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The moment Australian eagle punches a drone out of the sky – video

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-08-13 21:12

A wedge-tailed eagle, also known as an eaglehawk, takes down a drone as it is flown over grassland in Victoria, Australia. Melbourne Aerial Video, the company which captured the footage, says the eagle – Australia’s largest bird of prey, highly-territorial and known to fly at 6,000ft – escaped unharmed

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Humans have already used up 2015's supply of Earth's resources – analysis

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-08-13 07:00

Earth ‘overshoot day’ – the day each year when our demands on the planet outstrip its ability to regenerate – comes six days earlier than 2014, with world’s population currently consuming the equivalent of 1.6 planets a year

Humans have exhausted a year’s supply of natural resources in less than eight months, according to an analysis of the demands the world’s population are placing on the planet.

The Earth’s “overshoot day” for 2015, the point at which humanity goes into ecological debt, will occur on Thursday six days earlier than last year, based on an estimate by the Global Footprint Network (GFN).

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96m water-saving shade balls released into LA reservoir – video

The Guardian - Wed, 2015-08-12 19:00

The final tranche of 96m black plastic shade balls is released into the Los Angeles reservoir at Sylmar, to help improve water quality and prevent evaporation. The LA water and power department began pouring the balls into the water two months ago, as can be seen in the first clip, and the final balls are introduced this week.

The idea was conceived in 2007 in an effort to prevent the reservoir becoming contaminated with bromate, a substance formed when chemicals in the water react with sunlight. The balls are a relatively low-cost solution, at $34.5m, and are expected to save about $250m over 10 years, and prevent 300m gallons of water evaporating

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Produced but never eaten: a visual guide to food waste

The Guardian - Wed, 2015-08-12 16:00

Whether the wastage is measured in tonnes of spoiled goods, hectares of agricultural land or household expenditure, the scale is frightening

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'Slippery customer': police snare carpet python in London park

The Guardian - Wed, 2015-08-12 03:49

Met officer tweets details of snake chase in Wandsworth, which came a day after two royal pythons were found in Twickenham

Police have captured a “feisty” 1.5-metre snake that was on the loose in south London. Officers were called to a park in Wandsworth where the carpet python was found slithering along the edge of a fence.

In a series of tweets, Supt Steve Wallace of the Metropolitan police revealed how a team of three officers snared the “slippery customer” – thought to have been an escaped or dumped exotic pet – using a ballistic bag.

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How to overtake cyclists – the video all drivers should watch

The Guardian - Wed, 2015-08-12 00:36

The Highway code requires vehicles to give cyclists at least as much space as a car - but many cars endanger lives by ignoring this. Chris Boardman features in a new YouTube video that aims to help change that

“Socialism,” wrote the 1970s Chilean politician José Viera Gallo, “can only arrive by bicycle.” That’s why Jeremy Corbyn cycles everywhere. And come the revolution, prime minister Corbyn will see to it that this land of ours will be festooned with bike paths. Not the usual “crap” ones, oh no, the Corbynite cycleways will be clause IV bike paths, nationalised, surfaced with butter-smooth tarmac and wider than a wide thing.

Until then, we’ve got to make do with less then wholesome conditions, and that means sometimes sharing the road with tonnes of tin driven by texting, speeding, tweeting motorists.

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Australia sets 2030 emissions reduction target

Department of the Environment - Tue, 2015-08-11 14:01
The Australian Government has agreed a target of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
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Diary of an urban peregrine falcon nest in Chicago – in pictures

The Guardian - Mon, 2015-08-10 21:00

Rare images of wild peregrine falcons chart their entire nesting cycle from brooding to hatching and finally fledging from their tower block home. Images by Luke Massey

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Green Army Round Four

Department of the Environment - Mon, 2015-08-10 13:22
Round Four of the Green Army Programme is now open, applications close Wednesday 16th September 2015.
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Extension to ecological community assessment timeframe

Department of the Environment - Mon, 2015-08-10 13:19
The Minister has agreed to extend the timeframe for the Banksia dominated woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain bioregion ecological community assessment.
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Night parrot capture and tagging hailed as 'holy grail' moment for bird lovers

The Guardian - Mon, 2015-08-10 12:26

The area of south-west Queensland where the elusive nocturnal parrot, presumed extinct, was caught is now to be protected

The elusive night parrot, a species thought to be extinct for about 100 years, has finally been captured and tagged by scientists as part of a pioneering project to safeguard the remaining ground-dwelling birds.

