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Dartmoor beauty spot is battleground for Britain’s threatened woodlands
It is an idyllic spot. Sylvan slopes dip down to a babbling river fringed by alder and willow that winds through organic pasture where hens peck, sheep graze and bees hum.
The ethos is sound – to restore the woods to their ancient glory, to create a small, sustainable business producing timber and firewood, and to teach vanishing forestry skills to anyone keen to learn. They also try to have fun here at the Hillyfield woodland farm, near the village of Harbourneford in Devon, holding a “Woodland Olympics” with axe-hurling, wood-chopping relay races and logging with a horse rather than modern machinery.
Continue reading...The eco guide to electric vehicles
It’s the future: EVs are making a greener dream come true
“You lot [earth lovers] won’t be happy till there’s rose petals coming out the exhaust,” a car industry insider complained to me.
I’d settle for an electric vehicle. Not emission free (you have to factor in the source of the electricity), but a technology that can make a real dent in climate-change emissions. My next car needs to be an EV – and so does yours.
Continue reading...'Grown' drones and hypersonic speeds
The lion herding sheep in Russia's Dagestan
Juno mission: British rocket engine ready for Jupiter task
Farmers forecast food price rises and job losses in life after the EU
As England’s largest agricultural jamboree, the Royal Norfolk Show normally functions as a shop window for the country’s farming prowess. But this year it also offered a glimpse of the problems facing a post-Brexit nation. In the showground, amid displays of fresh fruit, vegetables and prize-worthy bulls, the talk was of how farmers would find the workers to harvest their crops in a world cut off from Brussels and free movement of labour.
In the wake of the Leave vote, there was now a “serious question mark” over the fruit industry’s ability to staff harvest season, warned Laurence Olins, who chairs British Summer Fruits, the sector’s trade association.
Continue reading...State of play
The 20 photographs of the week
Suicide bombs at Atatürk airport, the Somme centenary commemorations, England crashing out of Euro 2016, the recapture of the city of Falluja – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week
Continue reading...A fitting last stronghold for the whinchat
Rosebush, Pembrokeshire Views from this bleak saddle take in the headlands that ruckle the northern coast of Pembrokeshire
Bwlch Gwynt – “wind-pass” - lies between the two westernmost summits of Mynydd Preseli’s moorland ridge. The name fits perfectly with this bleak saddle marred by extensive forestry clearcut. Views distract attention from the ruined immediate landscape. They spread wide, take in Ramsey, the craggy crest of Ynys Bery off its southern tip, isolated rocks of the Bishops and Clerks in the sea beyond, and all the magnificent headlands – Dinas, Strumble, Penmaen Dewi – that ruckle the northern coast of Pembrokeshire.
Stonehenge’s bluestone menhirs were dragged from Preseli millennia ago in a dumbfounding, still-incomprehensible feat of megalithic engineering. But the oriental end of Preseli’s seven-mile whaleback whence they came (they’ve been identified as originating from the spiky outcrop of Carn Goedog) has a different character to its occidental heights. Here the ridge reaches its 536-metre highest point at Foel Cwmcerwyn, two miles distant from and 140 metres above the road that crosses through the bwlch.
Mapping the world’s diversity, one cell at a time
Hotel Antarctica
Brexit, air pollution and a swimming centipede – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...MEPs urge UK to honour new EU deal to halve deaths from air pollution
A post-Brexit Britain could choose whether to adopt new pollution limits to cut emissions of five key pollutants, including NOx and PM2.5
A post-Brexit UK government should respect a new EU deal designed to halve the number of premature deaths from air pollution, MEPs have said.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Fruit bats, Joshua trees and thousands of flamingos are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Children at nearly 90 London secondary schools exposed to dangerous air pollution
Westminster, Tower Hamlets and Southwark have highest number of secondaries in breach of legal limits of NO2, new research for the mayor reveals
Children at nearly 90 secondary schools in London breathe illegal and dangerous levels of air pollution, a report for the mayor reveals.
Former mayor Boris Johnson was accused in May of burying a report that showed hundreds of primary schools were in areas that breached EU pollution limits in 2010, prompting calls for greater action to clean up the capital’s air.
Continue reading...Orangutans return home after Indonesia forest fires
The War on Science with change how you see the world | John Abraham
Shawn Otto’s new book is a must-read
Every so often a book comes along that changes the way you view the world. The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It by Shawn Otto is one of those rare books. If you care about attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about biased media coverage or shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for you.
Vietnam blames toxic waste water from steel plant for mass fish deaths
Taiwanese firm Formosa Plastics that owns the plant says it will pay $500m towards clean up and compensation
Vietnam’s government has said toxic discharges from a Taiwanese-owned steel plant were responsible for massive fish deaths that have decimated tourism and fishing in four provinces and highlighted the risks of rapid growth in foreign investment.
An estimated 70 tonnes of dead fish washed ashore along more than 200 km (125 miles) of Vietnam’s central coastline in early April, sparking rare protests across the country after the Taiwanese company denied any wrongdoing.
Continue reading...China Environmental Press awards winners – in pictures
From exposing environmental crimes to a campaign to save a wildlife reserve, the awards, created by chinadialogue and the Guardian in 2010, recognise journalists making outstanding contributions to the field in China
Continue reading...This election, what hope is there for the Great Barrier Reef?
Before you head to the polls, here’s one last quick attempt to clear some of the haze of half-truths and complete rubbish surrounding the parties’ reef policies
If the Great Barrier Reef is an election issue for you, then before you head to the polls this weekend, here are a few things worth noting about the major parties’ policies.
Firstly, by way of background, remember that almost a quarter of the reef was killed by warm waters this year, in the worst bleaching event on record. And those water temperatures are expected to be average temperatures within 20 years. To give the reef a fighting chance of surviving that, scientists estimate $10bn needs to be spent to reduce water pollution over the next 10 years.
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