The Guardian
How melting plastic waste could heat homes
It is a problem bedevilling households across the UK: what can we do with the mountains of food-spattered plastic waste left in our bins?
Now a group of scientists say they have the answer – by using the detritus of domestic life to heat homes.
Continue reading...Death and broken livelihoods: farmers and wildfires in British Columbia | Joanna Chiu
As wildfires increase in intensity, how can farmers safeguard their animals – and their way of life?
Two years after wildfires killed the pigs on his family farms in British Columbia, Scott Kellington is still coming to terms with the destruction.
This particular fire had come from the north, its towering flames whipped into a terrible ferocity by strong winds and sustained by the 40C heat. After making sure his wife was evacuated, Kellington and his three sons stayed behind to try to save the neighbourhood homes and livestock.
Continue reading...Give endangered jaguars legal rights, Argentina campaigners ask court
With fewer than 20 left in the South American country’s Gran Chaco forest – the big cats could be classed as a ‘non-human person’
Argentina’s supreme court has been asked to recognize the legal rights of the South American jaguar, of which fewer than 20 individuals remain alive in the country’s Gran Chaco region.
The largest cat in the Americas once roamed the continent as far north as the Grand Canyon, but is now in decline across the entire western hemisphere.
Continue reading...The risk to woodland of putting wolves and bears back together | Letters
Rewilding is an attractive ecological concept urgently in need of an agreed definition. Bristol Zoo’s plan to introduce bears and wolves into ancient woodland requires greater scrutiny (1,000 years on, wolves and bears to get back together in UK woods, 17 July). Wild bears and wolves are creatures that roam over large areas of land. As top predators, they require a diversity of habitats to meet their life-cycle and dietary needs. When you are trying to put top-level predators back into an ecosystem, you need the other trophic levels, too. In short, bear and wolf conservation is a landscape-scale issue.
What we see at Bristol is a novel zoo exhibit. An enclosure of 1 hectare, 1.5 times the size of a typical football pitch is a tiny area for both species. The animals will need feeding, and the woodland will require ongoing active management to minimise negative impacts on old trees and to ensure adequate regeneration. There is nothing self-sustaining or “wild” about these conditions. Perhaps if visitors were exposed to a wolf pack hunting down a stricken deer they would get some sense of the rewilding reality.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Firebugs in Russia, monkeys in India and penguin visitors in a New Zealand sushi shop
Continue reading...If you go down to the woods today … will British bears welcome wolves?
Project to recreate ancient habitat prepares for delicate process of reuniting species
On a summer’s day the spot is idyllic. Ancient English woodland tumbles towards the broad river valley. The birds sing, the squirrels scurry.
Then suddenly the mood changes as a bear ambles mightily into sight among the oak trees. Another clambers up a towering ash and seems to take in the view down to the River Severn and and across towards the Forest of Dean.
Continue reading...Extinction Rebellion protesters block site of London super-sewer
Activists and residents demonstrate in Bermondsey in protest at pollution from lorries
Extinction Rebellion protesters have blockaded the entrance to the construction of London’s £4.2bn super-sewer project as part of a fifth day of protests.
About 50 activists – including mothers and children from the nearby Riverside Primary school – began a blockade to halt concrete pouring at Chambers Wharf, in Bermondsey, south-east London, at 7.30am on Friday morning.
Continue reading...Carbon calculator: how taking one flight emits as much as many people do in a year
Even short-haul flights produce huge amounts of CO2, figures show
Continue reading...Victorian recycling firm warns of landfill crisis if it goes under
SKM Recycling says its collapse could mean 400,000 tonnes a year more waste sent to landfill
A major recycling company feared to be at risk of going into administration has warned up to 400,000 tonnes of glass, paper, plastic and metals could be sent to landfill each year if it goes under.
Victoria-based SKM Recycling issued the warning in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the waste management crisis that has grown since China introduced an effective ban on most imported recyclable materials in 2017.
Continue reading...Why we're tackling the Etape du Tour despite our breast cancer
Our conditions have forced us to temper our expectations, but my friend and I won’t let them stop us pursuing what we love
A breakaway is a cycling term that refers to an individual or a small group of cyclists who have successfully opened a gap ahead of the peloton, the main group of cyclists. On 21 July, two of us are plotting a breakaway from the disease that hangs over our daily lives by tackling one of the most challenging amateur cycling events.
The Etape du Tour, which has been running since 1993, is a chance for amateur cyclists to test their mettle on a stage of the Tour de France, riding on the same routes and under the same conditions as the professionals.
Continue reading...Britons urged to help record influx of painted lady butterflies
High numbers have reached UK in past six weeks and many of their offspring will emerge during Big Butterfly Count
Wildlife lovers are being urged to help record the greatest influx of painted lady butterflies for a decade as part of the world’s largest butterfly survey.
Unusually high numbers of the migratory butterfly have flown into Britain from continental Europe in the last six weeks and some of their offspring will emerge during the Big Butterfly Count, which starts on Friday.
Continue reading...Crown backs down and ‘refines’ plans for offshore wind auction
Tender process for seabed use made more transparent after warnings from energy firms
The Queen’s property manager has bowed to criticism over its plans for the biggest offshore wind auction in a decade by agreeing to fairer terms for renewable energy companies.
The Crown Estate, which holds the rights to seabeds around the British Isles, told windfarm developers on Thursday that it has “refined” its controversial plans for the upcoming tender to make it more affordable to develop renewable energy.
