The Guardian
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.
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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.
Continue reading...UK will ban foreign fishing after leaving EU, says Gove – video
Michael Gove says the UK will be ‘taking back control’ of its waters and will ‘decide the terms of access’ for foreign fishing after leaving the EU. Speaking on BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show, the environment secretary announces foreign fishing will be banned upon the withdrawal from the London fisheries convention, an arrangement that allows other countries to fish in British waters
Continue reading...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
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