The Guardian
UK to 'take back control' of waters after exiting from fishing convention
Michael Gove announces withdrawal from London fisheries convention, but experts say sustainable fishing is ‘much more than which country fishes where’
The government has announced its withdrawal from an arrangement that allows foreign countries to fish in British waters, with environment secretary Michael Gove claiming that the UK was “taking back control”.
On Monday ministers will trigger withdrawal from the London fisheries convention, signed in 1964 before the UK joined the European Union, to start the two-year process to leave the agreement. The convention allows vessels from the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands to fish within six and 12 nautical miles of each other’s coast lines.
Continue reading...Russia begins cleaning up the Soviets' top-secret nuclear waste dump
When the Soviet Union collapsed a vast store of spent nuclear fuel was abandoned in the Russian Arctic – an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Decades later an international clean-up has finally begun
As the Rossita pulled away from the pier at Andreyeva Bay, sounding a long boom of its horn, a military band struck up a jaunty march. On board the ship were nine sealed metal casks, each four metres high and weighing 45 tonnes, containing canisters of spent nuclear fuel. Dozens of Russian and foreign nuclear specialists looked on applauding, as the chilly rain of a northern summer fell on the bay deep inside the Russian Arctic.
The ceremony, held on Tuesday afternoon, marks the culmination of a long international project to begin removing nuclear fuel from the site, formerly a top-secret Soviet installation. Nuclear specialists say Andreyeva Bay contains the largest reserves of spent nuclear fuel in the world, in fragile conditions that have disturbed the international community for years.
Continue reading...The eco guide to the repair economy
Taking possessions to be repaired – bicycles, clothes, shoes, anything – instead of throwing them out and replacing them is green gold
An unassuming repair shop might not look like a major disruptive force. But extending the lifespan of your possessions by getting them fixed is one of the most effective green direct actions available.
The cycling community is at the forefront of the repair economy
Continue reading...Nightingales flourish but why is ‘rewilding’ the countryside controversial?
Just down the road from Gatwick, the neatly hedged English countryside gives way to an exuberant, utterly alien-looking landscape. Arable fields are obliterated by dense thickets of sallow. Eight metre-wide blackthorn hedges spill into flowery meadows. Wild pigs and red deer run rampant through ragwort, thistles and other weeds. The air is alive with birdsong rarely heard in Britain today – spectacular bursts of nightingale and the purring of turtle doves.
In barely a decade, rewilded nature has conquered Knepp Castle in West Sussex. Rewilding appears to be conquering conservation too. As Brexit and the savaging of agricultural subsidies loom, farming may also be engulfed by this new wild. But as rewilding blossoms, so do controversies. Scientists recently warned that wild boar illegally released into Scotland could carry the CC398 strain of the MRSA superbug that is resistant to antibiotics.
Continue reading...Exotic and colourful – but should parakeets be culled, ask scientists
It is not what you would expect to hear in the Conservative suburban heartlands of Beckenham, Bromley and Boreham Wood in south-east England – homeowners voicing their approval for a wave of immigrants from Asia.
As one of the senior researchers studying the flocks of Afro-Asians said: “Many people say they bring an enormous sense of wellbeing. They say they are charismatic, beautiful, exotic. They absolutely love having them around.”
Continue reading...Winners of the BigPictures wildlife images competition 2017 – in pictures
The fourth annual BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition aims to celebrate the diversity of life on Earth, and encourages people to protect and conserve it. Thousands of entries were received for the competition held by the California Academy of Sciences, and here are the winners
Continue reading...Swan parents nurture a precious cygnet
Cardigan, Wales I saw the cob and pen paddling in golden light, between them a single, black-billed ball of grey down
The bell-beat of mute swans’ wings came with a grey dawn in early March. A pair of swans touched down in the river Teifi’s tidal reaches upstream of Cardigan town bridge. On wind-ruffled waters they kept proximity, gliding around in search of food, accompanied at respectful distance by small flocks of teal and unruly gangs of mallard drakes.
The old shipwright from the small boatyard most days ventured out of his workshop to sit on the slipway, talk to the swans, feed them by hand. They would respond with sonorous high grunts that belied their name. Occasionally the huge cob, neck outstretched, tore off downriver, wings flailing, to warn off some presumptuous intruder. This was his territory and no other’s.
Continue reading...Fantastic beasts and where to find them: Australian native wildlife – in pictures
The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double.
On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo.
• The National Geographic Photo Ark exhibition is open at Melbourne Zoo from 1 July until 1 October
Continue reading...Tackling the plastic bottle crisis and our wider disregard for nature | Letters
Green co-leader Caroline Lucas says she hopes to build a cross-party coalition to stop bottle wastage, while other correspondents offer their thoughts on protecting the environment
The Guardian’s coverage of the global plastic bottle crisis (Surge in plastic bottle use sparks global alert, 29 June) has been powerful and compelling. Like so many of the environmental challenges we face, this issue has been largely ignored in the mainstream, which has led us to the extraordinary situation where we have one million bottles being bought every minute globally. Britain’s contribution to this problem is significant. We use a staggering 38.5m plastic bottles each day, accounting for roughly 40% of the litter found in our environment along with cans. We’ve all read in horror the stories of whales’ stomachs filled with plastic waste, and we’ve all seen bottles littering our local communities.
The government must take responsibility for this growing crisis. One easy step forward would be to introduce a bottle deposit scheme. Such systems were commonplace in the UK until the 1980s, and are used in 11 other European countries. The concept is simple: you pay a small deposit on bottles and take them back to the shop you bought them from after use for recycling. The Scottish government has taken a major step towards introducing such a scheme – now the Tories must follow suit. We should also be ensuring that it’s easier for people to refill water bottles in shops and other businesses. This week has shown that the government is far more pliant towards the will of parliament than previously, and I’m hoping to build a cross-party coalition on this issue in the coming weeks so that Britain becomes a world leader in tackling plastic bottle pollution.
