The Guardian
Malaysia establishes a 1-million-hectare marine park
The new Tun Mustapha marine park & shark sanctuary in Borneo is the biggest marine protected area in Malaysia
Malaysia has just established the biggest marine protected area (MPA) in the country. The Tun Mustapha park (TMP) occupies 1m hectares (2.47m acres) of seascape off the northern tip of Sabah province in Borneo, a region containing the second largest concentration of coral reefs in Malaysia as well as other important habitats like mangroves, sea grass beds and productive fishing grounds.
It is also home to scores of thousands of people who depend on its resources – from artisanal fishing communities to the commercial fisheries sector – making it in many ways a microcosm of the entire Coral Triangle bioregion, where environmental protection must be balanced with the needs of growing coastal populations.
Continue reading...Brexit would free UK from 'spirit-crushing' green directives, says minister
Farming minister George Eustice says leave vote would free up £2bn now spent on insurance schemes and incentives for farmers
The UK could develop a more flexible approach to environmental protection free of “spirit-crushing” Brussels directives if it votes to leave the EU, the farming minister, George Eustice, has said.
Continue reading...Houses collapse during severe floods in southern Germany – video
Footage shows collapsed buildings and cars buried under rubble, following violent storms that caused severe flooding in southern Germany on Monday. Four people have died and several more are injured. The scenes are from the streets of Braunsbach, which according to German media, have been strewn with debris after two streams burst their banks and unleashed floodwaters that brought down one house and damaged several other. Photograph: REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
Four dead after severe floods hit southern Germany
Continue reading...Is Chris Packham right – should children eat tadpoles?
The Springwatch presenter’s revelation may seem a tad unpalatable, but he is sending an important message to parents about children’s encounters with nature
As celebrity revelations go, it’s one of the more unusual: as a boy, Chris Packham would decant tadpoles on to a special spoon and eat them.
The naturalist and Springwatch presenter reveals his tadpolephagy in his new memoir, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, and he’s not sorry either. They are gritty and tricky to chew, Packham reports, comparing them to watery semolina with a bit more “thrashing” under the tongue.
Continue reading...Recently-discovered peacock spiders species revel in new-found fame – video
Sydney biologist Jürgen Otto has discovered seven new peacock spider species. All within the Maratus genus, these tiny spiders can be found in particularly in Western Australia. Otto believes there are 48 confirmed species of peacock spider, which he says “behave more like cats and dogs”. Otto has a Facebook page with more than 61,000 followers and a YouTube channel, both dedicated to the colourful arachnids
Peacock spiders: scientist finds seven new species of ‘fairly cute’ creatures
Continue reading...Kenya's new front in poaching battle: 'the future is in the hands of our communities'
In a country hit by a devastating poaching surge for rhino horn and elephant ivory, local people are turning the tide – but the wider problems of demand, corruption and organised crime remain
“It’s hard work. I cut their tusks off with an axe,” said Abdi Ali, a northern Kenyan pastoralist who became a full-time poacher at 14. With three other men it took him about 10 minutes to kill each of the 27 elephants he poached, cutting off the trunk, splitting the skull and removing the ivory that would later fetch 500 Kenyan shillings (£3) a kilo.
But while he became rich compared with the cattle herders, who mostly live on less than $1 (68p) a day, he did not find happiness. “Much as I had money, it was money I couldn’t enjoy in peace, because I was on the run.”
Continue reading...Australia’s censorship of Unesco climate report is like a Shakespearean tragedy | Graham Readfearn
Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef is clearly at risk from climate change, so why would Unesco agree to censor its own report?
That quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet comes to mind: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
The lady in question is the Australian government, which some time in early January saw a draft of a report from a United Nations organisation.
Continue reading...My search for the nightingale's song
Castor Hanglands, Cambridgeshire I listen for 30 minutes, imagining this delicate thing inhaling, exhaling, creating that sound
It’s odd going somewhere to listen. Usually you go somewhere to look. I’d never knowingly heard a nightingale. The word is so resonant. It’s maybe 1,000 years old, that name: nihtgale, “night songstress” – but now they know it’s the male that sings so distinctively by dark, to defend and attract. I’d always thought the name elegantly, evocatively, benignly crepuscular. Probably I’d heard it passively. But I’d never gone somewhere to find it.
Knowing little of birds, I had to be told where and when to listen. “Dusk and into dark, and you’ll hear the nightingales. You’ll know it because nothing else will be singing.”
Continue reading...Peacock spiders: scientist finds seven new species of 'fairly cute' creatures
Sydney biologist has a Facebook page dedicated to the colourful arachnids, which he says behave more like cats and dogs
A scientist with a passion for peacock spiders – only a couple of millimetres long, extraordinarily colourful and “like dogs or cats” in their behaviour – has discovered seven new species.
Jürgen Otto, a biologist from Sydney, has been researching the arachnids since 2005, and has gained a significant following online with his footage.
Continue reading...Australian peacock spiders that behave 'like dogs and cats' – in pictures
Several new species of peacock spider – just a few millimetres long and featuring extraordinary colours – have been discovered in Western Australia and South Australia. Sydney biologist Jürgen Otto, who discovered the seven new species, has compared their behaviour to that of cats and dogs
Continue reading...Data is the secret weapon in the battle to save Australia's urban forests
As cities expand and trees are sacrificed for housing and infrastructure, the cost of losing green spaces grows
Deforestation. It is a word that conjures up mental images of loggers cleaving their way through pristine woodlands and grim statistics measuring how many football pitches worth of Amazon jungle get cleared every minute, but it isn’t something that only happens in the wild.
