The Guardian
Dozens of Laotian elephants 'illegally sold to Chinese zoos'
Laos accused of breaching Cites treaty to protect endangered species and China of encouraging trade in live animals
Dozens of elephants from Laos are being illegally bought by China to be displayed in zoos and safari parks across the country, according to wildlife investigator and film-maker Karl Ammann.
According to Ammann, so-called captive elephants in Laos sell for about £23,000 before being walked across the border into China by handlers or “mahouts” near the border town of Boten. Thereafter they are transported to receiving facilities, which buy them from the agents for up to £230,000 per animal. “That is a nice mark-up,” says Ammann, “and makes it exactly the kind of commercial transaction which under Cites rules is not acceptable.”
Continue reading...A plant to make a man as merry as a cricket
Allendale, Northumberland The melancholy thistle’s heads are magenta shaving brushes lighted on by hoverflies and bees
The garden is all heat and light on this summer afternoon, pulsing and multilayered with insect sounds and constant movement.
Wild flowers jostle with the cultivated, in varieties chosen for their nectar and pollen. Bumblebees wiggle up into the blue throats of viper’s bugloss, hoverflies taste scabious, dabbing with their tongues, soldier beetles clamber over wild carrot, bumping into each other before hurriedly parting.
Continue reading...'Out of control': saltwater crocodile attacks terrorise Solomon Islands
Steps to control protected reptiles have seen 40 killed this year and could bring an end to the ban on exporting their skins
A growing number of crocodile attacks is forcing police in the Solomon Islands to shoot the animals and to consider lifting a 30-year ban on exporting their valuable skins in order to control the population.
There have been more than 10 crocodile attacks on people this year, as well as dozens of assaults on livestock and domestic animals around the Solomon Islands, which is home to 600,000 people.
Continue reading...Religious leaders occupy environment minister's office to protest Carmichael coalmine
Rabbi, Uniting church reverend, former Catholic priest and Buddhist leader call for Frydenberg to withdraw support for mine
Religious leaders from several faiths have occupied the electorate office of Josh Frydenberg today, demanding the federal environment minister withdraw his support for Adani’s Carmichael mine, and vowing to stay there until he does so.
Related: Fresh legal challenge looms over Adani mine risk to endangered finch
Continue reading...Extreme El Niño events more frequent even if warming limited to 1.5C – report
Modelling suggests Australia would face more frequent drought-inducing weather events beyond any climate stabilisation
Extreme El Niño events that can cause crippling drought in Australia are likely to be far more frequent even if the world pulls off mission improbable and limits global warming to 1.5C.
International scientists have released new modelling that projects drought-causing El Niño events, which pull rainfall away from Australia, will continue increasing in frequency well beyond any stabilisation of the climate.
Continue reading...Study: our Paris carbon budget may be 40% smaller than thought | Dana Nuccitelli
How we define “pre-industrial” is important
In the Paris climate treaty, nearly every world country agreed to try and limit global warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, and preferably closer to 1.5°C. But a new study published in Nature Climate Change notes that the agreement didn’t define when “pre-industrial” begins.
Our instrumental measurements of the Earth’s average surface temperature begin in the late-1800s, but the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1700s. There’s also a theory that human agriculture has been influencing the global climate for thousands of years, but the mass burning of fossil fuels kicked the human influence into high gear.
Continue reading...Emissions scandal: VW showing 'utter contempt' for Londoners, says Khan
London mayor accuses Volkswagen of making the UK a laughing stock over refusal to pay £2.5m in compensation while it’s paid billions to US customers
Sadiq Khan has accused Volkswagen of showing “utter contempt” for Londoners after it refused to pay £2.5m compensation for its role in the dieselgate scandal.
The German car manufacturer has paid billions of dollars compensation in the US after admitting around 11m cars worldwide were fitted with “defeat devices” that switched the engine to a cleaner mode to improve results in tests.
Continue reading...How climate change scepticism turned into something more dangerous – podcast
Doubts about the science are being replaced by doubts about the motives of scientists and their political supporters. Once this kind of cynicism takes hold, is there any hope for the truth? By David Runciman
Subscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter
Continue reading...Vietnamese smallholders help end deforestation – photo essay
In the foothills of Vietnam’s Annamite mountains, hundreds of small forest owners are joining forces to produce sustainable acacia used in furniture around the world. With much of the country’s plantations owned by individuals, expanding the approach may be the best chance for saving forests in the Greater Mekong
All photographs: James Morgan/WWF
“It all starts with the seedlings!” says Le Thi Thuy Nga (left), the manager of Tien Phong forestry company in central Vietnam’s Thừa Thiên-Huế province. “All of ours are propagated from the ‘mother tree’ kept by the Academy of Forest Sciences in Hanoi. With a 99% survival rate, they effectively double overall plantation productivity.”
Continue reading...A village in slow peril on the sea
Hallsands, South Devon New grass on old roofs, confusing ruined masonry with cliffs – this is what natural reclamation looks like
The sound is gulls, silence, the thin chatter of house martin chicks in lintel-nests. And the sea below, though at all tides it is a breathing, rather than a pervasive growl. By day you see Start Bay arcing many miles beneath the cliff. By night the lighthouse softly lights every sou’western-facing wall with a slow, silent rhythm.
Benign. But then, not. This coastline restlessly resists permanence, even on human clocks, and the sea that will be the end of this place. Again.
On a single night a century ago, Hallsands fell into the sea. The natural defences protecting the coast from winter storms had been pillaged and dredged for decades by industrialists: the shingle beach, the Skerries Bank. Pleadings from subsisting villagers were ignored or shushed. Then, on 26 January 1917, the waves clawed the village from the cliffs.
