The Guardian
Parks Victoria staff used work credit cards for KFC to lure feral cats
Credit card bill was $2.2m last year, and was also used to spend $347 at a jewellery store, $898 at a bike shop and $5,000 at JB Hi-Fi
Parks Victoria staff have justified the use of their taxpayer-funded credit cards on hundreds of dollars worth of KFC because it is an effective bait for luring feral cats.
On Monday Victoria’s environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, announced an external auditor would undertake an independent review of Parks Victoria’s credit card transactions over the past four years.
Continue reading...Queensland community action prevents Santos from freely dumping coal seam gas waste
Challenge by Western Downs Alliance prompts environment minister Josh Frydenberg to revamp approval of development
Legal action by a Queensland community group has forced the federal government to stop Santos freely dumping coal seam gas waste water in Surat Basin rivers and streams.
A federal court challenge by the Western Downs Alliance has prompted the minister for environment and energy, Josh Frydenberg, to revamp his approval of the Santos gasfield development, in what has been hailed as a victory in protecting the Dawson river.
Continue reading...Sandpipers go the extra 8,000 miles to have as much sex as possible
Small birds were observed travelling to as many as 24 different breeding sites in Alaska within six weeks, further than flying from Paris to Moscow
A bird smaller than a city pigeon has been recorded flying 13,000km (8,000 miles) in just one month to have sex with as many females as possible
In behaviour never witnessed before, male pectoral sandpipers were observed travelling to as many as 24 different “breeding sites” in northern Alaska within a single season, a team of scientists wrote in the journal Nature.
Continue reading...UK throwing away £13bn of food each year, latest figures show
Waste and recycling advisory body says 4.4m tonnes of household food waste thrown away in 2015 could have been eaten
UK households binned £13bn worth of food in 2015 that could have been eaten, according to new figures which suggest that progress in reducing the national food waste mountain has stalled.
Despite concerted efforts to reduce food waste through the entire supply chain, a new national update from the waste and recycling advisory body Wrap revealed that an estimated 7.3m tonnes of household food waste was thrown away in 2015 – up from 7m tonnes in 2012.
Continue reading...Fracking concerns must be listened to | Letters
As public health researchers we noted your article on fracking (Friends of the Earth ticked off over claims in anti-fracking leaflet, 4 January) and wish to highlight the following: fracking operations involve pumping millions of litres of water containing fracking fluids underground and a small percentage of wastewater contains returned fracking fluids. Estimates vary depending on geological conditions but recent research suggests typically 4-8%. It is well established in peer-reviewed studies and government reports that fracturing fluids and wastewater have contaminated ground and surface waters.
An early peer-reviewed study on chemicals in fracking fluids found 25% could cause cancer and mutations, 37% could affect the endocrine system, 40-50% could affect the brain/nervous system, kidneys, immune system and cardiovascular systems. More recent studies support these findings, including a systematic evaluation that examined 240 fracking substances and found evidence suggesting 43% were linked to reproductive toxicity and 40% to developmental toxicity.
Continue reading...Desperate exodus of the climate refugees | Letters
In the last six years, some 140 million people have been forced to move because of climate-related disasters (Mongolian herders fly steppe blighted by climate extremes and social change, 5 January). Climate change is driving long-term environmental damage and sudden catastrophes, presenting a global long-term threat to human security. According to the UN, by mid-century, one in 30 people could be displaced, many as a result of climate change. Existing global inequalities are exacerbated by the injustice of climate change which severely affects the poorest and most vulnerable, those who have contributed least to the climate crisis. Although climate change and enforced migration are increasingly linked, those displaced have no legal standing under existing international refugee and asylum law.
Record-breaking increases in global temperature mask the unequal impact of planetary warming. Temperature increases in Mongolia have risen by more than double the global average over the past century. Elsewhere, in Somalia, Darfur, Syria and across sub-Saharan Africa, the chronic effects of drought, water scarcity and agricultural crises in rural areas no longer able to sustain their peoples have driven hundreds of thousands of migrants into cities and across borders. Safe haven is provided overwhelmingly by other poor countries, whilst richer countries respond by building walls and fences and a political debate that is toxic and often racist.
Continue reading...Obama puts pressure on Trump to adhere to US climate change strategy
The US president has been writing for academic journals to pre-empt arguments Trump or Republicans are likely to use to roll back his key accomplishments
Barack Obama called the adoption of clean energy in the US “irreversible” on Monday, putting pressure on his successor, Donald Trump, not to back away from a core strategy to fight climate change.
