The Guardian
White whale Migaloo spotted off Australia’s Gold Coast – video
A white humpback whale, known as Migaloo, was spotted swimming off Australia’s Gold Coast on Tuesday. The whale was making its annual migration towards the Great Barrier Reef. Up to 5,000 humpbacks migrate north up Australia’s east coast between April and August each year from waters in the Antarctic to feed and breed in warm tropical waters
Continue reading...Earth already in midst of sixth mass extinction, scientists say – video report
The scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reported that the Earth is already in the stages of the sixth mass extinction, which will see the world’s wildlife and plants die out. The research found that species, including those which are not endangered, had reduced in number due to habitation shrinkage, hunting, pollution and climate change
UK households binned 300,000 tonnes of clothing in 2016
The good news is that we are using our tumble driers less, the bad news we are chucking our unwanted clothes in the bin rather than recycling them
The carbon footprint of the UK clothing sector is worsening, a new report reveals, driven by the ongoing popularity of cheap and cheerful “fast fashion” and a shortage of sustainable raw materials.
Although the amount of clothing being sent to landfill has fallen by 14% from 350,000 tonnes in 2012 to 300,000 in 2016 a staggering one-quarter is still binned rather than recycled. That is down from 31% four years ago.
Continue reading...The Indigenous community making art from garbage – video
On Pormpuraaw beach on the west coast of Cape York peninsula, plastic fishing nets have been washing up on shore – some kilometres long. Killing hundreds of species of marine life, the ‘ghost nets’ threaten a valuable food source for the local community. So Pormpuraaw artists are fighting back, gathering other refuse from a local tip dubbed ‘Bunnings’ and weaving it through the nets to create stunning large-scale sculptures of ocean-dwelling totems. The art, which carries on tradition and raises awareness of the plight of local animals, also provides a valuable export industry. The film-maker David Varga spent time with the artists involved. Watch his full-length video here
Continue reading...‘Guardian of the forest’ routinely culled in Madeira
The Trocaz pigeon is a vital seed-disperser in one of the world’s rarest forest ecosystems, but its taste for cabbage has put it in direct competition with humans. Guess who wins?
As we hike through the cool, low-canopied forest along a levada – a centuries-old water canal carved out of the mountainside – our guide talks effusively of a pigeon.
It’s the “guardian of the forest” the guide with MB Tours tells me and the other hikers. Known as the Trocaz pigeon, or alternatively the laurel pigeon or the long-toed pigeon, it’s only found here: on the Portuguese island of Madeira. We halt under an ancient laurel tree and the guide explains that the endemic pigeon is vital to Madeira because it disperses many of the plants found in this unique forest ecosystem: the laurisilva.
Continue reading...Forget cats and dogs – caterpillars make the best pets | Patrick Barkham
• Patrick Barkham is a Guardian writer
Butterflies are ubiquitous in our culture, via dresses, prints, cards and tattoos, but the humble caterpillar is surely overdue a revival. Whenever I’ve paused by a sizeable nettle patch this year, I’ve found them – writhing balls of black peacock caterpillars and black-and-fluorescent-lime small tortoiseshells. Less conspicuous are red admirals, which neatly stitch together two sides of nettle leaf and live inside a little tent.
I’ve seen Twitter pictures of freshly flailed nettle patches that had harboured hundreds of caterpillars, which will now never become butterflies. Enhanced caterpillar-consciousness would halt such destruction.
Continue reading...Young falcons graduate from flying school
West Sussex Over a few short weeks the peregrine chicks have grown from ungainly youngsters into aerobats like their parents
The piercing calls coming from above, high up on the chalk cliff, reveal that there are still peregrine falcons at home. Four chicks have fledged, and over the course of a few short weeks I’ve been watching them grow from ungainly youngsters, flapping in short, clumsy flights across the cliff face, to become stronger aerobats like their parents. The mother soars overhead, her tail fanned out, and slowly banks and turns back towards the cliff, calling again, the sun catching her grey and white face. The young birds – brown with heavily streaked breasts – answer, their voices sounding more like squeaks than the piercing shrieks of the adult.
In the past week, both parents have been enticing the chicks to follow them by carrying prey in their talons, which they give to the young mid-air. When they all leave the nest site, probably some time in the next few weeks, the adults will teach them how to hunt live prey – birds in flight – over the Downs.
Countries with coral reefs must do more on climate change – Unesco
Custodians of world heritage-listed sites should aim to keep global temperature increases to just 1.5C, UN agency says
Countries with responsibility over world heritage-listed coral reefs should adopt ambitious climate change targets, aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions to levels that would keep global temperature increases to just 1.5C, the UN agency responsible for overseeing world heritage sites has said.
At a meeting of Unesco’s world heritage committee in Krakow, Poland, a decision was adopted that clarified and strengthened the responsibility of countries that have custodianship over world-heritage listed coral reefs.
Continue reading...Earth's sixth mass extinction event already under way, scientists warn
Researchers talk of ‘biological annihilation’ as new study reveals that billions of populations of animals have been lost in recent decades
A “biological annihilation” of wildlife in recent decades means a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is already well underway and is more severe than previously feared, according to new research.
Scientists analysed both common and rare species and found billions of regional or local populations have been lost. They blame human overpopulation and overconsumption for the crisis and warn that it threatens the survival of human civilisation, although there remains a short window of time in which to act.
