The Guardian
Share your views on drink deposit schemes
If you live in the UK we’d like to hear what you think about bottle and can deposit schemes near you
The government has unveiled a deposit return scheme (DRS) covering glass, metal and plastic drinks containers in England. By returning bottles and cans consumers will receive a small cash sum, however retailers are responsible for recycling the items.
Meet the people volunteering to defend nature in their local communities
As spring arrives and campaigners in Sheffield win a temporary pause in tree felling, here’s a gallery of Friends of the Earth volunteers defending nature in local communities
Continue reading...Labor and Greens keep up the fight against Coalition's marine park plans
Parties plan to introduce separate motions for individual affected regions
Labor and the Greens have launched a fresh attempt to disallow controversial new marine park management plans proposed by the Turnbull government last week, bowling up individual motions to boost the chances of scuttling at least part of the proposal.
A first attempt to disallow the management plans failed on Tuesday night when the government brought on a vote after a procedural skirmish – deploying an unusual chamber tactic, effectively inviting the Senate to vote down the Coalition’s regulations.
Continue reading...Vanishing Glaciers by Project Pressure - in pictures
Project Pressure is a charity that has been working with renowned artists in a pioneering project to document the world’s vanishing glaciers. This week it brought its touring photographic exhibition to the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change, Hong Kong, where visitors can experience the different types of glaciers found on each continent and take a video journey to see how glaciers are retreating
Continue reading...EU leaders should be telling us to eat less meat, say campaigners
A green coalition demands a review of health and environmental impacts of intensive animal farming ahead of budget talks next month
The EU is facing calls to overhaul its industrial farming sector by promoting more plant-based diets in the next common agricultural policy (CAP), as budget negotiations approach a crunch point.
Policy moves could face strong opposition from top officials who reportedly see “no evidence whatsoever” of large-scale linkages between livestock farming and greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading...A bumper year for finches and tits, Big Garden Birdwatch results show
The mild winter was followed by a good breeding season, boosting garden sightings of finches and tits
Finches and tits have enjoyed a golden year, according to the results of this year’s RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
These small bird species suffer particularly badly in cold weather but in the past year benefited from a mild start to the winter that followed a good breeding season. Blackbird sightings in gardens were down – the result of plentiful food elsewhere – but a dearth of robins followed a poor nesting season.
Continue reading...Charity calls for £15m fund to tackle UK hunger by preventing food waste
Figures show that just 17,000 tonnes of the 270,000 tonnes of edible surplus food in the supply chain is redistributed annually to charities
The government is being urged to introduce a £15m fund to tackle hunger by preventing food which could be eaten from going straight into landfill, animal feed or anaerobic digestion.
New figures from the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, FareShare, reveal that just 17,000 tonnes of the 270,000 tonnes of edible surplus food in the supply chain is redistributed annually to charities.
Continue reading...'Extreme' fossil fuel investments have surged under Donald Trump, report reveals
Sharp rise globally in the dirtiest fossil fuel investments reverses progress made after the Paris agreement, with tar sands holdings more than doubling in Trump’s first year in office
Bank holdings in “extreme” fossil fuels skyrocketed globally to $115bn during Donald Trump’s first year as US president, with holdings in tar sands oil more than doubling, a new report has found.
A sharp flight from fossil fuels investments after the Paris agreement was reversed last year with a return to energy sources dubbed “extreme” because of their contribution to global emissions. This included an 11% hike in funding for carbon-heavy tar sands, as well as Arctic and ultra-deepwater oil and coal.
Continue reading...Amazon priest who championed land rights for Brazil's poor is arrested
- Father Amaro Lopes is follower of Dorothy Stang, killed in 2005
- Extortion, land invasion and sexual harassment charges considered
Brazilian police have arrested a priest in the Amazon who championed the rights of smallholders against powerful agricultural interests.
Father Amaro Lopes is the best-known follower of the American-born nun, Dorothy Stang, who was murdered in 2005 in a killing orchestrated by landowners during a dispute that continues today.
Continue reading...Bottle and can deposit return scheme gets green light in England
Consumers to receive small cash sum for returning plastic, glass and metal drinks containers
All drinks containers in England, whether plastic, glass or metal, will be covered by a deposit return scheme, the government has announced.
The forthcoming scheme is intended to cut the litter polluting the land and sea by returning a small cash sum to consumers who return their bottles and cans.
Continue reading...Specieswatch: spring ice has made life hard for the common frog
Many common frogs were trapped under ice in early March and some inevitably died
The common frog Rana temporaria is having a difficult spring. The extreme cold at the beginning of March trapped many under ice. A lot continued to breathe through their skin, but after several days some died from lack of oxygen. The survivors then got breeding under way in many ponds, only for another three-day cold snap to halt proceedings. Some ponds still have no spawn, while in others the adults have already left piles of jelly to take their chance.
