The Guardian
Amazon coral reef at risk of damage if oil spills near Amazon river
Oil companies planning to drill near mouth of the river have calculated that the unique ecosystem has a 30% chance of being affected in the event of a spill
Oil companies planning to drill near a vast coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon river have calculated that the unique ecosystem has a 30% chance of being affected in the event of an oil spill.
Related: 'We are rewriting the textbooks': first dives to Amazon coral reef stun scientists
Continue reading...Tackle UK's plastic bottle problem with money-back scheme, ministers told
Opposition parties increase pressure for deposit return initiative to boost recycling and keep litter off streets and beaches
The UK government is under growing pressure to introduce a money-back return scheme for plastic bottles, in order to tackle huge volumes of waste in a country where 400 bottles are sold every second.
Opposition parties have called on ministers to introduce a deposit return scheme that experts say would drastically reduce the number of plastic bottles littering streets and seas around the UK. Similar schemes have been successfully introduced in at least a dozen countries.
Stream of consciousness in a marshy wonderland
Buxton, Derbyshire One summer we dammed the brook by the bridge where the dippers bred and swam with the tiddler trout
Hogshaw Brook, which runs below my late mother’s house, is part of the very first landscape in my story as a naturalist. Every night when I went to bed, I’d hear its ceaseless journey to join the river Wye. I remember one year how we dammed it by the bridge where the dippers bred, and its four-inch flow rose eventually up to the heaving chest of my nine-year-old self. We swam in it that summer, along with its tiddler brown trout and the caddis fly larvae that we loved to uncover beneath the cold stones.
Continue reading...Clean energy target 'best deal that coal will get', says NSW energy minister
Don Harwin tells Committee for Economic Development of Australia the ‘self-indulgent climate culture war’ should end
The Liberal New South Wales energy minister has delivered a speech marking a sharp departure from his federal colleagues saying the coal-fired power industry should accept the clean energy target that will see the industry close in the coming decades as “the best deal that coal will get”.
He also ridiculed claims that expanding gas exploration in NSW was the key to fixing Australia’s gas crisis, saying such an idea was “curious”, and pointedly called for an end to the “self-indulgent climate culture war”.
Continue reading...Chris Packham: learning to love slugs will help garden wildlife bloom
BBC Springwatch host urges gardeners to manage molluscs without killing them or risk losing hedgehogs and song thrushes
The naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham has advised the nation to encourage the ecosystem of their gardens by ceasing to kill slugs.
Extolling the virtues of tolerance, Packham said “draconian choices” like “I don’t want slugs and snails to eat my plants” puts the gardener at risk of losing other wildlife such as hedgehogs, slowworms and song thrushes.
Continue reading...Court rejects EPA's attempt to halt Obama-era methane rule
Environmental Protection Agency had announced stay in rule that would require oil and gas companies to fix methane leaks in equipment
The Environmental Protection Agency cannot freeze the implementation of a rule requiring oil and gas companies to fix methane leaks in their equipment, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday in a setback for Donald Trump’s push to cut environmental regulations.
Related: Trump's planned EPA cuts will hit America's most vulnerable | Mustafa Santiago Ali
Continue reading...Admiral calls Britain's plan to control fishing waters ‘amazingly complacent’
Lord Alan West says vessels involved in fisheries enforcement are ‘very, very few’, with one recently diverted on long Caribbean tour
Britain’s plan to enforce its new control of fishing waters is “amazingly complacent”, according to a former first sea lord and Royal Navy admiral, who said the three vessels used were far too few.
The government announced on Sunday that it was “taking back control” of the waters between six and 12 nautical miles from the British coast, by leaving a treaty called the London Convention. But Admiral Lord Alan West said on Monday that Britain would be a “laughing stock” if it was unable to enforce the new rules.
Continue reading...Hamming it up? Supermarket label changes colour to help cure food waste
Sainsbury’s launches packaging that shows how long its own-brand ham has been open to stop slices being thrown away
A major UK supermarket is launching a new “smart” label on packets of its own-brand ham in a bid to reduce waste by telling consumers how fresh it is.
Ham is Sainsbury’s top-selling cooked meat product, but many buyers find it difficult to remember how long it has been open. Figures from Wrap, the government’s waste advisory body, reveal that British households throw away 1.9 million slices of ham a day – equivalent to 32,500kg – at a cost of more than £170m a year.
Wildlife on your doorstep: share your July photos
Whether basking in sunshine in the northern hemisphere or fighting cooler temperatures in the south, we’d like to see the wildlife you discover
After the June heatwaves in the northern hemisphere, July has got off to a slightly more uneven start, but there will still be plenty of sun rays around. As winter takes hold of the southern hemisphere, the temperatures will get even cooler. So what sort of wildlife will we all discover on our doorsteps? We’d love to see your photos of the July wildlife near you.
You can share your July wildlife photos, videos and stories with us by clicking on the blue ‘Contribute’ buttons. Or if you’re out and about you can look for our assignments in the new Guardian app.
Continue reading...Elephant 2.0. - nature's invisible information architecture
What do you see when you look at an elephant? The world’s biggest land mammal – or a giant data store, sharing information in a living, breathing network?
Elephants have such sad expressive faces that is hard to imagine how anyone could harm them. They have drawn lips and sagging shoulders; a long, drooping demeanour; sad, knowing eyes capable of laying on the guilt. Yet, it would appear that guilt is not enough to save them. Eighty years ago there were perhaps 6 to 9 million African and Asian elephants. Today there are roughly half a million left. Day by day, they are getting closer to extinction.