Continue reading...Drilling rig owned by UK fracking firm Cuadrilla 'seriously vandalised'
Derbyshire police say rig was damaged at storage yard in move seemingly intended to slow embryonic shale industry
A drilling rig owned by one of the UK’s most prominent fracking firms has been seriously vandalised, in a move seemingly intended to slow down the country’s embryonic shale industry.
Derbyshire police said that between 18 and 24 May, a person illegally entered a facility near Chesterfield run by PR Marriott, Britain’s largest onshore deep drilling company, which stores and maintains the rig on behalf of shale gas firm Cuadrilla.
When very hungry caterpillars turn into very hungry cannibals
Research shows that defensive chemicals emitted by plants cause armyworms to turn on each other
Caterpillars turn into cannibals and eat each other when plants deploy defensive chemicals to make their foliage less appetising, research has revealed.
While it was already known that caterpillars of many species munch on each other, and that plants have a range of defence mechanisms, it was not clear whether the two were linked.
Continue reading...'You helmets, get a life!': Celebrating 25 years of the Dunwich Dynamo
To celebrate the anniversary of the annual 116 mile night ride, here’s how the night unfolded for one distinctly average rider
It was the 25th Dunwich Dynamo this weekend, and the fifth ridden by your correspondent.
Starting from a park in Hackney, the Dynamo is a madcap 116-ish mile dash from London through the night to the sea-covered remains of a medieval town that was once its rival.
Police tactics at fracking protests need urgent review, says MEP
Call for review follows repeated allegations of violence and excessive force by police and security staff at UK sites
Repeated allegations of excessive force by police and security staff against protesters at oil and gas fracking sites across the country have led to a call for an urgent review of police tactics.
Lancashire police are investigating an allegation of assault by a security official at the Cuadrilla site at Preston New Road in Lancashire. At other protest sites – including Surrey and Derbyshire – demonstrators have made complaints about the alleged heavy-handedness of police officers.
Continue reading...Fido's family tree – in pictures
A new series on Sky 1 traces the ancestry and evolution of the 500 million domesticated dogs worldwide, with biologist Patrick Aryee introducing some of the 36 wild species. Dogs: An Amazing Animal Family airs on Thursdays from 13 to 27 July.
All photographs: Offspring Films
Continue reading...Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming | Dana Nuccitelli
The best efforts to undermine the established climate science behind the Endangerment Finding are pathetically bad
As we well know, climate myths are like zombies that never seem to die. It’s only a matter of time before they rise from the dead and threaten to eat our brains. And so here we go again – American conservatives are denying the very existence of global warming.
Continue reading...Adani's Carmichael's short operating plan avoids expected legal obligation of $1bn environment bond
Plan details no mining or construction or resulting land disturbance, which would trigger government demand for rehabilitation assurance
Adani has kept an operating plan for its unfunded Queensland mine to just six months, postponing an expected legal obligation to provide a billion-dollar rehabilitation bond before financial backing emerges.
The miner has provided the state government with a plan that covers only up to the end of 2017, which falls before its deadline for securing US$2.5bn in financial backing to execute the first phase of Australia’s largest proposed coal project.
Continue reading...Gorgeous goats – in pictures
Meet Ben, Bella, Sherlock and Sydney – the elegant goats turned into portraits by Kevin Horan. As the American photographer explains, he just treated them ‘like customers in a small-town photo studio’
Continue reading...Between two shires – a world of difference
Moonshine Gap, Cambridgeshire I watch a bird, listen to its dainty movements, then walk over into Northamptonshire, into the wood and signs of rural mischief
Moonshine Gap: what does that name say? When I saw it on the map it said something probably over-romantic, definitely nefarious, the sort of feature found in literature of the Kentucky backwoods. Or older, when the transit of and sightlines to stellar objects were watched, noted and sometimes immortalised. Seemed a stretch for this place.
Gap is like col or pass, a place where the ground gives to allow a way between this place and that. All are mountain words, so a strange find in this flat place. This “gap” marks a straddle between Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, so maybe that’s why. It’s not new: there it is on the 1889 map, attached to a wedge of wood amid crackle-glaze fields.
Continue reading...Impressionist view of midsummer flowers: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 12 July 1917
Along the grassy cuttings of the railway line between Carlisle and Kilmarnock the midsummer flowers are rampant. One would like to have a free pass to investigate the flora of railway cuttings. Many are the tales one hears of the uncommon plants which turn up in such situations, but, in whirling past, one can get only an impressionist view. To-day the prevailing colour was a brilliant and beautiful lilac-blue, that of the tufted vetch (Vicia cracca) whose long-spikes of pea-shaped flowers made “little heavens” for many miles. In some places they had begun to mow the grass along the cuttings, and the farmers will be glad of this vetch, which makes a much-prized sweet food for cattle.
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Continue reading...The downside of summer sunshine
The June heatwave brought dangerously high ozone levels and caused serious summer smog
The hottest June day in the UK since 1976 caused widespread summertime smog across southern England and the Midlands. Sevenoaks in Kent and Lullington Heath, East Sussex, measured the greatest ozone level for 11 years; reaching eight on the UK government’s ten-point scale for the first time. The winds then turned westerly and carried our polluted air eastwards to create problems over Germany.
Ozone can take days to form in the atmosphere. It therefore spreads across very wide areas. To reduce the worst impacts, Paris once again banned the oldest vehicles from its roads and, in a targeted approach, restrictions were placed on industries that emit volatile hydrocarbons that contribute to ozone formation. In a re-run of the 2003 heatwave, smoke from the tragic forest fires in Portugal spread over France and reached the UK during the hot weather.
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