The Guardian
US poised to allow more mining on land Trump removed from monuments
Officials plan to sell some of the land that once belonged to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, despite pledge not to
US officials have announced plans to allow increased mining on land that once belonged to two national monuments Donald Trump shrank, and to sell off some of the land despite pledges not to do so.
The two monuments, now significantly smaller in size, are both in Utah. The draft management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument includes a 98-page minerals report that outlines deposits of coal, oil and gas, tar sands and other minerals under the whole of the monument’s original 1.9m acres.
Continue reading...On patrol with the wildlife rangers of Chinko – photo essay
Rangers in this Central African Republic nature reserve face an array of dangers in their bid to protect a rich variety of species
Deep in the heart of Africa, a dedicated group of rangers patrol the Chinko nature reserve. In baking equatorial heat, they are weighed down with body armour and camouflage fatigues. Beads of sweat run down their faces; mosquitos whine. The men keep watch over a vast patchwork of savanna and rainforest in the Central African Republic – a country mired in civil strife and one of the many frontlines of a poaching war that spans the continent and reaches across the globe.
Continue reading...Brazil: murder of indigenous leader highlights threat to way of life
Jorginho Guajajara’s killing is believed by members of his tribe to be the result of conflict with loggers in their Amazon territory
Indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon are mourning the murder of a community leader who campaigned to protect the forest from logging amid escalating violence in the region.
Jorginho Guajajara, a cacique, or leader, of the Guajajara people, was found dead near a river in the city of Arame, Maranhão state, at the weekend.
Continue reading...Weedkiller found in wide range of breakfast foods aimed at children
Cancer-linked herbicide, sold as Roundup by Monsanto, present in 45 products including granola, snack bars and Cheerios
Significant levels of the weedkilling chemical glyphosate have been found in an array of popular breakfast cereals, oats and snack bars marketed to US children, a new study has found.
Tests revealed glyphosate, the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller brand Roundup, present in all but two of the 45 oat-derived products that were sampled by the Environmental Working Group, a public health organization.
Continue reading...New pesticides may harm bees as much as existing ones – study
Ability of bumblebees to reproduce, and rate at which colonies grow, compromised by new sulfoximine-based insecticides
A new class of pesticides positioned to replace neonicotinoids may be just as harmful to crop-pollinating bees, researchers have warned.
In experiments, the ability of bumblebees to reproduce, and the rate at which their colonies grow, were both compromised by the new sulfoximine-based insecticides, they reported in the journal Nature.
Continue reading...Sea life in 'peril' as ocean temperatures hit all-time high in San Diego
Between 1982 and 2016, the number of ‘marine heatwaves’ doubled, and likely will become more common and intense as the planet warms, study finds
Even the oceans are breaking temperature records in this summer of heatwaves. Off the California coast near San Diego, scientists in early August recorded all-time high seawater temperatures since daily measurements began in 1916.
“Just like we have heatwaves on land, we also have heatwaves in the ocean,” said Art Miller of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Continue reading...$444m reef grant to cost taxpayers extra $11m, says Labor MP
Chris Bowen says it ‘defies logic’ that the grant was awarded without a competitive tender process
The transfer of $443.8m to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation will cost taxpayers another $11m in public debt interest, Labor’s treasury spokesman Chris Bowen says.
Bowen has questioned what oversight Treasury and the Department of Finance had of the decision to award such a large amount of funding to the small charity in one instalment.
Continue reading...Hugh Synge obituary
The botanist Hugh Synge, who has died of cancer aged 67, was a roving ambassador for wild plants. In 2007, he was voted one of the 20 most influential British conservationists by BBC Wildlife magazine.
While on the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the 1970s, he helped to compile the first Red Data Book of plants. Published in 1979, co-edited with Gren Lucas, this was a landmark publication that assembled for the first time detailed case histories of plant species to explain why so many of them were vanishing.
Continue reading...Pine marten spotted in Northumberland for first time in 90 years
Fearsome predator was extinct in England but Scottish relatives have crossed the border and set up home in Kielder forest
The pine marten, a fearsome but diminutive predator driven to extinction in England, has returned to the country’s largest forest for the first time since 1926.
Stills and video from a camera trap have recorded a mature pine marten devouring peanut butter put out for red squirrels at a secret location in Kielder forest, Northumberland.
Continue reading...Badger campaigners lose high court battle to limit cull
Wildlife campaigner Tom Langton claims the culls themselves risk making bovine TB epidemic worse
Badger culling will be extended across England on an open-ended basis, conservationists have warned, after the high court rejected a challenge to the legality of the government’s policy.
Licences to allow badger culling to continue in particular areas beyond a four-year period are legal, ruled Mr Justice Cranston, rejecting a challenge brought by the independent ecologist Tom Langton.
