The Guardian
Country diary: the hollow hills of legend
Bronkham Hill, Dorset: The wind pours larksong over the humps and bumps of a bronze age barrow cemetery
The sound of chiffchaffs shouting in the woods falls away as I follow the South Dorset Ridgeway upwards to the high chalk. The way is starred with white stitchwort running through clumps of shocking-pink campion and the last of the bluebells.
Continue reading...Dutch fishermen to sail fleet into Amsterdam in wind turbine protest
Workers say they are taking action in response to vast amount of windfarms being constructed in their waters
The Netherlands may be the land of the windmill, but fishermen are planning a major protest on Saturday against the Dutch government’s latest wind turbine construction in the North Sea, with an armada of fishing boats sailing into Amsterdam.
After alighting from at least 15 boats at the back of Amsterdam’s central station, it is understood that hundreds of fishermen will march to the capital’s Damrak canal, where they will upend bags of small fish deemed too small for sale by the EU, and cover them with red dye.
Continue reading...Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
Biggest analysis to date reveals huge footprint of livestock - it provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland
Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
Continue reading...Mountain gorilla population rises above 1,000
New total represents an increase of 25% since 2010 in its central African heartland
It is one of the most recognisable animals in the world and one of the most endangered, but a new census reveals the surviving mountain gorilla population has now risen above 1,000.
This represents a rise of 25% since 2010 in its heartland of the Virunga Massif in central Africa. It also marks success for intensive conservation work in a region riven by armed conflict, and where six park guards were murdered in April.
Continue reading...Romania breaks up alleged €25m illegal logging ring
Security forces launch raids linked to deforestation in the Carpathian mountains, home to some of Europe’s last virgin forest
Romania’s security forces have mounted a series of raids to break up an alleged €25m illegal logging ring, in what is believed to be the largest operation of its kind yet seen in Europe.
Officers from Romania’s Directorate for Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) swooped on 23 addresses – including factories owned by the Austrian timber group Schweighofer Holzindustrie, according to local press reports.
Continue reading...Tell us how you are rewilding or improving nature in your area
We’d like to hear about – and see pictures of – the small things you are doing to encourage nature where you live
Naturalist Patrick Barkham wrote in the Guardian this week about the principles of rewilding – stepping back and allowing natural processes to occur, and encouraging wild plants and insects.
Related: How to rewild your garden: ditch chemicals and decorate the concrete
Continue reading...'Chronic inaction': call for planning overhaul as population growth threatens biodiversity
Melbourne bird species decreased in proportion to density of human occupation
The outskirts of Melbourne are a maze of newly-paved culs-de-sac. Freestanding homes twist in on each other, filling the footprint of their small street blocks.
On the other side of the road, short wooden stakes have been tied with fluorescent tape to mark out the next development.
Continue reading...Margaret Atwood: women will bear brunt of dystopian climate future
Booker prize-winning author predicts climate reality will not be far from scenarios imagined in her post-apocalyptic fiction
Climate change will bring a dystopian future reminiscent of one of her “speculative fictions”, with women bearing the brunt of brutal repression, hunger and war, the Booker prize-winning author Margaret Atwood is to warn.
“This isn’t climate change – it’s everything change,” she will tell an audience at the British Library this week. “Women will be directly and adversely affected by climate change.”
Continue reading...Mind your beeswax: global price surge leaves bearded Australians in a tangle
Australia is one of the few countries in the world where hives are free of the debilitating varroa mite
The soaring price of Australian beeswax could be bad news for local beard owners – and good news for scammers – as demand for high-quality beeswax heats up.
New uses for the wax – from cosmetics to food wraps – and the comparative health of Australia’s bees have driven the export price of Australian beeswax up in the global marketplace.
Continue reading...Rise of the ultra-cyclists: a new breed of riders go the distance
With no spectators, no bags of freebies and no medals, the 400km London-Wales-London ride provides a welcome antidote to overblown sportives
“Cycling far?” asks a woman in the bakery as a group of us queues for coffee and sausage rolls, as well as an all-important receipt to prove we passed through Tewkesbury.
Increasing numbers of cyclists are getting bored with 100-mile sportives and looking for something else
Continue reading...Reprieve for Abbott's booby after Christmas Island mining expansion ruled out
Coalition says proposed phosphate exploration would have had unacceptable impact on wildlife, including endangered sea bird
The Turnbull government has knocked back a controversial phosphate exploration proposal on Christmas Island “because it is likely to have significant and unacceptable impacts on matters protected under national environment law”.
Phosphate Resources Limited – the owners of a phosphate mine on Christmas Island – had proposed to clear 6.83ha of land and undertake exploration drilling along 44 survey lines in an effort to determine the extent of the additional phosphate resources on Christmas Island.
Continue reading...Country diary: summer's lagging in the woods
Comins Coch, Ceredigion: Meadow grasses and flowers have grown in abundance, but the trees have been slow to green
In the pasture beside the lane, dandelions have already set seed, their spherical heads intact and waiting for the right gust of wind to break the seeds free and disperse them across the village like invading paratroopers. The meadow grasses and wild flowers have grown rapidly in confused abundance, but the crown of the oak tree across the field remains more defined by the framework of branches than by new foliage. Possibly the sudden drop in temperature that preceded the late snow selectively stalled development.
