The Guardian
Drug money destroying swaths of forest in Central America – study
Cocaine traffickers’ efforts to launder profits by creating agricultural land results in loss of millions of acres, researchers say
Cocaine traffickers attempting to launder their profits are responsible for the disappearance of millions of acres of tropical forest across large swaths of Central America, according to a report.
The study, published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that drug trafficking was responsible for up to 30% of annual deforestation in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, turning biodiverse forest into agricultural land.
Continue reading...38 million pieces of plastic waste found on uninhabited South Pacific island
Henderson Island, part of the Pitcairn group, is covered by 18 tonnes of plastic – the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world
One of the world’s most remote places, an uninhabited coral atoll, is also one of its most polluted.
Henderson Island, a tiny landmass in the eastern South Pacific, has been found by marine scientists to have the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world, with 99.8% of the pollution plastic.
Continue reading...The sad demise of trees in our streets | Letters
Re Ian Jack (We hardly notice them. But street trees are monuments to city life, 13 May), part of the Victorian heritage of the public realm were 8 million trees, greening public streets which had formerly been private roads on great land-owning estates. Ian Jack sets out the threat to this heritage, from disease and pollution to overzealous council pruning. But the most urgent threat is the re-privatisation of public realm through redevelopment. Local councils are offloading maintenance costs of streets and trees by granting permission for estates where the developer retains ownership and responsibility for upkeep. And private developers prefer “architect’s trees” – small, shaped, boxed, contained – rather than the sprawling London plane.
But there is hope. The ultimate symbol was the garden bridge – a private bridge across a public river and public realm, with 30 mature South Bank trees facing the axe to make way for private designer trees in planters. Thankfully, the mayor of London has pulled the plug on this landgrab. Is the tide turning?
Michael Ball
Thames Central Open Spaces
The Lake District is indeed a sheepwrecked landscape | Letters
Robin Milton, chairman of the NFU Uplands forum, and sheep farmer Louise MacArthur (Letters, 13 May) completely misunderstand the point George Monbiot is making (The Lake District as a world heritage site – what a disaster that would be, 10 May) in resisting the designation of the Lake District as a world heritage site. This landscape is totally artificial and manmade: it is a “sheepwrecked landscape” which could not be resurrected if designated as a world heritage site. Louise MacArthur’s “glorious fells” should, except for the highest ground, be partially forested, and would be but for the depredations of free-ranging sheep which prevent natural tree growth. Hence the relative paucity of forest in the British Isles, compared with almost all of our European neighbours. Of course, it is not all down to sheep. In the highlands of Scotland, deer are also significant players (as is heather-burning to sustain grouse). A major problem is that most Britons have no idea that the bare upland areas that dominate Scotland, much of Wales and the higher Pennines were once extensively clothed in trees. Our Neolithic stone-axe-wealding ancestors started the tree felling, a job that was completed during the industrial revolution.
If anyone doubts this scenario, just take a look at the richly forested countries of northern and eastern Europe or Canada. You will be hard put to match the huge expanses of bare moorland that characterise these British Isles. If sheep in Lakeland were confined to the lower valleys, where most are concentrated anyway, but excluded from the higher, steeper slopes, the landscape would revert to its true ecological state and beauty.
Alan Woolley
Weybridge, Surrey
38,000 people a year die early because of diesel emissions testing failures
Global inventory of nitrogen oxide emissions shows highly polluting diesel cars are ‘urgent public health issue’
The global human health impact of the diesel emissions scandal has been revealed by new research showing a minimum of 38,000 people a year die early due to the failure of diesel vehicles to meet official limits in real driving conditions.
Researchers have created the first global inventory of the emissions pumped out by cars and trucks on the road, over and above the legal limits which are monitored by lab-based tests. Virtually all diesel cars produce far more toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx) than regulations intend and these excess emissions amounted to 4.6m tonnes in 2015, the team found.
Continue reading...UK faces sharp rise in destructive wind storms due to global warming
If climate change heats world by more than 1.5C, damaged buildings are likely to increase by over 50% across Midlands, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland
The UK is set to reap the whirlwind of climate change with the huge damage caused by wind storms expected to increase sharply, according to new analysis.
