The Guardian
Growth in artificial lawns poses threat to British wildlife, conservationists warn
Growing trend to lay fake lawns instead of real grass causes loss of habitat for wildlife and creates waste that will never biodegrade
Environmentalists have warned that a growing trend to lay artificial lawns instead of real grass threatens the loss of wildlife and habitat across Britain.
From local authorities who purchase in bulk for use in street scaping, to primary schools for children’s play areas and in the gardens of ordinary suburban family homes, the sight of pristine, green artificial grass is becoming a familiar sight. One company has registered a 220% year-on-year increase in trade of the lawns.
Continue reading...Pesticide blamed for huge drop in frog numbers along Queensland coast
The Cairns Frog Safe project blames neonicotinoids for population decline and malformations, but cannot attract government or academic interest
The head of Australia’s only dedicated frog hospital believes powerful insecticides are behind a staggering decline in frog populations along the Queensland coast.
Related: Neonicotinoids: new warning on pesticide harm to bees
Continue reading...UK expedition explores potential and risks of deep sea gold rush
Huge rich-metal deposits on the ocean floor could transform the global commodities market but there are fears mining them could harm rare ecosystems
A scientific expedition has been launched from the UK to explore the mining of rich metal deposits on the deep ocean floor, which are the focus of a new gold rush around the world.
The UK research vessel, the RSS James Cook, left Southampton on Thursday, heading for the underwater ridge in the middle of the Atlantic where volcanic activity drives hot springs, also known as black smokers.
Continue reading...A walk among clouds on Liathach's fabled ridge
Glen Torridon, Liathach, Highlands The path that worms up alongside the waterfalls is invisible until we’re on it
From Glen Torridon, Liathach looks impregnable, with little sign of a way upwards; the path that worms up alongside the waterfalls of the Allt an Doire Ghairbh is invisible until we’re on it. The vast bulwarks and bastions of rock rise into a ceiling of white cloud, their full extent obscured.
We climb unhurriedly, content to wait for the forecasted “cloud free Munros” to materialise.
Continue reading...Climate change: big four banks' lending to Australian renewables projects falls
Market Forces finds only two financing deals closed in first half of 2016 despite banks’ purported support for sector
Australia’s big four banks’ lending for Australian renewable energy projects has tumbled in the first half of 2016, despite all of them spruiking their continuing support for the sector.
Based on public announcements from the banks and their customers, the activist group Market Forces has found only two financing deals were closed this year in the Australian renewables sector.
Continue reading...Food Standards Agency urges UK to cut down on freezer-related waste
FSA identifies myths preventing people from freezing food, as households throw away 7 million tonnes of food a year
Consumer ignorance about how to freeze food safely is helping to fuel the annual 7-million-tonne household food waste mountain in the UK, the government’s food watchdog has said.
The Food Standards Agency, working with the government department Defra, is to launch an urgent review of current guidance given to the food industry on date marking for food, which could include giving consumers more detailed and easy-to-understand advice on freezing and food storage.
Continue reading...Dark woods inspire fantasies: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 8 July 1916
Surrey
Sun and rain, coming almost together, have extended the branches and enlarged the leaves in the great woods that spread over many acres beyond our commons. You are housed now in their recesses under dark green roofs through which the eye cannot penetrate; there is a mysterious shaking and rustling by the wind overhead, and this helps to strengthen or inspire the fantasies which in these dim solitudes are created by the mind. Big toadstools which were not there two days ago cluster round the trunk of a decaying beech; the long spindle legs of an insect crawling over the table-like top of one of them are as if they belonged to some new lesser inhabitant of the world, and when the gauze of his wings spreads out and they tremble ever so lightly, a curious process fills this cool enclosure with all kinds of living things.
The verge of the wood brings realities again. A pair of pigeons start up from near the orchard on the far side flying not angularly, like the rooks, but straight and true, going high over the taller elms, showing white and grey and pale purple, now distinct in each part, then all mingled as it were together; there is nothing else quite so beautiful under the sun as the plumage of the larger kind of birds when they are on the wing. In the corner of a near field, which is half of turnips and half of mangold in their now juicy leafage, a group of young birds, scuttering rather than flying, scramble toward the hedge – it is a covey of young partridges. Presently a cock pheasant comes out of the ditch chuckling; and above where he was whole bodies of small gnats play in the shade. They seem to mix, whole parties of hundreds of them, in confusion, and yet as you watch, all appear to assort together in their own groups again.
Continue reading...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...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...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.
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...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.
Continue reading...