Related: How to make your garden frog-friendly
Continue reading...David Cobham obituary
David Cobham is best remembered for his classic films on British wildlife, including the 1979 cinema feature Tarka the Otter and his 1972 TV programme The Vanishing Hedgerows, the first explicitly environmental film broadcast by the BBC.
Cobham, who has died aged 87, made The Vanishing Hedgerows for the corporation’s prestigious strand The World About Us. Presented by the author Henry Williamson, it was a powerful elegy to Britain’s disappearing farmland wildlife, with shocking scenes showing the fatal effects of pesticides on birds.
Continue reading...Campaigners call on UK retailers to stop stocking Antarctic krill products
Greenpeace wants health shops like Boots to follow the lead of Holland & Barrett and ditch products that threaten the pristine waters home to penguins, seal and whales
Campaigners are calling on high street retailers to stop stocking health products containing krill that have been caught in the pristine waters of the Antarctic.
The Guardian reported earlier this month on the threat industrial krill fishing poses to animals like penguins, whales and seals.
Continue reading...Elephant seen 'smoking' in southern India – video
Footage of an elephant blowing ash has baffled wildlife experts, who say they've never seen behaviour like it before. The video released by the Wildlife Conservation Society may be an example of zoopharmacognosy, animal self-medication
Continue reading...Labor and Greens fail in first attempt to disallow Coalition's marine park plans
Parties have the option of redrafting the disallowance and resubmitting it as soon as Wednesday
A first attempt by Labor and the Greens to disallow controversial new marine park management plans proposed by the Turnbull government last week has failed in the Senate after the government flipped the order of business and brought on the chamber debate.
The Turnbull government on Tuesday night pulled its proposal to lower the tax rate for big business to 25% and abruptly changed the order of business in the Senate to force consideration of Labor’s disallowance motion on the marine parks.
Continue reading...Call for post-Brexit trade deals to safeguard against invasive species
Conservation charities estimate cost of dealing with predators at £2bn a year, and warns this may spiral without strong prevention measures
Invasive species such as Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and New Zealand flatworms must be subject to stronger safeguards after Brexit, a group of conservation charities has urged, or the cost of dealing with them may spiral.
They fear that future increased international trade outside EU rules could threaten further invasions, while the status of safeguards under potential trade deals could be put in doubt.
Continue reading...Hotting up: how climate change could swallow Louisiana's Tabasco island
With thousands of square miles of land already lost along the coast, Avery Island, home of the famed hot sauce, faces being marooned
Avery Island, a dome of salt fringed by marshes where Tabasco sauce has been made for the past 150 years, has been an outpost of stubborn consistency near the Louisiana coast. But the state is losing land to the seas at such a gallop that even its seemingly impregnable landmarks are now threatened.
The home of Tabasco, the now ubiquitous but uniquely branded condiment controlled by the same family since Edmund McIlhenny first stumbled across a pepper plant growing by a chicken coop on Avery Island, is under threat. An unimaginable plight just a few years ago, the advancing tides are menacing its perimeter.
Continue reading...Country diary: conflicted by the regimented lines of coppicing
Barford Wood and Meadows, Northamptonshire: Yes, the trees have established beautifully, but a randomness to the planting pattern would be more aesthetically pleasing
Again the landscape is etched with snow. The footpath to Barford Wood and Meadows from Rushton village crosses first under the Midland mainline, emerging on to a wide and exposed field where the chilled wind bites, before passing over the Corby branch line and on to the nature reserve; a tapering wedge of land, bound on the west by the railway and by the thundering A43 on the east.
Continue reading...Victoria calls on federal government to fund fresh reviews of forestry agreements
A row between state and federal ministers has thrown Victoria’s long-term native forest logging agreements into disarray
The future of long-term native forest logging agreements in Victoria is uncertain because of a row with the federal government over the need to carry out fresh scientific assessments.
Three of Victoria’s regional forest agreements (RFAs) – in east Gippsland, the central highlands and the north east regions – were extended on Monday on a short-term basis, to 31 March 2020.
Continue reading...Plans to mine 6.2bn tonne Queensland coal deposit quietly revived
Site owner appears to have no employees or premises and its phone is disconnected
Plans to mine a 6.2bn-tonne coal deposit in north Queensland have been quietly revived, despite the failed sale of the project last year and the collapse of an associated company.
Guardian Australia understands that Wilton Coking Coal made two applications to the Queensland government for coal production permits in the Bowen basin in January.
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