Surrey meadow slowly comes to life: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 28 July 1917
SURREY, JULY 26
At daybreak this morning a white mist was so thick as to dim out the sight of the cattle in the meadow. They came lowing to the gate, waiting to be milked, and, passing through when it was open, were lost in the lane just as birds began to rustle in the hedge. Then the light spread and made the tall ragwort glisten – yellow colour seemed to shine everywhere. The stems of goatsbeard straightened, the fringes of nuts in clusters appeared of a new pale green, a farm boy clambered into the copse and came out whistling with a big bunch stuck in his button-hole, a pair of jackdaws flew noisily from an oak and went down to the village to search in the vegetable gardens.
Related: How to access the Guardian and Observer digital archive
Continue reading...Linear parks and the drive to ease congestion
If building new roads and fast traffic lanes does not cut traffic, can it work the other way round?
You would think that ending a traffic restriction would improve journey times, but the sudden termination of Jakarta’s high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes had the opposite effect. To use these lanes drivers required two passengers, but a trade in hiring people bought the lanes to an abrupt end last year. The traffic could spread across all lanes, but journey times and congestion increased. In fact, traffic worsened over the whole network almost immediately. Even on roads with no HOV lanes, at times when the lanes had not operated, delays increased by up to two minutes per km. The US embassy measures air quality from its roof in Jakarta. It is too early to see the changes, but we can be sure that it did not get better.
La #piétonnisation de la rive droite, une mesure juste et pertinente. #Pollution #Transports #Santé #RivesdeSeine https://t.co/N5mKXTWX1j pic.twitter.com/xQTe6UEN3l
Continue reading...On the tail of the uncommon lizard
They are widespread in the British Isles and could be found almost anywhere, but often aren’t, which is a bit of a mystery
The common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, is at its most numerous and active at this time of year. In late July it is giving birth to between three and 11 young at a time. They emerge from an egg sack that breaks during birth or immediately afterwards. That is why it is sometimes called viviparous lizard, meaning bearing live young, an unusual trait in reptiles.
Viviparous might be a better name in any case, as this lizard is not common at all in many places and some people may go for years without seeing one.
Continue reading...Drop in wind energy costs adds pressure for government rethink
Tories urged to look at onshore windfarms which can be built as cheaply as gas plants and deliver the same power for half the cost of Hinkley Point, says Arup
Onshore windfarms could be built in the UK for the same cost as new gas power stations and would be nearly half as expensive as the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, according to a leading engineering consultant.
Arup found that the technology has become so cheap that developers could deliver turbines for a guaranteed price of power so low that it would be effectively subsidy-free in terms of the impact on household energy bills.
Continue reading...The lynx effect: are sheep farmers right to fear for their flocks?
Plans to bring the wild cats back to Northumberland have prompted concerns from farmers, but – from beavers to red kites – rewilding in the UK has generally been a success
More than a millennia has passed since lynx roamed Britain, and now the Lynx UK Trust – a community interest company formed in 2014 by conservationists and scientists – wants to reintroduce them into Kielder Forest in Northumberland. The trust’s plans have received opposition from the National Sheep Association, which says: “The consultation process adopted by Lynx UK Trust appears flawed and misleading.”
Related: Campaigners seek to reintroduce Eurasian lynx to parts of Britain
Continue reading...Robot shows suspected melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima reactor – video
An underwater robot has captured images of what is believed to be suspected debris of melted nuclear fuel inside one of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Locating and analysing the fuel debris is crucial for decommissioning the plant, which was destroyed in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami
Continue reading...Fukushima: robot images show massive deposits thought to be melted nuclear fuel
Robot spots suspected debris of melted fuel for first time since 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant
Images captured by an underwater robot on Saturday showed massive deposits believed to be melted nuclear fuel covering the floor of a damaged reactor at Japan’s destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant.
The robot found large amounts of solidified lava-like rocks and lumps in layers as thick as 1m on the bottom inside a main structure called the pedestal that sits underneath the core inside the primary containment vessel of Fukushima’s Unit 3 reactor, said the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Continue reading...Disturbing proximity of a red kite's nest
Comins Coch, Aberystwyth I was looking forward to seeing the ramshackle structure for myself. Then the anxiety began
A month or so ago, a friend casually mentioned that they thought red kites were starting to nest near their house. Very near, in fact; actually in the garden. Even in the hills beyond Tregaron, where kites wheel and dive in such abundance as to be almost unworthy of comment, having a nest within view of your kitchen window is unusual.
On the boundary of the property, the crook of a sycamore tree provided an apparently suitable spot for the pair to set up home; occasional bulletins told of the progress, albeit slow and halting, of nest building. It seemed the birds were in no great hurry – limiting their activity to the odd twig or two each day – but eventually they had assembled a slightly ramshackle structure that managed to support the weight of a sitting bird.
Continue reading...Norfolk playing catch-up in the anti-littering stakes | Brief letters
Gosh! How clever we have all become. Fifty years ago, only the top 2% of the population went to university and about 10% of them got firsts, so 0.2% of the population. Now, 30% go to uni, and 25% of them get firsts (Number of UK degree students receiving firsts soars, theguardian.com, 20 July), making 7.5% of the population. The universities say there is no grade inflation so we must be more than 30 times cleverer! Impressive or what?
Rob Symonds
Birmingham
• How refreshing, considering the Guardian’s stance on attitudes at the BBC, to find that of the 13 saints in your Wordsearch grid (20 July), just one is female, and that AnneMarie Ciccarella is “a fast-talking 57-year-old brunette” (The long read, 18 July). Do you need to know my hair colour to print this?
Alison Robinson
Seer Green, Buckinghamshire
Mega farms, palm oil and plastic pollution – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
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