Feed aggregator
Rare giant panda cub born at Vienna zoo - mother's fourth
Householders will have to wait at least five years for fracking payments
Government says payments, capped at £10m for communities near wells, will not be made until site is up and running
The government has admitted that payments of up to £10,000 a household for living near a fracking well would not be distributed until a new site begins operating and producing gas – at least five years after exploration begins.
In a consultation on the shale wealth fund published on Monday, officials said that payments would be capped at £10m for each community living near a well, over its lifetime. They also conceded that any money flowing directly to households would not happen until a full-scale fracking industry is up and running.
Unlocking the mystery of Gabon's cuckoo migration – in pictures
Earlier this year photojournalist Toby Smith followed a group of migrating cuckoos to the forests of Gabon, west Africa. His images document the African landscapes in which the globally dwindling cuckoo population spends its winter months away from the UK, and will help conservationists understand how land use change is affecting birds
Continue reading...Rejection of experts spreads from Brexit to climate change with 'Clexit' | Dana Nuccitelli
Clexit calls for withdrawal from climate treaties, rejects the conclusions of 97% of climate science experts and 95% of economics experts
Brexit support and climate denial have many similarities. Many Brexit Leave campaign leaders also deny the dangers of human-caused climate change. Older generations were more likely to vote for the UK to leave the EU and are more likely to oppose taking action on climate change; younger generations disagree, and will be forced to live with the consequences of those decisions. On both issues there’s also a dangerous strain of anti-intellectualism, in which campaigners mock experts and dismiss their evidence and conclusions.
With Brexit, the Leave campaign won the vote, and the UK economy is already feeling the consequences. As Graham Readfearn reported, a new group called “Clexit” (Climate Exit) has formed in an effort to similarly withdraw countries from the successful international climate treaty forged last year in Paris. As the group describes itself:
Continue reading...More than 60% of Maldives' coral reefs hit by bleaching
Scientific survey found all reefs had been affected by high sea surface temperatures, with up to 90% of coral colonies bleached in some areas
More than 60% of coral in reefs in the Maldives has been hit by “bleaching” as the world is gripped by record temperatures in 2016, a scientific survey suggests.
Bleaching happens when algae that lives in the coral is expelled due to stress caused by extreme and sustained changes in temperatures, turning the coral white and putting it at risk of dying if conditions do not return to normal.
Continue reading...Palm oil giant IOI Group regains RSPO sustainability certification
Palm oil producer was stripped of its certification in March 2016 after failing to meet environmental standards, reports BusinessGreen
Palm oil supplier IOI Group has had its certificate for sustainable palm oil reinstated by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), after it was judged to have fulfilled the body’s demands to improve its environmental performance.
In a statement issued last Friday, the RSPO said the palm oil supplier would be re-instated with its certificate from Monday.
Continue reading...'Alarming' trend in Queensland tree clearing figures spurs call for tighter laws
Jackie Trad says action is needed to prevent harm to the Great Barrier Reef as study shows tens of thousands of hectares cleared in catchment areas
Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been cleared in Queensland, a new study has found, after a surge led by cattle graziers under relaxed laws that the state government is seeking to overturn.
A state science department study on land cover released on Sunday found 296,000 hectares of land was cleared in 2014-15, more than a third of it in Great Barrier Reef catchments.
Continue reading...Waste of resources is biggest threat to planet, warns Scottish environment agency
Scotland’s industries and farmers must cut energy, greenhouse gas emissions and resource use as waste overtakes pollution as the major environmental threat, says head of regulator
Scotland’s environment agency has warned the country’s industries and farmers that their waste and inefficiency is now the biggest threat to the environment, overtaking pollution.
In a marked shift in strategy, the regulator’s chief executive, Terry A’Hearn, will urge businesses, farmers and manufacturers to adopt a “one planet prosperity” policy designed to cut their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste and resource use.
Continue reading...Heathrow expansion: Planned price hikes will end budget flights not airport emissions | Leo Barasi
The only way the UK could have another runway without breaking climate change laws would be to increase prices
When the government’s Airports Commission endorsed the expansion of Heathrow last year it was challenged to explain how the UK could expand its airports without breaking climate change laws that limit greenhouse gas emissions.
It was a reasonable question. Like most countries, the UK has a tough emissions target for 2050 and, even though aviation has been given an easy ride compared with other industries, the sector is on course to exceed its generous limit. That’s the case even without adding a new runway. Increasing the number of flights from the UK would put the target further out of reach.
Continue reading...A brief history of being heard
It hasn’t always been easy for individuals or minority groups to speak up for their rights against governments or large corporations. But a series of past events have strived to ensure that all Australians’ voices are being heard.
Continue reading...A hidden meadow alive with flowers and grasshoppers
Marshwood Vale, Dorset The meadow is a waving, dancing, tawny-pink shimmer of grasshopper song
The landscape is dense, dark green and silent. Acres of monocrop ryegrass fields, grown for silage, lie empty, penned between tall hedges and thick, mostly neglected, stands of oak, ash, alder and hazel. The damp clay in the Vale nurtures straight-growing trees of monster size, once prized by the navy. Eager to keep the trees, 16th- and 17th-century farmers would coppice everything, even young oaks, to spoil them for shipbuilding. Today these old oaks can be identified by their strange shapes, branches growing out in sudden clumps from stunted trunks.
