The Guardian
Revealed: US-style industrial farms receive millions in subsidies
The Guardian and Bureau of Investigative Journalism establish that intensive farms in the UK received nearly £70m in two years
The operators of industrial-scale livestock farms have received millions of pounds of public funds in the last two years, the Guardian can reveal, despite concerns over the spread of US-style factory farming across the British countryside.
Data analysis by the Guardian and Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that recipients of almost £70 million in subsidies in 2016 and 2017 include individuals and companies running:
Continue reading...Irukandji warning: deadly jellyfish will be 'fired up' by north Queensland's big wet
Tiny creatures prefer calm, warm waters – with risk of stings increasing after rainfall
Irukandji jellyfish may be elusive during far north Queensland’s big wet but they’re set to come back in big numbers when the sun comes out.
After they forced the closure of two northern Queensland beaches last weekend, including Ellis Beach near Cairns when a teenage girl was admitted to hospital with stings to her upper body, no irukandji have been spotted in swimming areas since.
Continue reading...‘It’s God’s plan’: the man who dreams of bringing intensive chicken farming to Africa
A US mega-farm, a Christian backer and Africa’s oldest industrial chicken producer are bringing the world’s super birds to reform central Africa’s food market and feed the poor
On the evening of 7 August 2018, a KLM charter flight left Amsterdam, landing 11 hours later at Kilimanjaro airport in northern Tanzania. Its young occupants were nodded through immigration and driven 50 miles to their new home, close to some of Africa’s most famous game parks.
These were no tourists hoping to see lions in the nearby Serengeti. The 2,320 little cockerels and 17,208 hens on the plane were a flock of European-bred pedigree Cobb 500 chickens, the world’s most popular breed. Their destination: a remote 200-hectare mega-farm under construction in the windy foothills of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro.
Continue reading...Schools urged to eliminate single-use plastics by 2022
Education secretary asks headteachers to consider using sustainable alternatives
Schools are being encouraged to set themselves the target of eliminating their reliance on single-use plastics by 2022.
The education secretary, Damian Hinds, has urged headteachers in England to consider using sustainable alternatives instead of non-recyclable plastic for items such as straws, bottles, bags and food packaging.
Continue reading...Woodside seeks approval for gas project near WA's Dampier marine reserves
Federal environment department publishes proposal on Christmas Eve and public has only 10 business days to comment
The oil and gas company Woodside Energy has applied for federal approval for dredging and pipeline construction in waters near the Western Australian Dampier Archipelago marine reserves.
The company has sought the approval as part of its proposed Scarborough gas project, an offshore development about 380km from the Burrup peninsula that would use a 430km pipeline to transport gas to its existing Pluto liquefied natural gas facility on the peninsula.
Continue reading...Wildlife photographer of the year people’s choice award – in pictures
Admirers of wildlife photography can choose their favourite for the Lumix-sponsored award from 25 images pre-selected by London’s Natural History Museum. The institution made its selection taken from over 45,000 submissions from 95 countries
Continue reading...'It's warm water now': climate change strands sea turtles on Cape Cod shores
The Gulf of Maine’s rapidly warming waters draws in larger numbers of Kemp’s ridley turtles, enticing them to stay longer
At the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in a repurposed shipyard building south of Boston, the casualties of climate change swim in tanks as they recover after being pulled stunned from the beach.
Every year, as autumn turns to winter and ocean temperatures off Massachusetts drop below 10C (50F), dead, dying and stricken sea turtles wash up on the shores of Cape Cod as those shelled reptiles that have failed to migrate south start to die in the chilly waters.
Continue reading...More than 50 Australian plant species face extinction within decade
Study finds just 12 of the most imperilled species are listed under national environment laws as critically endangered
More than 50 Australian plant species are under threat of extinction within the next decade, according to a major study of the country’s threatened flora.
Just 12 of the most at-risk species were found to be listed as critically endangered under national environment laws – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – and 13 had no national threatened listing at all.
Continue reading...Japan confirms it will quit IWC to resume commercial whaling
Japan will resume hunting in its waters in July but will end controversial expeditions to the Southern ocean
Japan is to leave the International Whaling Commission and resume commercial whaling for the first time in more than 30 years, the government said on Wednesday, in a move that has drawn international criticism.
The country’s fleet will resume commercial operations in July next 2019, the government’s chief spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, said of the decision to defy 1986 global ban on commercial whaling.
Continue reading...From George Pell to Roger 'the ripped kangaroo': Australia's 2018 – in pictures
The most memorable images in 2018 spanned the Australian Open, Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Prince Harry and Meghan’s visit, and the leadership coup against Malcolm Turnbull
Continue reading...Specieswatch: amazing life cycle of freshwater pearl mussels
In healthy oxygen-rich rivers these mussels can live up to 130 years
The extraordinary life cycle of the freshwater pearl mussel Margaritifera margaritifera enabled it to thrive in rivers across most of northern Europe and north America including the UK.
The adult mussels live in gravel on the bottom of rivers with about one third of their shell sticking out into the stream. Once a year they release millions of larvae into the water. Survival depends on the unlikely chance that a passing juvenile salmon or brown trout will swallow them so that the larvae can clamp themselves on the fish’s gills and grow in the oxygen rich environment.
