Feed aggregator

In unprecedented move, OECD will look into allegations that world’s largest conservation organisation facilitated abuse of Baka people of Cameroon

A human rights abuses complaint against WWF, the world’s largest conservation organisation, is to be examined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD) in an unprecedented step.

Anti-poaching government “eco-guards” in the Cameroon rainforests, part-funded and logistically supported by WWF, are alleged to have destroyed camps and property belonging to the hunter-gatherer Baka people. The guards are accused of using physical force and threats of violence against the Baka people over a number of years.

Continue reading...

The UK's largest Antarctic research station which will be home to the ship nearly named Boaty McBoatface gets a £100m upgrade.

Climate sceptic journalist’s claim that marine life has nothing to fear from rising ocean acidity levels is not misleading but ‘comment’, says Ipso

A magazine article claiming “marine life has nothing whatsoever to fear from ocean acidification” has been deemed neither misleading nor inaccurate by the UK’s press regulator.

The feature, written by journalist and climate-change sceptic James Delingpole, appeared in the Spectator under the headline “Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism”.

Continue reading...

Some flashpoints for environmental activists relating to climate change that are likely to erupt in the first few months of Donald Trump’s presidency

Donald Trump is likely to face unprecedented opposition from environmental groups during his presidency as activists prepare to battle the new administration on a number of fronts across the US.

While environmentalists clashed with Barack Obama over the Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines, these fights could pale in comparison to the array of grievances Trump will face over water security, fracking and climate change.

Continue reading...

A seal is found in the back garden of a holiday home, 2km (1.2 miles) away from the sea.

A recent outbreak of a fish parasite on Yellowstone may have seemed unremarkable, but new research shows it could be linked to years of human activities that are slowly chocking river systems to death, reports Environment 360

The Yellowstone river has its headwaters in the mountain streams and snowy peaks of the famous US national park with the same name, and makes an unfettered downhill run all the way to the Missouri river, nearly 700 miles away. It is the longest undammed river in the Lower 48 states.

Last August, the Yellowstone made national headlines when a parasite killed thousands of fish, mostly whitefish. Fear of spreading the parasite to other waterways forced Montana officials to close the river to fishermen, rafters, and boaters. At the height of summer, the stunningly scenic, trout-rich river was eerily deserted. Fishing re-opened in the fall, but the parasite has been found in other Montana waterways.

Continue reading...

Energy firm says it is building access road at site in Fylde after receiving government green light last year

Energy company Cuadrilla has started work on a controversial shale gas site in Lancashire that will later this year become the first well to be fracked in the UK since 2011.

The site at Preston New Road in the Fylde is one of two that Lancashire county council rejected but whose decision was overturned last year by the communities secretary, Sajid Javid.

Continue reading...

Former US Secretary of Defence, William J. Perry, warns that the risk of nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and is growing every year. 

Climate minister Nick Hurd told bank’s portfolio will be broken up and asset-stripped by Australia’s Macquarie

The prospect of the UK Green Investment Bank being stripped of its assets in a sale to Australian investment bank Macquarie is “deeply troubling”, Scottish ministers have told Westminster.

The sale of the Edinburgh-based bank, which supports offshore windfarms and other green projects, is expected to be agreed in January. But the Labour party, Liberal Democrats, Greens and former Conservative ministers have all raised concerns in recent weeks that privatisation may see the bank lose its environmental purpose.

Continue reading...

What does nature mean to each of us?  Why is nature so pure?  And how do we reconnect with the natural world in an age where our lives are connected to technology?  

A 212kg bluefin tuna sells for 74.2m yen (£517,000) at the first auction of the year at Tsukiji market in Tokyo, amid warnings that decades of overfishing by Japan and other countries is taking the species to the brink of extinction

• Bluefin tuna sells for £500,000 at Japan auction amid overfishing concerns

Continue reading...

The UK Ministry of Defence has officially awarded a £30m contract to produce a prototype laser weapon.

Roker beach, Sunderland Storms tore wracks from the seabed and raucous black-headed and herring gulls rode the waves

Storms had torn wracks and kelps from the seabed and driven them against Roker pier, forcing the heap higher up the beach with each successive tide. This afternoon it was seething with seabirds.

There were sanderlings, conspicuous in their pale grey and white plumage, and turnstones, whose feathers so closely matched the hues of the brown fronds that they would have been all but invisible if they had not been constantly on the move. Close by, on the seaward side, raucous black-headed and herring gulls gathered, riding the waves.

Continue reading...

A family enjoying a new year’s trip has freed a humpback whale it found entangled in fishing nets off the coast of Antofagasta, Chile. Juan Menares said two of his children dived in to free the distressed 10-metre animal on Monday. Menares said: ‘That feeling after doing something good ... fills me with joy, fills me with pride and to be able to do something that I really had never done before.’

Continue reading...

JCDecaux join the Carbon Neutral Network.

JCDecaux join the Carbon Neutral Network.

JCDecaux join the Carbon Neutral Network.

New research backs a controversial study that found there had been no slowdown in global warming.

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon says the ash currently blanketing Port Augusta is so toxic it can't even be classified as waste fill.

Known as Granny and believed to be 105, the matriarch of a small population of struggling Puget Sound orcas was first identified by researchers in the 1970s

The world’s oldest known orca – a century-old matriarch of a small population of endangered Puget Sound orcas – has been missing for months and is presumed dead by researchers in what is being described as a tremendous blow to an already struggling population.

Known as Granny and believed to be 105 years old, the orca has not been seen by researchers since mid-October, according to the Centre for Whale Research in North America’s Pacific Northwest.

Continue reading...