for earth defending activism this year. And one of the most exciting opportunities involves pensions. Huh? OK, pension schemes and auto enrolment do not immediately shout “riveting”, but it is time to follow the money.
The lion’s share of that giant pot flows in the direction of oil and gas companies
Continue reading...'Pioneer' astronaut John Young dies
Pressure grows for UK to bring in blanket ban on ivory trade
Environmental campaigners believe that public pressure is finally about to force the environment secretary, Michael Gove, to introduce a blanket ban on the commercial trade in ivory in the UK.
A consultation on what form a proposed ban should take has just closed, and the government says it will give its response soon. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is overseeing the consultation, said there had been “a massive public response to the government’s proposed ban on ivory sales”. More than 60,000 responses were received, half of them coming in the week running up to Christmas, making it one of the biggest consultations in Defra’s history. Of the responses analysed so far, the overwhelming majority support a ban.
Continue reading...Stopping the poachers
John Young, US astronaut and pioneer, dies aged 87
The latest cutting-edge technology changing our landscapes? Trees
The UK has been slow to embrace agroforestry, fearing trees compete for valuable space and water. In fact they can increase crop diversity as well as profits, as two pioneering Cambridgeshire farmers have found
“Most people round here think it’s pretty normal for the earth to just blow away,” says Lynn Briggs. “They seem to think it’s what happens and you just have to live with it. It’s even got a name – they call it fen blow.”
But when Lynn and her husband Stephen moved on to their Cambridgeshire farm in 2012 they had some radical farming notions. Against all precedent, the Briggs planted rows of fruit trees at 21-metre gaps in their cereal fields to provide both windbreaks and alternate crops. “Our neighbours thought we were absolutely crazy,” says Stephen. His soil, however, began to stay put.
Continue reading...Country diary: midwinter has its own discreet beauties
Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd A distant, writhing, black line resolves itself into a low-flying flock of scoter ducks
At the western end of Black Rock Sands, the beach where Roman Polanski filmed the battle scenes in his powerfully unsettling 1971 version of Macbeth, is a dark crag of ancient rock, trap-dyked, quartz-seamed, dripping. In it are the sea-caves that Robert Graves inhabited with the “Things never seen or heard or written about” of his poem Welsh Incident (1929). A dull winter’s afternoon intensified their gloom. The bright orange flash of a kingfisher whirred around sombre overhangs until it found shelter among deep shadow. I turned to face seawards.
Related: Climate change is radically reshuffling UK bird species, report finds
Continue reading...The rodent and the walking stick
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