The Guardian
Troubled by wasps this summer? I have a fail-safe approach to shooing them away | Alys Fowler
Wasps have taken over my shed and are a wonder to behold – especially since I worked out how to live with them in harmony
My tiny, wonky shed has new owners. I have never had a garden shed before, so I wasn’t expecting to give it away so quickly, but once they moved in I accepted it was rightly theirs – for this summer at least. I have never had such a good view of a wasp nest. I peer in most weeks to marvel at its progress.
It is quite exquisite in its grey, papery layers. Where there was once a solitary queen, now there are many more insects building and foraging, so the nest is only going to grow in size. These are common wasps, Vespula vulgaris, and the colony will survive into early autumn, until the first queen dies. At this point, in a fit of genetics and anger, the worker bees will revolt against the collective and start to lay their own eggs.
Continue reading...Moth on brink of extinction found flying at secret Scottish site
Discovery of dark bordered beauty males where caterpillars were released raises hopes species can be revived
A moth on the brink of extinction in Britain and reared for the first time in captivity has been found flying at a site where its caterpillars were released.
The dark bordered beauty is clinging on in just three places in Britain but its numbers are being increased by a conservation project to establish new populations in the Scottish Highlands.
Continue reading...Lawsuit says US environmental agency ignores harm of biofuel production
New suit charges that the EPA disregards ethanol production’s impact on endangered species as it is directed to study under law
The US biofuel program is likely killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges.
The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation.
Continue reading...Aerial footage shows Rhodes wildfire turning sky orange – video
Footage from the Greek island of Rhodes shows a huge fire and thick plumes of smoke rising, which has forced 19,000 people to flee and threatened resorts and coastal villages. Firefighters were struggling to contain 82 wildfires across the country, 64 of which started on Sunday, the hottest day of the summer so far
Continue reading...He hid, hoping against hope I’d leave: how a cockroach changed my mind about killing insects | Ingrid Newkirk
When people asked me where I drew the line, I wasn’t sure about insects – until a fateful encounter in my kitchen
The Grammy-winning American comedian George Carlin often included animal rights messages in his standup routines. He once joked that he’d like to invent a cockroach spray with a difference: “It doesn’t kill the roaches, but it fills them with self-doubt as to whether or not they’re in the right house.”
As one of those animal rights people who expounds on the virtues and benefits of being decent to all sentient beings, I’m often asked: “Where do you draw the line? What about insects?”
Ingrid Newkirk is the founder of Peta and author of Animalkind
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Continue reading...It could just be that a global catastrophe matters more than a pause in sport | Emma John
The outraged reaction to Just Stop Oil’s mild protests says far more about us than it does about the activists themselves
“Play was not disrupted.” With those four words the R&A summed up its message after Just Stop Oil made their latest protest on the 17th green at the Open on Friday.
A police statement had already done the heavy lifting, with its charges of conspiracy to commit criminal damage and its stern disapproval of public disorder. That left the golfing establishment to sound cool, calm and – unusually for them – like the good guys. They had, after all, triumphed. No one had been inconvenienced in the course of watching their sporting entertainment and that, by and large, has been the focus of anger at Just Stop Oil’s activity this summer. Critics find it frustratingly hard to accuse them of anything else. The protesters haven’t endangered players, or broken equipment; they haven’t altered the course of the sporting action or brought it to an unwanted conclusion. They’ve shown up, made something temporarily orange, then disappeared peacefully in a police van.
Continue reading...Be dingo-safe! How K’gari tourists can avoid being transformed into wongari snacks | First Dog on the Moon
That would never happen to me
Continue reading...Don’t be scared of rewilding, Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh: it’s a garden revelation | Isabella Tree
Celebrity gardeners are in uproar – but abandoning perfection can both help the environment and create beautiful spaces
Celebrity gardeners have been throwing down the gardening gloves and stamping up and down on the parterre. The uproar is all about rewilding – how it cannot, must not, should not apply to gardening.
Rewilding gardens is “puritanical nonsense”, rails Monty Don. Alan Titchmarsh believes gardeners have been “brainwashed”. He’s just written to the Lords about it. The rewilding craze, he told peers, is an “ill-considered trend” loaded with “misleading propaganda” that will “deplete our gardens of their botanical riches” and be “catastrophic” for wildlife.
Isabella Tree runs Knepp Castle estate with conservationist Charlie Burrell. They are the co-authors of The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small
Continue reading...Fukushima fish with 180 times legal limit of radioactive cesium fuels water release fears
Black rockfish caught in May close to disaster-hit nuclear power station is one of dozens caught in the past year above the legal safety limit
A fish living near drainage outlets at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in May contained levels of radioactive cesium that are 180 times Japan’s safety limit.
The black rockfish caught on 18 May was found by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to have 18,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium-137, compared with the legal maximum level of 100 becquerels per kg.
Continue reading...Nicola Jennings on fears about the Tories dumping green policies – cartoon
As Greece burns, we see the existential climate crisis dragged into shoddy UK party politics. That can’t happen | John Harris
A terrible lesson is being taken from the Uxbridge vote. Labour must stick to its green agenda, and decent Tories must raise a voice
One news story defines this summer: the fact that average global temperatures have recently reached record-breaking levels. Baking European weather is now seared into our consciousness in the form of those heat maps coloured red and orange; as wildfires spread across the Greek island of Rhodes, thousands of people have been evacuated. In the US, China and no end of countries besides, the idea of planetary heating as a looming threat whose worst effects might yet be averted feels like it is turning to ash.