Obama, penning an opinion article in the journal Science, sought to frame the argument in a way that might appeal to the president-elect: in economic terms. He said the fact that the cost and polluting power of energy had dropped at the same time proved that fighting climate change and spurring economic growth were not mutually exclusive.
Continue reading...US plans to save polar bears are toothless, says climate scientist
US strategy offers no direct action to address threat of greenhouse gases on decline of sea ice habitat
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has released its plan for the recovery of threatened polar bears, acknowledging it will take no direct action to address the primary threat of greenhouse gases on the decline of sea ice habitat.
Related: This is the polar bear capital of the world, but the snow has gone
Continue reading...Rebirth of a native woodland
Windermere, Lake District The wood is coming back to life, aided by a man on a mission
Not everyone’s idea of a retirement present, perhaps, but three years ago Hamish Ross bought himself a wood to the east of Windermere, roughly triangular and bordered by a dry-stone wall. “The first thing we did was fix the walls and put up a deer-proof fence,” he said, leading me through the new gate. “They’d been getting in for decades – eaten everything. The under-storey had completely disappeared. Now, we get excited about brambles.”
As we walked along, he pointed out the line of 10 conifers he’d kept for shelter – all that remained of an acre of neglected Sitka spruce and larch. With the dense tangle gone, light could once more filter onto the ancient woodland floor, helping the 900 indigenous saplings that Hamish has planted over the past couple of years. Reaching to a couple of metres high, they were woven through the centre of the wood amid mature trees and fallen giants. An assortment of buds – elegant orange beech tips, the red bulbs of lime, fat nut-coloured horse chestnut and downy crab apple – adorned their branches. This winter, he will be planting 350 more.
Continue reading...Owls brave the trenches in search of mice: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 9 January 1917
Several correspondents in France have referred to the owls which find the trenches such profitable mouseries that they hunt by day. The latest note on the subject comes from one of our south coast camps, where a light brown owl – probably a barn owl – found daylight sport anything but peaceful. The lads who were watching it were not the trouble, but a number of gulls resented its presence, “and flew excitedly around it,” though apparently they did not venture to attack the unusual-looking bird. Then a rook, no doubt attracted by the calls of the gulls, came along, flying above the owl. It darted upon the mouse-hunter, striking it on the back with its beak, and down fell the owl. “We saw it no more,” writes my correspondent, but it does not follow that the owl was slain; a rook coming down with wings half-closed, “stooping” like a falcon, is certainly a formidable foe, but the feathers on an owl’s back are wonderfully thick and soft, and would act as an elastic cushion protecting the body.
A small bird which “seems to fly in jumps” has puzzled the same correspondent; it is black and white with “a black boomerang band on its white throat” and white streaks – outer feathers – on its tail. Undoubtedly our friend the pied wagtail; many of these birds are now wintering on our southern shores.
Continue reading...How different cities responded to December's winter smog
Paris introduced free public transport; Madrid restricted cars; Londoners were advised to take less exercise
Winter smog returned to our cities in December. Modern smog is less visible than Victorian pea-soupers but a thin brown layer could be seen on the horizon as still weather trapped the air pollution.
Paris had ten days of smog at the start of the month; the worst pollution for a decade. Emergency actions to reduce the health impacts included free public transport, reduced traffic speeds, lorry bans in the city centre, a ban on wood burning and four days of alternating bans on cars with odd or even number plates.
Continue reading...How colour-changing cats might warn future humans of radioactive waste
Plans for a new fleet of UK nuclear power plants are under way. Last month, for example, Hitachi and the Japanese government confirmed a plan to construct 5.4 gigawatts of generating capacity at UK sites. But what about the waste? And what happens when, in thousands of years, our descendants – who may not read any current human language – find a store, and put themselves in danger?
A panel of scientists and linguists asked this question in 1981 when the US Department of Energy commissioned them to find a method of ensuring that whatever is left of humanity in 10,000 years’ time is warned off the sites we’ve been filling with radioactive sludge.
Continue reading...Thawing Arctic is turning oceans into graveyards
Something is happening to the floating sea ice of the Arctic, other than the well-documented retreat in its surface coverage each summer. Scientists are finding that Arctic sea ice is getting younger and thinner, which is set to continue in March, when US research reveals the winter maximum, and September, when it reveals the summer minimum, making it more vulnerable to a catastrophic and unprecedented break-up.
Nasa researchers have found that the thicker multi-year ice, which has survived several summer melt seasons, is being rapidly replaced by thinner, more ephemeral one-year ice formed over a single winter. This change makes the polar region increasingly vulnerable to storms that could smash their way through the final remnants of thinner, one-year sea ice, making a completely ice-free summer in the Arctic increasingly likely.