Continue reading...Hunting bans don’t help elephants | Brief letters
Here in Botswana, where trophy hunting was banned in 2014, the elephant population has exceeded the country’s carrying capacity by 300%. They are now susceptible to species collapse due to drought or competition with humans. Is there no solution apart from promoting or banning trophy hunting (Letters, 21 December)?
Gontse Kgosiemang
Gaborone, Botswana
• Hopefully, the passing of Christmas means we’ll not hear more spurious claims linking it to supposed pagan festivals. Those claims were first made by Puritan preachers in the 17th century to undermine what they saw as a Catholic celebration. There was no evidence for it then and none now.
Dr Michael Paraskos
London
'Never seen any place like it' – readers share their national park stories
From Wilsons Promontory to the Royal, you love the open spaces of our national parks – but you’re worried about them, too
There’s no doubt you love Australia’s national parks. When we put the call out for readers to send in stories about the parks they loved, we received lots of submissions. There were clear favourites – there were a number of stories about Wilsons Promontory as well as the Blue Mountains, Girraween, Kosciuszko, Lamington, the Alpine and the Royal national parks.
And there were common themes in your responses: many readers said how glorious it was being out in nature, imagining life before colonisation, when Indigenous Australians looked after the land. But some voiced their concerns about the cuts to national parks funding, and many were worried about whether these treasured areas would be protected for future generations.
Continue reading...Father Christmas’s winter wonderland homes are hotting up
Many towns claiming to be the birthplace of Santa Claus have seen unseasonal temperatures
After a year in which the climate has been far more naughty than nice, even Father Christmas – in his various guises – is feeling the heat, according to the towns that claim to be his birthplace.
From Alaska to Finland, half a dozen Arctic towns have staked a claim to be the home of Santa Claus or whatever other name he is locally known as. And almost without exception, these winter wonderlands are hotting up.
Continue reading...Scotland considers continental wildcats to save native species from extinction
Releasing ‘pure’ animals could counter interbreeding with domestic cats, experts say
Conservationists could release wildcats captured from other European countries in the Scottish Highlands in a final effort to protect Scotland’s population from extinction.
Recent genetic testing by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland of 276 Scottish wildcat samples found those in the wild are so heavily interbred with domestic cats that they are close to becoming functionally extinct.
Continue reading...Locked doors, cancelled tours: US national parks suffer amid shutdown
Visitors face ‘disruption and disappointment’ as states scramble to keep key sites open
The doors remained locked at Fort McHenry National Monument in Maryland, the birthplace of the US national anthem. In Georgia, the Fort Pulaski National monument announced it would be closed except for one boat ramp. At Washington’s Mount Rainier national park, ranger-led snowshoe walks were cancelled.
And at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, a scheduled talk by the nation’s oldest park ranger, 97-year-old Betty Reid Soskin, had to be called off.
Continue reading...On the real Watership Down, rabbits are hard to come by
Numbers may be at an all time low as a new adaptation of the novel hits our TV screens
The real Watership Down is not hard to find.
In the introduction to his book, Richard Adams helpfully gives the Ordnance Survey map reference – sheet 174. Once located on paper, long-remembered names jump from the map: Nuthanger Farm, Ashley Warren and Honeycomb are all there. It was the multitude of rabbits found on this little square of England that inspired Adams to write Watership Down.
Continue reading...Give the gift of no plastic this Christmas
For the next few months, Jemima Kiss explores how we can all move towards a life without plastic, starting with Christmas
We all know the physical and emotional toll Christmas can take, particularly on women; it is hard bloody work. But I also enjoy making the magic happen because I love the ritual, and the nostalgia, and the gratitude. I loved it when I was a kid, when Father Christmas left sooty boot prints across our lounge carpet, crumbs of mince pies and dribbles of whisky on the floor. I loved the map he left me that Christmas morning in 1984 that led to a real bunny rabbit waiting for me downstairs. I loved my Mum’s Christmas pudding. I loved hand-making my cards. I loved giving presents. Thirtysomething years later I still love all of this, and now I unironically have Michael Bublé’s Christmas album, too.
Related: Plastic pollution discovered at deepest point of ocean
Continue reading...Scott Pruitt never gave up EPA plans to debate climate science, records show
- White House denied administrator’s ‘red team, blue team’ idea
- Emails: staff considered questioning greenhouse gases finding
In Scott Pruitt’s final weeks as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, his political advisers were still considering ways to formally raise doubts about climate change science, agency records show.
Related: Deadly weather: the human cost of 2018's climate disasters – visual guide
Continue reading...World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin
Scientists can now quickly determine a chick’s gender before it hatches, potentially ending the need to cull billions of male chicks worldwide
The world’s first ever no-kill eggs are now on sale in Berlin after German scientists found an easy way to determine a chick’s gender before it hatches, in a breakthrough that could put an end to the annual live shredding of billions of male chicks worldwide.
The patented “Seleggt” process can determine the sex of a chick just nine days after an egg has been fertilised. Male eggs are processed into animal feed, leaving only female chicks to hatch at the end of a 21-day incubation period.
“If you can determine the sex of a hatching egg you can entirely dispense with the culling of live male chicks,” said Seleggt managing director Dr Ludger Breloh, who spearheaded the four-year programme by German supermarket Rewe Group to make its own-brand eggs more sustainable.
“It’s not about winning or losing,” he added of the worldwide race to find a marketable solution. “We all have the same goal, which is to end the culling of chicks in the supply chain. Of course, there’s competition, but it’s positive in that it keeps us all focused on that goal.”
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