Caroline Lucas MP
Co-leader, Green party of England and Wales
Europe's contribution to deforestation set to rise despite pledge to halt it
Europe’s consumption of products such as beef, soy and palm oil could increase its contribution to global deforestation by more than a quarter by 2030, analysis shows
Europe’s contribution to global deforestation may rise by more than a quarter by 2030, despite a pledge to halt such practices by the end of this decade, according to a leaked draft EU analysis.
An estimated 13m hectares (Mha) of the world’s forestland is lost each year, a figure projected to spiral in the next 30 years with the Amazon, Greater Mekong and Borneo bearing the brunt of tree clearances.
Continue reading...Trump called 'threat to every coastline' as he pushes ocean drilling plan
Administration moves to ‘unleash’ US fossil fuels by rewriting Obama-era plan that banned drilling along Atlantic seaboard and large parts of the Arctic Ocean
Environmentalists have condemned Donald Trump as a “threat to every ocean and coastline in the country”, after the president pushed forward plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans as part of what he called a new era of “American energy dominance”.
The Trump administration has taken the first steps to rewrite a five-year plan, put in place under Barack Obama, that banned drilling along the Atlantic seaboard and in large swaths of the Arctic. The interior department is opening a 45-day public comment period for a new plan that it says will help grow the economy.
Continue reading...Plastic waste, bee-harming pesticides and tigers – 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
Continue reading...When deciding a nation’s future, politicians play with their food
In the UK and abroad, the political events of the past year prove that politicians are willing to gamble with the health, prosperity, and fate of our food systems.
One of the many things that the past year of political turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic has revealed, is that governments have a questionable relationship with food. As the UK inches towards the completion of Brexit negotiations, and the Trump administration in the US unleashes its budget proposal, a strange kind of disconnect has become apparent: those negotiating their nations’ futures seem not to recognise that a chunk of its security and prosperity depends on how well they manage its food.
In the UK that trend became clear well before Brexit struck, when during the negotiations many pointed out a lack of meaningful discussion about what the split would actually mean for farmers. It didn’t matter enough to be a priority. Until suddenly it did--when we realised we’d have to plug the hole left behind by the European migrants that currently make up roughly 20% of the UK’s agricultural workforce, and who would exit if we ultimately back away from free movement.
Continue reading...Europe's extreme June heat clearly linked to climate change, research shows
Heatwaves that saw deadly forest fires in Portugal and soaring temperatures in England were made up to 10 times more likely by global warming, say scientists
Human-caused climate change dramatically increased the likelihood of the extreme heatwave that saw deadly forest fires blazing in Portugal and Spain, new research has shown.
Much of western Europe sweltered earlier in June, and the severe heat in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland was also made significantly more likely by global warming. Such temperatures will become the norm by 2050, the scientists warned, unless action is taken to rapidly cut carbon emissions.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A drumming cockatoo, basking sharks and flamingos are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Fukushima nuclear disaster: former Tepco executives go on trial
Three men plead not guilty to professional negligence in the only criminal action targeting officials since the triple meltdown
Three former executives with the operator of the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have pleaded not guilty to charges of professional negligence, in the only criminal action targeting officials since the triple meltdown more than six years ago.
In the first hearing of the trial at Tokyo district court on Friday, Tsunehisa Katsumata, who was chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) at the time of the disaster, and two other former executives argued they could not have foreseen a tsunami of the size that knocked out the plant’s backup cooling system, triggering a meltdown in three reactors.
Continue reading...Life along the vanishing shorelines of the Solomon Islands – in pictures
Trees, graveyards and everyday life are being encroached upon by rising sea levels on the Solomon Islands. Local people are trying to adapt
Continue reading...The house that Tateh built ... out of sand-filled plastic bottles
In the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert, Tateh Lehbib Braica – aka ‘the crazy bottle guy’ – has built circular houses from waste plastic that protect from wind and sun
A group of women drink tea under the shade of a tent and cast an eye over the construction of an odd, circular house. The half-built dwelling is the brainchild of Tateh Lehbib Braica, 27, an engineer who wanders among the workers.
On the ground lie hundreds of sand-filled, 1.5 litre plastic bottles that serve as bricks. With them, Tateh has found a way to fight back against the harshness of the Algerian desert that is home to 90,000 long-term refugees from western Sahara. It’s not yet that hot, but in summer, when the temperature rises above 50C, it will be impossible to venture out of doors.
Continue reading...Fine motorists idling outside schools to cut air pollution, say health watchdogs
New official guidance also backs planting trees, supporting cycling and encouraging take-up of electric vehicles to tackle crisis that causes 40,000 early deaths a year
Parents who leave their car engines running at the school gate should be fined in order to help tackle the air pollution crisis, according to England’s official health watchdogs.
New guidance from Public Health England (PHE) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) sets out a wide range of measures to cut air pollution, which is at illegal levels in almost 90% of urban areas.
Continue reading...Spiky stars of summer's golden gang
Airedale, West Yorkshire Goldfinches bicker among the chromium yellows of gorse and laburnum
It’s been a good year for gorse. Perhaps the dryish winter helped. All across the north of England I’ve seen the plant’s reckless spatters of chromium yellow bristling with the promise of stonechats and whitethroats.
Some trace the origins of the word gorse to an Anglo-Saxon word for wasteland (this, Ulex europaeus, is a species of poor soil and open skies) but others relate it ultimately to the Greek for hedgehog, which is much more satisfying.
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