Continue reading...The eco guide to taking action in 2017
All too often environmentalism is about stopping doing something, but maybe it’s time to be more active and start doing something instead?
I wonder if Nike would loan me its famous brand slogan as a motto this year. After all, Just Do It is much more motivating than Just Don’t Do It – the traditional ethical living response…
Until now. Who can fail to be cheered by the way the Divest movement has just done it? Starting only four years ago with a smattering of universities, the Divest-Invest network recently reported that the value of organisations committed to ditching their holdings in fossil fuels is now greater than the value of all listed oil and gas companies.
Continue reading...As British tourists take to the seas, giant cruise ships spread pollution misery
From the upstairs windows in Colin MacQueen’s house there isn’t a view of the sea but he can clearly see the ships. Docked in the port, less than half a mile away, they tower over the roofs of flats and houses. “They are colossal,” he said. “These cruise liners are much bigger than the container ships. They use as much fuel as whole towns.”
The view is pretty spectacular. But it’s what he cannot see that worries MacQueen. Like many cities across the UK, Southampton has such poor air quality it breaches international guidelines, and while the government and local authorities are looking to take action on cars, maritime fuel – the dirtiest and most polluting of all diesels – is on no one’s radar. Not only do the giant cruise liners churn out pollutants at sea, they also keep their engines running when they are docked in places like MacQueen’s home town.
Continue reading...How warming seas are forcing fish to seek new waters
Rising sea temperatures are pushing shoals hundreds of miles from native grounds
Scottish fishermen have uncovered an intriguing way to supplement their income: they have added squid to the menu of marine creatures they regularly pull from the sea. A species normally associated with the warmth of the Mediterranean, rather than the freezing north, may seem an odd addition to their usual catches of cod and haddock. Nevertheless, squid has become a nice little earner for fishing boats from Aberdeen and the Moray Firth in recent years.
Related: What will be the big environment events in 2017?
Continue reading...Prince William charity urges UK to back ivory trade ban
The environment secretary Andrea Leadsom is under increasing pressure to make good on a Tory manifesto commitment to ban the UK ivory trade after China announced it would close down its domestic ivory market.
Conservation organisations, including a charity championed by Prince William, say that by allowing the trade to continue the UK is fuelling the annual slaughter of thousands of rhinos and elephants. A recent study suggested that the UK is now the third-largest supplier of illegal ivory items to the US.
Continue reading...Ecuador’s leading environmental group fights to stop forced closure
NGO Acción Ecológica responds to the government’s attempt to close the organization down
Members of one of Latin America’s most well-known environmental organisations, Acción Ecológica, are fighting for their survival against a controversial attempt by Ecuador’s government to shut them down.
The move by the government came six days after violence between soldiers, police and indigenous Shuar people opposed to a proposed giant Chinese-run copper mine in Ecuador’s south-eastern Amazon region, and just two days after Acción Ecológica had called for a Truth Commission to be set up to investigate events there. The attempt to close the organisation has sparked severe criticism from UN human rights experts and outrage from numerous civil society organisations in Latin America and elsewhere.
Continue reading...China's ivory trade ban: how to make it work
Elephants will only be safe when decisive action is taken against the ivory traffickers who have been operating under the cover of the legal trade
China’s decision to ban all trade in ivory by the end of the year has been widely hailed as a game changer by environmentalists in China itself and across the world. There is no doubt that this is very welcome news.
Many commentators have also pointed out that this new Chinese policy is also motivated by self-interest. China has rapidly growing economic and political interests in Africa and hopes to improve its image on the continent by responding to pressure from its African allies to reduce demand for ivory among Chinese consumers. If protecting elephants is in China’s self-interest—and if African leaders care enough about them to put pressure on China to change its policies—that is also welcome news.
Continue reading...Prey silence for the peregrine falcon
Udale Bay, Cromarty, Highlands Rapid wings took the peregrine high, and it wheeled, looking for any movement below
The tide was starting to ebb as I raised two of the windows in the RSPB hide. This meant I could not only see the mass of birds on the saltmarsh but also enjoy the music of their various calls. They seemed to be trying to decide just when to leave for the mudflats and the food that would be exposed for them by the departing tide.
Curlews walked around looking superior on their long legs, drake wigeon whistled in their inimitable fashion, and the black and white plumage of the several shelduck stood out in contrast to the brown and grey camouflage of the waders.