Further uphill the old meadow was marked by fresh molehills among the rushes and the lady’s smock, showing where these stolid hunters have been clearing and extending their shallow runs. The activity of their favoured prey, earthworms, is triggered by rising temperature and an attractive level of soil moisture – conditions that have apparently been satisfied.
Continue reading...Uncomfortable truths about the control of predators | Letters
There is growing anecdotal evidence that the fox population in lowland rural Britain is in sharp decline (Is Britain’s fox population in decline?, Shortcuts, G2, 23 May). This is not because they are short of food, and thus in need of feeding on roadkill by Chris Packham or anybody else.
Professor Stephens of Durham University is right that “fox populations appear to have dropped specifically within the past 15 or 20 years”, ie since the enactment of the ban on fox-hunting in 2004. Nor is he wrong when he suggests that “people who were enthusiastic about hunting would often encourage fox populations”. More accurately, this means that they provided habitat (which benefited all wildlife), observed a closed season to allow foxes to breed and rear their cubs in peace, and practised a method of culling that encouraged survival of the fittest and removed the surplus numbers required to maintain a level population. The existence of hunts also acted as a deterrent to those wishing to shoot foxes indiscriminately and all year round with rifles which have significantly increased in accuracy and range over the past 15 years.
Continue reading...How to rewild your garden: ditch chemicals and decorate the concrete
There are several ways to embrace nature – no matter the size of your plot
Rewilding excites people with its images of wolves and ambition to return entire landscapes to nature as humans withdraw after centuries of domination. But the grandeur of rewilding can also make the concept seem remote or irrelevant to people living ever more urban lives.
To declare we are rewilding our garden, or window box, is probably a contradiction in terms and risks cheapening this important conservation concept. But there are principles of rewilding – stepping back and allowing natural processes to occur, and encouraging wild plants and insects – which we can all embrace. The most relevant rewilding idea for us urban beings? Let go, and reduce our micromanagement of whatever small patch of earth we own, rent or enjoy and influence.
Continue reading...Paris, presidents and pandas: Wednesday's best photos
The Guardian’s picture editors bring you a selection of photo highlights from around the world
Continue reading...Karachi residents cool off in Pakistan heatwave – in pictures
Pakistan’s most populous city is in the grips of a heatwave as temperatures soar to 45C. The sweltering conditions have come during Ramadan, the holy month in which millions of Muslims refrain from food and drink from dawn until dusk. Sixty-five people have been killed in Karachi by the recent spell of hot weather, with the country expected to sizzle into June
Continue reading...Are avocados toast? California farmers bet on what we'll be eating in 2050
For farmers planting crops they hope will bear fruit in 25 years – including avocado trees – climate change must be reckoned with now
Chris Sayer pushed his way through avocado branches and grasped a denuded limb. It was stained black, as if someone had ladled tar over its bark. In February, the temperature had dropped below freezing for three hours, killing the limb. The thick leaves had shriveled and fallen away, exposing the green avocados, which then burned in the sun. Sayer estimated he’d lost one out of every 20 avocados on his farm in Ventura, just 50 miles north of Los Angeles, but he counts himself lucky.
Continue reading...Can the world's largest rewilding project restore Patagonia's beauty?
Purchasing huge tracts of land in Chile and Argentina, former clothing tycoons Doug and Kristine Tompkins have led a quarter century-long effort to reintroduce threatened and locally extinct species to the wilds of South America
Click here to watch Wilderness, our 360° film of Patagonia
During an elegant dinner in the wilds of Patagonia, Kris Tompkins suddenly remembered the fresh guanaco carcass down the road. She rose from the table and drove us to the nearby grasslands of Patagonia national park, gushing about the possibility of staying up all night with a torch in hope of spying a mountain lion come to feast on the dead llama-like creature.
Continue reading...Meat and fish multinationals 'jeopardising Paris climate goals'
New index finds many of the world’s largest protein producers failing to measure or report emissions, despite accounting for 14.5% of greenhouse gases
Meat and fish companies may be “putting the implementation of the Paris agreement in jeopardy” by failing to properly report their climate emissions, according to a groundbreaking index launched today.
Three out of four (72%) of the world’s biggest meat and fish companies provided little or no evidence to show that they were measuring or reporting their emissions, despite the fact that, as the report points out, livestock production represents 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading...Butterflywatch: here come the skippers in the May parade
Newly reintroduced chequered skippers are fluttering about Rockingham forest as other butterflies emerge in the sunlight
Butterfly lovers’ emotions tend to boom and bust like butterfly populations. Two weeks of sunshine in my part of the world and my heart’s lifted by plentiful orange tips, small whites and brimstones, while last summer’s peacocks gamely fly on. Alongside a decent abundance of common species there’s the exciting addition of 41 chequered skippers from the continent, now enjoying the warm glades of Rockingham forest, Northamptonshire.
The chequered skippers – males and females collected in Belgium – have been reintroduced as part of the Back from the Brink project, after the species became extinct in England following the hot summer of 1976. (A similar summer would be too dry for this species’ caterpillars, which need moisture to survive.)
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