Continue reading...Campaign to save Kenya's wild animals – archive, 19 July 1961
19 July 1961 Conservationist pioneer Mervyn Cowie works tirelessly to set up national parks, despite opposition from the British colonial territories
Nairobi, July 18
One of the little jokes of the last Kenya Parliament was the way Mervyn Cowie, a nominated member, was often referred to as “the Member for Wild Animals.” In this Parliament there is no place for the director of Kenya’s National Parks. Yet the plight of his wild animals is worse today than he has ever known before.
The immediate causes are those afflicting every farmer – the unprecedented devastation of grazing by army-worm and two years of terrible drought. But there is an even larger danger in the background: the indifference of African politicians to game preservation and the prospect that after independence they may let this greatest of East Africa’s tourist attractions vanish through neglect.
Continue reading...Pollutionwatch: soot study shows harm from open waste burning
Not only carbon dioxide but also soot released from fires has impact on global warming, study finds
The focus on plastics in our oceans has highlighted the global problem of waste disposal. Household bin collection and the recycling, composting, burying or incinerating of our rubbish are key functions of a modern city. But in low-income countries about 90% of waste ends up in open dumps or is burned in the open air.
Obviously, burning waste creates carbon dioxide and the smoke contains health-harmful particles, but it also contains tiny black particles of soot which have a huge short-term climate impact. Researchers from London’s King’s and Imperial colleges burned small samples of rubbish and measured the smoke. Soot amounts were greatest when the rubbish contained two plastics: polystyrene and polyethylene terephthalate (more commonly abbreviated to PET and often used to make drinks bottles). Burning waste containing textiles, many of these being plastic, also contributed to high soot releases.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef authority urges 'fastest possible action' on emissions
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says ‘further loss of coral is inevitable’
The federal agency that manages the Great Barrier Reef has made an unprecedented call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, warning only the “strongest and fastest possible action” will reduce the risks to the natural wonder.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has published a climate position statement that says the reef is already damaged from warming oceans and it is “critical” global temperature rises remain within 1.5 degrees.
Continue reading...UK energy-saving efforts collapse after government subsidy cuts
Only 10,000 upgrades such as loft insulation happen each month compared with 65,000 in 2014, report shows
Efforts to end fuel poverty and energy waste by making the UK’s draughty homes more efficient have collapsed by almost 85%, according to new government data.
The report, published on Thursday, shows that the number of energy efficiency upgrades undertaken each month has fallen to 10,000 on average for the six months to the end of May. This compares with an average of 65,000 a month in 2014.
Continue reading...Police call for tougher sentences to deter Extinction Rebellion
Met says it is working with CPS on more than 900 cases from environmental protests
Police have accused Extinction Rebellion of causing “high level” disruption and called for courts to pass sentences big enough to deter them from causing fresh chaos, as the environmental group braces itself for mass prosecutions of its activists.
Laurence Taylor, the deputy assistant commissioner in charge of protest policing for the Metropolitan force, said last April’s mass civil disobedience, when thousands of activists occupied four sites across London, saw 90 of the people being arrested only to be released and rejoin the protests. Taylor said police were talking to the government about tougher and clearer powers.
Continue reading...Southern Water must pay for its pollution spills, watchdog told
Environmental groups condemn cutting of company’s fine from £37.7m to £3m
Environmental groups are demanding one of Britain’s biggest water companies be made to pay tens of millions of pounds to restore the damage to habitats and wildlife caused by thousands of pollution spills into the rivers and beaches across the south-east of England.
As details of the scale of the criminal inquiry into the allegedly deliberate misreporting of data and cover-up of thousands of pollution spills by Southern Water emerge, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are calling on the regulator, Ofwat, to review a penalty of £126m imposed on the company last month.
Continue reading...Ofwat has a duty to protect our rivers | Letters
As river, fishery and wildlife organisations, we are concerned by Ofwat’s proposal to levy a reduced penalty on Southern Water for “improper practices … including at senior management levels, to present a false picture of compliance”, by the “deliberate misreporting of data” on significant pollution incidents, and the failure to have “adequate systems of planning, governance and internal controls in place to be able to manage its wastewater treatment works; to accurately report information about the performance of these works; and to properly carry out its general statutory duties as a sewerage undertaker”.
We are particularly disappointed that the rivers and environments that have been affected will not receive any compensation for the damage to the habitat of fish and other wildlife caused by the company. Reducing the fine from £37.7m to £3m in return for allowing Southern Water an opportunity to give customers a rebate is in our opinion the wrong option. It is the environment and the aquatic life in the watercourses that were deliberately polluted by Southern Water in an attempt to remain within the terms of their permitted consents and to avoid incurring penalties.
Continue reading...IUCN red list reveals wildlife destruction from treetop to ocean floor
Latest list shows extinction now threatens a third of all assessed species, from monkeys to rhino rays
From the tops of trees to the depths of the oceans, humanity’s destruction of wildlife is continuing to drive many species towards extinction, with the latest “red list” showing that a third of all species assessed are under threat.
The razing of habitats and hunting for bushmeat has now driven seven primates into decline, while overfishing has pushed two families of extraordinary rays to the brink. Pollution, dams and over-abstraction of freshwater are responsible for serious declines in river wildlife from Mexico to Japan, while illegal logging is ravaging Madagascar’s rosewoods, and disease is decimating the American elm.
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