Continue reading...Humans are pushing the Earth closer to a climate cliff | John Abraham
A new study examines potential climate feedbacks that could push Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state
A new paper, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has received a lot of media attention. The attention is justified because the paper paints a very grim picture of the climate and what humans may be doing to it. In particular, the authors of this study tried to determine the trajectory that the Earth is on so we can predict what the future climate will be.
There are many really important insights from this paper. The authors wanted to know how feedbacks in the Earth’s climate will play a role in shaping the climate in the future. By feedbacks, we mean a change in one part of the climate that then causes another change, which in turn may cause another change, and so on, potentially setting up chain reactions.
Continue reading...Nutria: the rodent wreaking havoc on California's landscape – video
The rapid influx of these beaver-like rodents has decimated parts of the Californian wetlands. They were introduced to the US for the fur trade and now share wetland areas with some of the west coast’s most endangered species. The California department of fish and wildlife has compared the threat of their presence to that of wildfires
California v nutria: state seeks to eradicate scourge of giant rodents
Continue reading...Senate inquiry to grill Great Barrier Reef Foundation chairman over $444m grant
Foundation board members and government officials will also give evidence into the awarding of the grant
The chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and two more board members have agreed to appear at a Senate inquiry examining a $443.8m government grant to the not-for-profit.
John Schubert, who attended a meeting with the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, on 9 April that led to the awarding of the grant, will appear before the Senate committee for questioning at a second hearing on 18 September.
Continue reading...Sanjeev Gupta: $1bn South Australia renewable energy plan will mean cheaper power
UK industrialist’s plan features 780,000 solar panels, generating enough electricity for 96,000 homes
Billionaire UK industrialist Sanjeev Gupta has launched a $1bn, one-gigawatt renewable energy plan based in South Australia’s mid-north that he says will lead Australian industry’s transition to more competitive power.
In the first of a number of projects slated for the upper Spencer Gulf region, which will also include a lithium-ion battery bigger than Elon Musk’s, Gupta’s energy company Simec Zen has released details of its Cultana Solar Farm.
Continue reading...Creatures of the cold: the Antarctic photography exhibition – in pictures
The annual exhibition, which is part of Hobart’s Antarctica festival is back on with its chilly, majestic imagery. The winner this year is Sydney’s Sam Edmonds with his striking photo of a gentoo penguin in the snow. The show is currently being exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s Basement Bond Store Gallery.
Continue reading...Calls for environmental water entitlements to be sold to drought-affected farmers
Politicians and farmers say water should be diverted to crops to keep herds alive
There are growing calls for the federal and state governments to start selling government-owned environmental water entitlements to farmers to alleviate the drought and to keep livestock alive.
But the proposals would see wetlands and river courses starved of water with potential environmental stress from the drought exacerbated by the diversion of water onto farmland.
Continue reading...Stop climate change, don’t ‘adapt’ to it | Letters:
While I appreciate your work in keeping the spotlight on the global heatwave (World on fire: the rise of the 50C city, G2, 13 August), I’m scared by the emphasis of your correspondents and leader writers on “adapting” to climate change (Letters, 11 July). You don’t “adapt” to a raging fire, do you? You have to stop it. And the first thing you need to do is stop pouring fuel on it.
Leading scientists worldwide now agree that the main cause of the climate crisis is the burning of fossil fuels, and leading economists agree that the solution is to price fossil fuels out of the market. Until that happens, we will be paying – with our health, our lives and our children’s future.
Continue reading...Warm weather brings freshwater jellyfish to Shropshire canal
First UK sighting of tiny jellyfish species normally found in the Yangtze basin in China
First came the wasps, exotic sharks and marauding seagulls. Now the long hot summer has revealed another initially alarm-inducing animal in British waters – or more precisely, in the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union Canal.
Freshwater jellyfish more normally found in the Yangtze basin in China have been spotted swimming in the waters near Bridge 23 of the canal between Middlewich and Winsford, according to the Canal & River Trust.
Continue reading...Breakthrough as New Caledonia votes to protect coral reef
The Pacific Island is home to one of the world’s most pristine coral reefs, boasting more than 9,300 marine species
New Caledonia has agreed to tougher protections around a huge swathe of some of the world’s last near-pristine coral reefs, in a move conservationists hailed as a major breakthrough.
The Pacific nation, a French overseas territory, is home to a rich array of wildlife including 2.5 million seabirds and more than 9,300 marine species such as dugongs and nesting green sea turtles, many of which thrive in and around remote zones off the island nation’s coast.
Continue reading...Scotland's mountain hare population is at just 1% of 1950s level
Culling and loss of moorland in favour of conifer forests blamed for severe decline in wildlife
The number of mountain hares on moorlands in the eastern Scottish Highlands has fallen to less than 1% of the level recorded more than 60 years ago, according to a long-term study.
The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the RSPB teamed up to study counts of the animals over several decades on moorland managed for red grouse shooting and nearby mountain land.
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