Perhaps we need some new ideas. Perhaps it is time for a different perspective on why elephants need saving. Rather than their bodies, maybe it is their shared memories and experience that we might one day come to value. This is the argument that I’d like to put forward in this piece.
Continue reading...Local councillors and protesters blockade Lancashire fracking site
Group of 13 people lock themselves to objects to stop vehicles entering Cuadrilla site at Fylde, as part of month of action
Protesters have blockaded the entrance to a fracking site as part of a month of action to resist the controversial drilling process.
The group of 13 protesters, including three local councillors, arrived at the site on Preston New Road in Fylde, Lancashire, in the early hours of Monday morning and locked themselves to objects in an attempt to prevent vehicles entering the site.
Continue reading...The Arctic Melt: a disappearing landscape – in pictures
The fine art photographer Diane Tuft travelled to the Arctic Circle to document the fragility of the snowbound landscape as it melts away. The photographs produced on her journey are on show at Marlborough Gallery NYC until 20 July, and an accompanying book, The Arctic Melt: Images of a Disappearing Landscape, is published by Assouline
Continue reading...Natural world heritage sites under threat – in pictures
Illegal fishing, logging and poaching are damaging two thirds of the 57 natural world heritage sites monitored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is drawing attention to their plight. The 41st session of the Unesco World Heritage Committee in Kraków runs until 12 July
Continue reading...Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter | John Abraham
The favorite satellite data of contrarians like Ted Cruz corrected for some errors and ended up hotter
A new paper just published in the Journal of Climate is a stunning setback for the darling of cherry-picking for contrarian scientists and elected officials. Let’s walk though this so we appreciate the impact.
The vast majority of scientists know that the climate is changing, humans are the main reason, and there are going to be severe consequences. We have decades of measurements that prove our understanding of this process. There is simply no debate or dispute.
Vintage images of public lands in the US in color – in pictures
The late 1800s showcased the beauty of America’s public lands in color for the first time. A photographic technique called photochrom was developed, which allowed color to be introduced on to black and white negatives. The process was used extensively by William Henry Jackson, whose early pictures of Yellowstone helped convince Congress to make it the first national park in 1872. Here is a selection of the collection held by the Library of Congress
Continue reading...Lawyers plan to stop UK dropping EU rules on environment after Brexit
Taskforce head says complexity, scale and political resistance mean key protections could be lost during rollover into law
A taskforce of environmental lawyers is drawing up plans to stop thousands of EU rules protecting rivers, wildlife, coastlines and air quality from being dropped by the government after Brexit.
The EU is the source of most environmental protection in Britain and for 40 years has acted as a monitoring body and enforcer, with powers to fine member states for breaches in the law.
Continue reading...Signal crayfish – invader, cannibal, survivor
Appletreewick, Yorkshire Dales Its body is as dark as the river at its deepest, where the peat-stained water turns as black as molasses
The heatwave hits its stride before breakfast, building to a dog day intensity that will relent only with the last red moments of the sunset. For the long hours between, an endless afternoon, the light ceases to move, training its intensity on the elderflower, oxeye daisies and buttercups of Wharfedale until their colours take on the bleach-brightness that signals high summer in England.
The weather brings people out of hibernation, and into encounters with unfamiliar forms of life. “Look at the size of that crayfish!” The woman paddling in the untypically warm river Wharfe near Appletreewick points near her feet, causing half a dozen swimmers to coalesce around the spectacle. Children express something between amazement and open-mouthed horror.
Continue reading...Kingfisher gives a picture of many hues: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 7 July 1917
SURREY
Helped by moisture from the north downs, the river to-day runs higher, swirling along by the tall grasses and the loosestrife, bending reeds, and flags, flowing above the few yellow blooms on the near banks, and lifting “water-blobs” like small boats, which rock a little while the tide runs in. Kingfishers on the wing show now of a deep, now of a pale blue as a momentary light strikes from the sun. They perch on a swaying willow stem which dips to the stream, then a glint flashes all along the stretch of water and one of them flies in and with it gives a picture of many hues. Swallows, skimming low, are wonderfully white in plumage when they make a sudden turn, and there is a constant low warbling of the smaller willow wrens. Up the bank, where the teasel is breast high and its prickly bloom is forming, linnets whistle a few notes before they move restlessly from bush to bush.
Related: How to access the Guardian and Observer digital archive
Continue reading...Save us from tree-less asphalt deserts | Letters
Re your editorial on the Great Barrier Reef and “the values that money can’t measure” (29 June), Dieter Helm’s “natural capital” approach recognises that some assets are literally priceless and must be maintained.
As an example, the drainage path of the river Bann is being degraded at a great and almost irreversible rate. Lough Neagh, which is in its course, has been losing its characteristic fenland vegetation through nitrification from slurry runoff. The once vast flocks of overwintering wildfowl are long gone.
Continue reading...The new west: why Republicans blocked public land management
As ‘permanent tourists’ move to the western US, the oil and gas-captured Republican party is fighting to keep locals out of managing public lands
A year ago, residents of Yucca Valley, California, along with Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service officials, filled the town’s community center for a public meeting about the Sand to Snow National Monument. Designated early in 2016 by Barack Obama – and now under review for resizing by the Trump administration – the monument spans from the desert near Yucca Valley to the San Bernardino mountains about an hour east of Los Angeles.
Residents wanted to know what would change once their back-yard BLM land was converted into a national monument. Would the monument prohibit public access? Would it mean an end for hunting? What would it do for protecting area wildlife? Even those who had opposed Obama’s creation of Sand to Snow and the nearby Mojave Trails national monument came to the meeting, asking how they could have their voices heard in planning processes.
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