Trees in the city are also being chopped down, a fact that is of increasing concern to urban planners as it becomes apparent that tree canopies serve as much more than a decorative backdrop for the lives of residents.
Continue reading...Feeding time along the shoreline: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 2 June 1916
Although we could not see them, shoals of small fish raced seaward on the falling tide, hastening through the shallowing water on the banks; the terns, however, could see them, and, following in a dense, screaming crowd, literally fell upon them. Out of the mass of noisy hovering birds a score or more at a time dived head-long, splashing up the water as they struck. Nearer shore, where the water runs in channels between the rocks and banks, the lesser terns were feeding in smaller numbers, and one amorous male carried his squirming captives to his mate upon the shore. A mob of pied oystercatchers lined the edge of the water, and now and then a whimbrel, with rippling call, flew down to join them.
Where the sand was dry the ringed plovers fed, where still wet the dunlins ran, probing the mud, and wading till the water washed their breasts were a number of short-billed sanderlings. Turnstones, some gay in the black and orange dress of summer, tossed the seaweed strands with their slightly upturned and stout bills; they knew where to find the lurking crab and sand-hopper.
Continue reading...How fracking can contribute to climate change
Leakage of natural gas from drilling and pipework means more methane is entering the atmosphere
One of the justifications for fracking is the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel between coal and a low-carbon future. However natural gas is mostly methane, which has strong global warming impacts in its own right. Natural gas therefore only provides climate benefits over coal if the leakage is no more than 2-3%.
We cannot measure leaks from every pipe joint. One alternative is to measure the sum of lots of leaks from a distance. Flights over US shale gas fields reveal large methane sources, but these areas also have cattle farms that produce methane and the two sources need to be separated.
Continue reading...Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report
Climate Institute says risk data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks, but homebuyers and developers do not have access to it
The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.
The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it.
Continue reading...Labor pledges $500m over five years to support Great Barrier Reef
Extra cash for scientific monitoring and management promised by Bill Shorten to support one of party’s ‘highest priorities’
Labor is promising to invest $500m to boost scientific monitoring and management of the Great Barrier Reef over five years as it unveils its biggest environmental policy of the election campaign so far.
It says it will adopt every recommendation in the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce final report, released last week.
Continue reading...Most coral dead in central section of Great Barrier Reef, surveys reveal
As mass bleaching sweeps the world heritage site, scientists also find an average of 35% of coral dead or dying in the northern and central sections of the reef
The majority of coral is now dead on many reefs in the central section of the Great Barrier Reef, according to an underwater survey of 84 reefs, in the worst mass bleaching event to hit the world heritage site.
An average of 35% of coral was now dead or dying in the northern and central sections, according to the surveys led by the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
Continue reading...Women are ready to take on fracking | Letters
There is a whole generation of women out here who were protesters at Greenham Common, Aldermaston, and the Newbury Bypass (Anti-Fracking groups plan protest camps, 26 May). Besides working with our partners to help our children carve out a life in a horribly hostile financial climate, we are volunteering on committees to help keep youth and children’s centres, libraries, and village halls open, because council budgets are totally inadequate. In our 50s, 60s and 70s, we are supporting the junior doctors, standing against welfare cuts, and for renewable energy. We want this government to publish the report, which they have been sitting on since the end of March, on the Environmental Impact of Shale Gas Technology, by the independent Climate Change Committee. Yes, I think there will be anti-fracking camps like Balcombe here in the north. I think there might be all sorts of imaginative social disobedience. We’ve been round the block already, and demographics show that our age group is growing. Even if we didn’t get to Greenham Common, there are quite a lot of us who might make up for it in Kirby Misperton, Preston New Road, or Roseacre Wood.
Janet Russell
Silsden, West Yorkshire
How a Nottinghamshire hamlet wages quiet battle against fracking
After North Yorkshire allows test drilling, villagers in Misson are determined to stop the same happening in former bomber pilot testing ground
When councillors in North Yorkshire ignored widespread public opposition and granted planning permission for the fracking company Third Energy to carry out test drilling, there were groans around the Nottinghamshire village of Misson.
For the last two years, tenacious locals in this quiet fenland hamlet have been fighting attempts by another energy firm to set up a shale gas exploration site in a nearby field.
Continue reading...Australia covered up UN climate change fears for Tasmania forests and Kakadu
Fears about damage to the Great Barrier Reef were removed from UN report along with concern about a threat to the environment in two other heritage sites
A draft UN report on climate change, which was scrubbed of all reference to Australia over fears it could deter visitors to the Great Barrier Reef, also outlined possible threats to the Tasmania wilderness and Kakadu.
Continue reading...Sustainable energy: inside Iceland’s geothermal power plant
Thanks to its position on a volatile section of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, Iceland is a world leader in the the use of geothermal energy, and of the six geothermal power plants in Iceland, Hellisheiði (pronounced “het-li-shay-thee”) is the newest and largest. Fully operational since 2010, it sits on the mossy slopes of the Hengill volcano in the south-west of the country; a green and placid-looking landscape that belies the turbulent geological activity rumbling beneath it.
To access the potential energy under the surface, wells are drilled thousands of metres into the ground, penetrating reservoirs of pressurised water. Heated by the Earth’s energy, this water can be more than 300C in temperature, and when released it boils up from the well, turning partly to steam on its way. At Hellisheiði, the steam is separated from the water to power some of the plant’s seven turbines, while the remaining water is further depressurised to create more steam, used to power other turbines. At its maximum output the station can produce 303MW of electricity, making it one of the three largest single geothermal power stations in the world.
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