Feed aggregator

Ban on all fishing, rafting and other river activities in the US river will remain until fish stop dying, say officials

Closures on a 183-mile stretch of the Yellowstone river and hundreds of miles of other waterways could continue for months while biologists try to prevent the spread of a parasite believed to have killed tens of thousands of fish.

The closures will remain until the waterways improve and fish stop dying, according to officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The ban includes all fishing, rafting and other river activities.

Continue reading...

With the future of Hinkley Point in doubt and the government committed to assist British business, now is the time to get behind wind power

Cancelling the planned new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point will be a huge victory for the offshore wind industry. The word from inside No 10 is not clear yet, but there are so many Tories, including the prime minister, unsettled by the prospect of the Chinese building a plant in Britain to an untested French design that the prospects of it going ahead appear slim.

As if to emphasise the continuing success of Britain’s elegant turbines in the sea, the government cleared the way for a new array off the Yorkshire coast earlier this week.

Continue reading...

Firefighters in California gain ground in tackling the massive Blue Cut wildfire, containing around 40% and allowing many evacuees to return home.

The Rio Olympics, wildfires in Europe, the continuing violence in Aleppo – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

Continue reading...

New Forest It’s a muddy hole that holds water all year round. We could so easily have walked by without seeing it

The walking group stop as they see me peering into a net. “Can we ask what you’re doing?” I explain that I’ve heard there were shells in this pond and have come to find out what they are. As we talk, a blue-bodied dragonfly circles over the water. I tell them what it is and say that it has chosen this mucky pool as its breeding patch, and is probably waiting for a mate to arrive. “Thanks for the nature lesson,” they say with a smile, and head on.

This pond isn’t easy to find. We have only a rough idea where to look. To get to it we cross heavily cropped grassland with tufts of heather and ground-hugging gorse in among which is petty whin. This is a member of the pea family whose yellow flowers are carried on stalks with vicious thorns. We see it because it’s still flowering, much later than the guides say to expect it.

Continue reading...

Water is pumped using power from a renewable source, from a low level to a high level and stored. The water acquires potential energy. When released, it drives turbines and generates hydro electricity.

Standard silicon cells only capture infra red light. But there is more energy in other wavelengths hitting solar panels. New materials will capture this light and boost the output of solar cells.

Plastic is a problem. Rh Fitri Faradilla at UNSW is looking for a replacement material, strong and safe, one which will easily break down without causing harm.

Specific temperature-related calls made in the final days before hatching alters the behaviour of the developing chick.

There are fewer numbats than there are pandas or orangutans in the world, and keeping the captive breeding numbats in peak condition is a full time job.

Tidal power | Great British Bake Off | Theresa May on holiday | Michael Gove’s beard | Three feet | Christmas stamps | Knickers

Phil Jones (Letters, 18 August) says that tidal energy cannot possibly provide baseload power, because it offers energy in “four three-hour blocks a day”. Make that 80 three-hour blocks a day: the tide is a wave that takes 20 hours to move around the British Isles. True, one tidal project can’t provide baseload on its own – but Jones asks you to believe that tidal power can’t do it, period. That’s inaccurate.
David Robjant
Bedford

• There is indeed a problem of obesity in this country, and many different suggestions for tackling it (Letters, 19 August). Isn’t it rather counterproductive that a large audience is eagerly anticipating The Great British Bake Off – a programme dedicated to making us eat cake?
Julia Reisz
Walberswick, Suffolk

Continue reading...

Marine experts say mysterious orbs found at Long Rock, near Penzance, are species of urchin stirred up from sandy burrows

With their biomechanical, other-worldly appearance, these orbs look like baseballs reprocessed through the imagination of HR Giger. So their appearance en masse on a beach near Penzance this week left locals uneasy.

“I took one home with me, then panicked and put it in the bin in case it attacked,” said one dog walker who found hundreds on the beach at Long Rock, between Penzance and Marazion. His spaniel refused to go near them, he said.

Continue reading...

Burrowing owls at the Olympics, a pygmy elephant with very special tusks, and a rare white mynah bird are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

The success or failure of certain species can be used to predict the future health of an entire ecosystem, research says

The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today.

Conservation often focuses on the big, enigmatic animals - tigers, polar bears, whales. There are many reasons to want to save these species from extinction. But what about the vast majority of life that we barely notice? The bugs and grubs that can appear or vanish from ecosystems without any apparent impact?

Continue reading...

A study finds that Australian zebra finches sing to their eggs in hot conditions and these "incubation calls" change the chicks' development.

States agree to develop coal seam gas and make deals more transparent in an effort to increase competition and reduce prices

Gas supplies in Australia will be expanded and suppliers forced to publish previously secret prices under reforms agreed to by state and federal ministers at the Coag energy council meeting in Canberra.

All states except Victoria, which has a blanket ban on coal seam gas, agreed to focus on expanding onshore gas activities. The state government in Melbourne agreed to consider its position.

Continue reading...

National Trust will release 100 of the endangered animals, not seen at Malham tarn in Yorkshire dales for 50 years

Britain’s endangered water voles will reach new heights when they are returned to Yorkshire’s Malham tarn for the first time in 50 years.

Around 100 water voles will be reintroduced on Friday to the National Trust estate in the Yorkshire dales, home to England’s highest freshwater lake, in what the trust says is the highest-altitude reintroduction of the species it has carried out in Britain.

Continue reading...

Kinder Scout, Derbyshire Far from being a dismal, greasy world of chocolate peat, the plateau appeared luxuriantly green

There is something littoral about the northern rim of Kinder Scout, the plateau that includes Derbyshire’s highest point. Its start in life was estuarine. Its famous gritstone cap, abrasive icing on a sedimentary layer cake, began as infill of a vast river delta, a Ganges in north Derbyshire. As I picked my way westwards along this narrow shoreline, between Kinder’s summit plateau and the sky, the setting sun emerged below the level of the cloud. The moors to my right – Howden, Alport and Bleaklow – were suddenly bathed in light.

Related: Country diary: Kinder Scout: A silent brooding crowd on the moor

Continue reading...

A guide is now available for this nationally listed critically endangered ecological community.

A guide is now available for this nationally listed critically endangered ecological community.