Along the line of the ploughed-out bridleway, the ground underfoot is hard and lumpy, the grass a scanty layer over stones and cracked clay. I miss the overgrown footpath through the hedge and have to go back. Pushing aside brambles and nettles, I climb the first wobbly stile and the blackthorn closes around and above me, making a low passageway. Three, four steps with twigs catching at my hair, over the second stile and out into a different environment.
Continue reading...Know your NEM: An average week in an oligopoly
Some facts on climate science for Malcolm Roberts
South Australia signalling the death of base-load generation
Bob Brown will “sit in the way” of bulldozers if Adani coal mine goes ahead
Victoria renewables auction scheme opens for consultation
Kangaroos add 200kW solar system at North Melbourne football HQ
Port Augusta 375MW solar and wind energy park approved for development
Pollutants react in sunshine to form more pollutants
There’s more to summer smog than traffic, heating and industry. Hydrocarbons are chemically reactive and can form thousands of other pollutants
The contribution of diesel exhaust to summer smog has been a topic of hot debate over the last six years.
Not all air pollution comes directly from sources such as traffic, heating and industry. Pollutants are also created from chemical reactions in the atmosphere. This is especially true in summer when stronger sunlight provides extra energy to drive the chemistry. During this July’s hot weather, air drifted over France and the UK, accumulating pollutants that then reacted in the sunshine. The resulting summertime smog reached six on the UK government’s ten point warning scale.
Continue reading...Death by dingo: outsourcing pest control raises uncomfortable questions
Female dingo in Oxley Wild Rivers NP, New South Wales Guy Ballard, CC BY-NCFrom cats and foxes to goats and cane toads, invasive animals are one of Australia’s biggest environmental problems. Over the past few weeks, one Queensland council has been trying a new approach to controlling goats on an offshore island: introducing dingoes from the mainland.
But since dingoes were moved to Pelorus Island to kill goats, passions have overflowed for and against.
Queensland RSPCA chief executive Mark Townend was notable among the opposition. He stressed that his organisation is not against feral animal control, but opposes the “very cruel method” of using dingoes to achieve it.
Some people have also strongly objected to the implantation of poison capsules, containing sodium fluroacetate, into the Pelorus Island dingoes. This is intended to kill them after they have killed the goats.
In a rapidly changing world, people are trying new ways to save wildlife and help the environment. These strategies are forcing us to ask new, and sometimes difficult, ethical questions.
Changing worldHumans have created a global patchwork of degraded environments. Australia has the world’s worst mammal extinction record, as well as booming populations of invasive herbivores and ongoing problems with native habitat loss.
When it comes to managing invasive animals, Australians have often been quick to use lethal “pest” control. Methods include poisoning, trapping and shooting for livestock and wildlife protection, in attempts to reduce populations until impacts reach acceptable levels.
This approach does not sit well with many Australians and it has become common to see vocal opposition to wildlife culling programs that are perceived as indiscriminate, unnecessary or unacceptably cruel.
At the same time, there is increasing support for reintroducing native predators to help fix environmental problems.
Some experts in Australia have suggested that Australia should use dingoes to control invasive herbivores, red foxes and feral cats, following the example of our North American counterparts.
Some call it “rewilding”. Others simply see it as biological control. Regardless, a range of private and public land managers believe that dingoes should be Australia’s primary agents of ecosystem restoration.
Putting aside the debate about the likely success of such schemes, the issue of public acceptance remains. Proponents claim that using dingoes for environmental benefit is both “virtuous” and “free”. But the objections to the use of dingoes for feral goat control shows that there is still widespread dissatisfaction with getting dingoes to do our dirty work.
The ethics of killingEvery control technique has a welfare impact on wildlife, causing some pain and suffering.
We can measure objectively how well a technique works, but assessments of humaneness are always subjective. When people choose lethal control, we condemn animals to death.
Although it has been marketed as “compassionate conservation”, using dingoes for pest control means that other animals will be hunted, maimed and killed. This applies to the animals we want removed, such as goats, as well as to other wildlife that shares the habitat.
The future of using dingoes and other predators as pest controllers hinges on whether or not the public finds it acceptable. Do people draw a line between “natural” ways of killing invasive animals (with dingoes), and more artificial means (such as poison)?
We know, for instance, that dingo attacks can be extremely distressing for livestock producers.
Queensland RSPCA’s opposition to the Pelorus Island trial doesn’t mean an end to rewilding, but it is significant. It reminds us that welfare is an important issue for invasive animal control, regardless of whether humans or animals are doing the killing.
Some people find the notion of dingo-based pest control acceptable, even appealing, but others do not. Just as society expects that we carefully assess the use of poisons, traps or bullets, so too we should consider the welfare impacts of outsourcing death to dingoes and making them our tools for ecosystem management.
Guy Ballard is Project Leader for the Wild Canids in Agri-Ecosystems project, funded by the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre.
Peter Fleming receives funding from Australian and NSW Governments, and the Invasive Animals CRC. He is not affiliated with any political or industry organisation or think tank.
Pages