Aside from two dead parrots found over the past 25 years, the night parrot had not been captured since the 1890s and was presumed extinct by many bird experts.

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20 Million Trees Competitive Grants Round Two

Department of the Environment - Mon, 2015-08-10 10:06
Round Two of the 20 Million Trees Programme’s competitive grants is now open, applications close 2.00pm AEST (Canberra time) 6 September 2015.
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OMG… Greenland’s ice sheets are melting fast

The Guardian - Sun, 2015-08-09 16:00
Nasa’s Oceans Melting Greenland study will deploy 200 robot probes to measure the full extent of Arctic climate change

An urgent attempt to study the rate at which Greenland’s mighty ice sheets are melting has been launched by Nasa. The aim of the six-year project, called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG), is to understand how fast the world’s warming seas are now eroding the edges of the island’s vast icecaps. Warming air temperatures are already causing considerable glacier loss there, but the factors involving the sea that laps the bases of its great ice masses, and which is also heating up, are less well understood.

Greenland contains vast reservoirs of ice which, if completely melted, would raise world sea levels by more than six metres. However, some influences on its current dramatic melting are poorly understood. Hence the decision to launch OMG, an acronym that the project leader, Joshua Willis, admits he “barely squeezed past the censors”.

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Where are the world's ants? First ever map detailing 15,000 species launched

The Guardian - Fri, 2015-08-07 11:42

Four-year project maps location of species, with Australian state of Queensland found to host the greatest number of native species

The world’s first ever ant map showing the distribution of the tiny industrious creatures around the globe was launched on Thursday by the University of Hong Kong in a bid to shed more light on the insect world.

The colourful interactive online map which took four years to complete, displays the geographic locations of nearly 15,000 types of ants, with the Australian state of Queensland home to the highest number of native species at more than 1,400.

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Fresh for Spring in the Lachlan River

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2015-08-07 10:06
Native fish in the Lachlan River will benefit from environmental watering this month.
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Chairs' Update 6 August 2015 | Commonwealth Marine Reserves Review

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2015-08-07 10:01
Find out the latest updates on the Commonwealth Marine Reserves Review.
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Wasp masters turn enslaved spiders into zombies to build their nests

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-08-06 19:11

Parasitic wasp larvae drug their orb spider hosts into altering their normal webs to create a perfect nest for them to transform into adult wasps

People associate wasps with memories of picnic invasions, BBQs under siege, and painful stings. There is a lot more to these much-maligned insects though, and with more than 100,000 different species, their life histories range from the quietly unobtrusive to the bizarre and gruesome. A new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology documents one such disturbing example of wasp larvae that takes control of their unfortunate spider hosts.

The Japanese scientists behind the study thought the host-parasite relationship between the wasp Reclinervellus nielseni (most wasps have only a scientific name) and its orb-weaver spider host Cyclosa argenteoalba could help us understand how parasitic organisms alter their host’s behaviour.

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Draft Outcomes-based conditions policy and guidance

Department of the Environment - Wed, 2015-08-05 11:54
The Department of the Environment is releasing a draft set of policy and guidelines for public comment from 10 August 2015 to 5 October 2015.
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National Taxonomy Grants 2016–2017 Research and Capacity-Building Grants

Department of the Environment - Wed, 2015-08-05 11:18
The 2016–2017 Research and Capacity-Building Grants rounds are OPEN. Applications close 2pm [AEDT] on Wednesday 28 October 2015
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Are plants intelligent? New book says yes

The Guardian - Tue, 2015-08-04 18:43

A new book, Brilliant Green, argues that not only are plants intelligent and sentient, but that we should consider their rights, especially in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction

Plants are intelligent. Plants deserve rights. Plants are like the Internet – or more accurately the Internet is like plants. To most of us these statements may sound, at best, insupportable or, at worst, crazy. But a new book, Brilliant Green: the Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence, by plant neurobiologist (yes, plant neurobiologist), Stefano Mancuso and journalist, Alessandra Viola, makes a compelling and fascinating case not only for plant sentience and smarts, but also plant rights.

For centuries Western philosophy and science largely viewed animals as unthinking automatons, simple slaves to instinct. But research in recent decades has shattered that view. We now know that not only are chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants thinking, feeling and personality-driven beings, but many others are as well. Octopuses can use tools, whales sing, bees can count, crows demonstrate complex reasoning, paper wasps can recognise faces and fish can differentiate types of music. All these examples have one thing in common: they are animals with brains. But plants don’t have a brain. How can they solve problems, act intelligently or respond to stimuli without a brain?

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