In the UK, unfortunately, the past 48 hours has seen a political story whose parochialist absurdity is off the scale: Conservative voices undermining the fragile cross-party consensus on reaching net zero by 2050 and calling for many of the UK’s tilts at climate action to be either slowed or stopped. The reason? The results of three parliamentary byelections – and, in particular, the views of 13,965 Conservative voters in the outer London suburbs.
Continue reading...UK weather: flood alerts in northern England as rain hits sports events
Downpours affect Open golf tournament and fourth Ashes Test and festivalgoers also drenched
Flood alerts have been issued across the north of England where heavy rain disrupted sporting events and left festivalgoers drenched.
It has been a soggy final day of the Open Championship golf tournament in Liverpool and downpours have blighted the fourth Ashes cricket Test in Manchester on Sunday.
Continue reading...Sadiq Khan to press ahead with Ulez expansion amid Labour pressure
London mayor is open to ideas to mitigate impact on residents, but not on scheduling of policy some blame for loss of byelection
Sadiq Khan is open to new ideas for mitigating the impact of the anti-pollution levy in London being expanded next month, but refusing to back down on the planned timing of its implementation.
Despite pressure from some in Labour for city hall to rethink the policy they believe lost the party the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection on Thursday, the mayor is determined for it to come into force.
Continue reading...It won’t cost much to make free school meals a universal right | Larry Elliott
A new push to offer free school meals across the globe won’t end world hunger but it’s a very good start
During the pandemic the Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford turned food into a hot political issue in the UK with his campaign for every child in a low-income family to be guaranteed a free school meal.
Since then, things have moved on. The problems facing low-income families – not just in Britain but everywhere – have worsened owing to rising global food prices. Consumers in the western economies have seen the cost of their weekly shop rise sharply. Food bank use in Britain has surged as a result of a cost-of-living crisis that has seen grocery bills rise by almost a fifth in the past year.
Continue reading...Scientists battle to save Guam kingfisher after snakes introduced
A species almost wiped out by tree snakes is being returned to the wild and, eventually, to its Pacific island home
As arks go, the shipping container that has been placed inside Sedgwick County Zoo, in Wichita, Kansas, looks an unlikely vehicle for saving species.
Nevertheless, work there is expected to play a key role in undoing one of the world’s worst conservation disasters: the accidental introduction of brown tree snakes to the Pacific island of Guam. The snakes’ arrival, at the end of the second world war, eventually wiped out huge numbers of indigenous birds, mammals, and lizards including the Guam kingfisher, the Guam rail, and the Guam flycatcher.
Continue reading...As my home city of Athens burns, I can only watch in amazement as sunseekers fly in | Helena Smith
I’ve had my fair share of messages from friends abroad recently asking if it really is as hot as “they say” in Greece. Hot, I usually retort, doesn’t say it all. “It’s mind-meltingly blistering, baking from morning to night. You struggle to sleep, you struggle to eat, you’re ill-tempered and you can’t even drink; a consolatory sundown cocktail is usually the kiss of death.”
After the emojis and exclamation marks, the response has invariably been: “Well, over here it’s all cloud and rain, I’ll make sure to pack my factor 30+. Looking forward!”
Continue reading...Fire ants breach Queensland containment zones six times as authorities try to stop march to NSW border
Experts say pest eradication program is underfunded and it is a ‘matter of time’ before ants move beyond Queensland
Fire ants have breached containment zones in south-east Queensland six times in the past six weeks, triggering the expansion of biosecurity controls at the New South Wales border.
The imported red fire ants – considered one of the world’s worst invasive species – were detected at a site at Tallebudgera last week, about 5.5km from the NSW border. The find was the farthest south the pest has been detected in Queensland.
Continue reading...Dropping green pledges would be ‘political suicide’, Sunak and Starmer warned
Science and business leaders say lurch away from climate agenda after byelections would be deeply unpopular with voters and damage UK’s reputation
Britain’s leaders have been warned against a “politically suicidal” lurch away from their green pledges as concerns grow that both major parties may dilute their plans to combat the climate crisis in the wake of a shock byelection result.
Senior figures from business, the scientific community and across the political divide warned that any watering down of climate policies would be deeply unpopular with voters, set back the international fight to reach net zero and damage Britain’s green reputation.
Continue reading...Sadiq Khan in U-turn on ‘eco’ wood-burners amid pollution fears
Campaigners’ pressure sees London mayor withdraw approval for stoves billed as better for the environment
The London mayor Sadiq Khan has withdrawn his endorsement of woodburning stoves promoted as “environmentally friendly” after a surge in sales of the appliances, which contribute to harmful air pollution.
In 2018, Khan endorsed the Ecodesign stoves, which comply with new regulations in an EU’ directive on minimum energy efficiency standards that came into force on 1 January last year, in order to encourage householders to switch from open fires and older stoves to more modern technology. He said Londoners could make a big difference by using the “right kit”.
Continue reading...Avian flu may have killed millions of birds globally as outbreak ravages South America
Virus has spread around the world, with 200,000 wild birds dead in Peru alone and concerns Australia could be next
Millions of wild birds may have died from bird flu globally in the latest outbreak, researchers have said, as the viral disease ravages South America, with 200,000 deaths recorded in Peru alone.
The highly infectious variant of H5N1, which gained momentum in the winter of 2021, caused Europe’s worst bird flu outbreak before spreading globally. The disease reached South America in November 2022, and has now been reported on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica.
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