The Guardian
Amazing mini animals – in pictures
David Yeo’s photography places naturally small species alongside animals that have been selectively bred to be tiny and cute, opening a troubling ethical debate
Continue reading...Surge in eye injuries as Melbourne magpies go on attack spree
Hospital issues warning as ‘extraordinary’ spate of bird-inflicted injuries include a penetrated eye that required surgery
A penetrated eye that needed surgery is just one of an “extraordinary” spate of magpie-inflicted injuries in Melbourne, and one hospital has issued a warning about the swooping birds.
The number of eye injuries caused by the bird has risen significantly, according to the emergency director of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear hospital, Dr Carmel Crock.
Continue reading...Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers
Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, with serious implications for all life on Earth, scientists say
The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.
Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.
Continue reading...CliFi – A new way to talk about climate change | John Abraham
If you’re not familiar with the new genre of climate fiction, you might be soon.
Cli-Fi refers to “climate fiction;” it is a term coined by journalist Dan Bloom. These are fictional books that somehow or someway bring real climate change science to the reader. What is really interesting is that Cli-Fi books often present real science in a credible way. They become fun teaching tools. There are some really well known authors such as Paolo Bacigalupi and Margaret Atwood among others. A list of other candidate Cli-Fi novels was provided by Sarah Holding in the Guardian.
What makes a Cli-Fi novel good? Well in my opinion, it has to have some real science in it. And it has to get the science right. Second, it has to be fun to read. When done correctly, Cli-Fi can connect people to their world; it can help us understand what future climate may be like, or what current climate effects are.
Continue reading...Government set to face fresh legal challenge over air pollution crisis
Legal NGO ClientEarth to take the government back to court if it fails to set out a new range of measures to tackle Britain’s toxic air
Environmental campaigners are set to take the government back to court over what they say are ministers’ repeated failings to deal with the UK’s air pollution crisis.
ClientEarth, which has already won two court battles against the government, has written a legal letter demanding that the environment secretary Michael Gove sets out a range of new measures to address air pollution which contributes to the deaths of 40,000 people across the UK each year.
Continue reading...Country diary: the air is heavy with the scent of apples
St Dominic, Tamar Valley Black Rocks and Crimson Queens and Green Chisel pears – colourful fruit with colourful names on show at Cotehele’s Apple Day
Sheltered from rain, inside the display tent at Cotehele’s Apple Day, the perfume of juice and ripe fruit pervades the damp air. Examples of different varieties are pinned to a board and Mary and James (my sister and brother-in-law) have laid out a lavish array from their orchard of local varieties, gathered on rare dry days during recent weeks.
A basket of pears, decorated with swags of rose hips and sloes, includes the large Aston Town (originally found in a pub garden at Launceston), Green Chisel (possibly the Hastings pear), green sweats, various harvest pears, grey and red Catterns, all awaiting the results of genetic tests to confirm their identities.
Continue reading...'The threats continue’: murder of retired couple chills fellow activists in Turkey
The killing of two activists who successfully campaigned to shut down a mine has shocked environmentalists in Turkey who fear their deaths will embolden others to kill to protect their profits
• Interactive: recording the deaths of environmental activists around the world
Cedar branches whisper in the Anatolian breeze. Twigs crunch underfoot. A truck rumbles from a distant marble quarry. The crack of a hunter’s rifle echoes through the forest.
The sounds of tranquility and violence intermingle at the remote hillside home of Aysin and Ali Büyüknohutçu, the Turkish beekeepers and environmental defenders whose murder in Finike earlier this year has sent a chill through the country’s conservation movement.
Continue reading...Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 – the winners
A ceremony at the Natural History Museum, London, will reveal the winners of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition on Wednesday. Two overall winning images have been selected from the winners of each category, depicting the incredible diversity of life on our planet. They are on show with 99 other images selected by an international panel of judges at the 53rd exhibition, which opens at the museum on Friday.
Continue reading...Snack attack: alligators like to eat sharks, study reveals
- Researchers find alligators preying on small sharks in Atlantic and Gulf
- ‘The frequency of one predator eating the other is really about size dynamic’
American alligators are frequently seen ambling around golf courses in Florida as players warily compete their rounds. But new research suggests the reptiles partake in a far more outlandish habit when away from the greens – eating sharks.
Related: ‘I don’t want to imagine a world without giant snakes in it’
Continue reading...Winds have generated power for centuries | Brief letters
“Walsall was never a pretty town”, according to Roy Boffy (Letters, 16 October); this may be true now but has not always been the case. Its handsome villas and public buildings were remarked on in 1834 by William White in The History, Gazeteer and Directory of Staffordshire and he believed it needed to yield to no other town in Staffordshire in beauty and elegance. During the 19th century, Walsall added more civic buildings, many built to help improve the life of working people. The 20th and 21st century have not been kind to the town but that is not a reason to forget its history.
Cathy Schling
London
• Regarding Paula Cocozza’s article on “the resource that could power the world” (G2, 15 October), let us not forget that wind has indeed already powered the world in the political and economic sense, powering the sailing ships of naval and merchant fleets that set up the European empires that dominated the pre-20th-century globe.
Beth Cresswell
Hightown, Merseyside
UK withdrawal bill 'rips the heart out of environmental law', say campaigners
New bill omits key ‘precautionary’ principle requiring developers and industry to prove actions will not harm wildlife or habitats as well as ‘polluter pays’ protections
- Interactive: How will Brexit affect British wildlife?
The cornerstones of wildlife and habitat protection have been quietly left out of the withdrawal bill ripping the heart out of environmental law, campaigners say.
A key principle under EU law which provides a robust legal backstop against destruction of the environment – the precautionary principle - has been specifically ruled out of the bill as a means of legal challenge in British courts.
Continue reading...Regreening the planet could cut as much carbon as halting oil use – report
Natural solutions such as tree planting, protecting peatlands and better land management could account for 37% of all cuts needed by 2030, says study
Planting forests and other activities that harness the power of nature could play a major role in limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris agreement, an international study showed on Monday.
Natural climate solutions, also including protection of carbon-storing peatlands and better management of soils and grasslands, could account for 37% of all actions needed by 2030 under the 195-nation Paris plan, it said.
Continue reading...Country diary: sycamores create painterly clumps of colour and shade
Cressbrook Dale, Derbyshire These often despised trees took centuries to go native but today they are a welcome addition to the autumn atmosphere – especially in the rain
I find it strange to read in Oliver Rackham’s wonderful Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape that sycamores were probably introduced to the UK in the 16th century, but only went native in the 18th. It seems odd, because it is hard to imagine this restless beast of a tree settling for domestic imprisonment for 200 years.
My experience is that its whirling helicopter-like “keys”, aided only by the slightest breeze, can unpick any attempt to block their escape into the wild. In our Norfolk village I am also astonished how quickly those seeds put down roots and I’ve even taken to using mole grips to wrestle with the saplings’ iron-like purchase on our garden soil.
Continue reading...Frydenberg seeks review of four-wheel-drive tracks in Tasmania's Tarkine
Conservationists and Indigenous groups hail decision to examine plan to lay rubber matting over middens and heritage sites
The federal government has requested an independent assessment of an application to open four-wheel-drive tracks along Tasmania’s heritage-listed north-west coast, potentially delaying action until the state election.
Conservationists and Indigenous groups have been fighting the Hodgman government’s proposal to lay rubber matting over middens and other Aboriginal heritage sites along the Tarkine coast to allow four-wheel-drive access.
Continue reading...Remains found in crocodile believed to be missing Queensland woman
Anne Cameron’s remains and walking stick found at Craiglie Creek, south of Port Douglas, after 79-year-old went missing from her aged-care facility
Human remains have been found inside a large crocodile police believe killed an elderly woman in Queensland’s far north.
Remains believed to belong to Anne Cameron, her walking stick and other items were located at Craiglie Creek, south of Port Douglas, last week.
Continue reading...We can do without plastic packaging and supermarkets | Letters
The idea of increasing the use of aluminium and steel packaging, as proposed by Andy Clarke (Bring in plastic packaging ban, former Asda boss tells stores, 13 October), is not a sustainable solution. Both materials rely on finite substances and intensive energy to produce them, and there is no guarantee that they will be recycled and will avoid ending up in the sea as well. One possibility would be to increase the use of starch based “plastic”; it’s biodegradable and therefore matters less where it ends up. Obviously another solution is to avoid shopping in supermarkets as far as is possible and to instead shop in markets and smaller shops, which are less packaging obsessed and often use paper bags, as in the good old days.
Rachel Meredith
York
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Continue reading...Indigenous rights "serious obstacle" to Kinder Morgan pipeline, report says
Pipeline company downplaying major legal and financial risks of crossing unceded First Nations territory in British Columbia
The controversial expansion of a pipeline that would carry tar sands crude from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast will be doomed by the rising power of Indigenous land rights.
That’s the message that Kanahus Manuel, an Indigenous activist from the Secwepemc Nation in central BC, plans to deliver to banks financing the project as she travels through Europe this week.
Continue reading...Are flatulent shellfish really contributing to climate change?
Scientists investigating marine life in the Baltic Sea have found mussels, oysters and clams are emitting greenhouse gases – but cows still trump them
Swedish scientists have found that flatulent shellfish are creating vast amounts of greenhouse gases, leading to a predictable slew of comments about farting cockles and clams. But beneath the schoolboy humour, there is a serious point. The two gases in question – methane and nitrous oxide – are potent agents of climate change, with a warming potential 28 and 265 times greater than carbon dioxide respectively.
Scientists studying the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden have found that shellfish are producing one-tenth of all the greenhouses gases released there – the equivalent to the amount produced by 20,000 cattle. If the same situation is being replicated around the rest of the world’s seas and oceans, we have a serious problem.
Continue reading...The war on coal is over. Coal lost | Dana Nuccitelli
Coal can’t compete with cheaper clean energy. The Trump administration can’t save expensive, dirty energy.
Last week, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced, “the war on coal is over.” If there ever was a war on coal, the coal industry has lost. According to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, many old American coal power plants are being retired or converted to natural gas, and new coal power plants aren’t being built because they’ve become more expensive than natural gas, wind, and solar energy:
The share of US electricity coming from coal fell from 51 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in 2016—an unprecedented change. New UCS analysis finds that, of the coal units that remain, roughly one in four plans to retire or convert to natural gas; another 17 percent are uneconomic and could face retirement soon.
Continue reading...Photographers against wildlife crime – in pictures
In a new project, an international group of photographers have joined forces to use their powerful images to raise awareness and funds to help stop the illegal wildlife trade
Continue reading...