Even the minimum global warming now expected – just 1.5C – is projected to raise the cost of windstorm destruction by more than a third in parts of the country. If climate change heats the world even further, broken roofs and damaged buildings are likely to increase by over 50% across a swathe of the nation.
Continue reading...Louisiana floods: how a displaced community fought back - video
Torrential downpours in Louisiana led to catastrophic flooding in August 2016, submerging entire communities and displacing thousands of residents. Volunteers did whatever they could to help – rescuing stranded people, organising food and shelter and providing security. In their own words, members of the self-styled ‘Cajun army’ tell the inspirational story of how a natural disaster made their community stronger
Continue reading...Adani may be forced to revamp Carmichael coalmine clean-up plans
Reforms touted by Queensland government would mandate targets and ratios for progressive rehabilitation of land
Adani may be forced into an expensive revamp of its Queensland coal plans if mining rehabilitation reforms touted by the Palaszczuk government prevail after the next state election.
The environmental group Lock The Gate says Adani now plans a “lowest cost” program to rehabilitate its Carmichael mine, including waiting 39 years to start on rehabilitation of huge open-cut pits that will leave more than 3,300 hectares “completely un-rehabilitated”.
Continue reading...Top UK fund manager divests from fossil fuels
Archbishop of Canterbury plays crucial role in BMO Global Asset Management’s decision to dump £20m of shares in firms such as BHP Billiton
One of Britain’s biggest managers of ethical funds is to dump £20m of shares in fossil fuel companies in one of the biggest divestments so far because of climate change.
Shares in BHP Billiton, the Anglo-Australian mining giant, will be among those sold by BMO Global Asset Management’s range of “responsible” funds, which manage £1.5bn of assets. They were previously known as the “stewardship” funds, the first ethical funds launched in Britain.
Continue reading...Coralroot, a rare beauty among the old graves
North Wessex Downs, Hampshire Cow parsley and common vetch crowd around the carved words of grief and remembrance
My right hand, flushed with warmth after a day’s walking, is refreshed at the touch of the stone gate post. Standing at the entrance of an abandoned church, I can see it has been worn marble-smooth by the hands of the long-vanished faithful. Centuries of their feet, too, have passed this way and carved a dip into the threshold of one of its ancient doorways.
Although they are faint and rubbed, I’m nonetheless able to trace the radiating spokes of the witches’ marks that decorate the stone lintel. And above the squat and timbered tower a weathercock, long since rusted in place, cannot turn to greet me but instead shudders in the spring breeze.
Britons throw away 1.4m edible bananas each day, figures show
Government study says £80m worth is discarded every year – sometimes simply because of a minor bruise or black mark
Britons routinely bin 1.4m edible bananas every day at a cost of £80m a year, figures reveal.
A third of consumers (30%) admit to discarding a banana if it has even a minor bruise or black mark on the skin. More than one in 10 (13%) also throw the fruit away if it shows any green on the skin.
Continue reading...Gorse badly damaged by harsh winter: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 17 May 1917
Our Cornish driver said today that here they had had “two winters in one, and that a bad one.” Certainly one does not remember ever to have seen gorse so badly damaged. One thinks of gorse and ling as the hardiest of hardy shrubs, yet here there are great tracts of whin quite sandbrown, and the green, young shoots of the ling are only beginning to prevail over the dead surface. If you beat a bush of ling you have the queer experience of seeing it turn green under the taps of your stick. Another odd thing is that the succulent shoots of the Mesembryanthemum have in many places survived without harm. Of course many square feet of this rampant exotic have been destroyed, but on one sunny slope to the sea we saw a continuous sheet over a well ten feat high and about thirty foot long; it came rambling over the top of this wall, cascading down and then running along the gravel path at the foot, and out over the border and through the fence and on to the cliff beyond, like the ripples of the waves below, after they have broken, invading every crevice with silent haste. This huge tract was deeply green and full of promising buds, yet the gorse bushes with which the fleshy leaves came in contact had been killed by the winter.
Another odd effect of the very late spring is that the blackthorn was overtaken by the gorse, and we have had the very uncommon sight of gorse bushes in full glory of gold and odour, with the frothing among them of blackthorn blossoms, peculiarly thick and snowy this season. In the coves running down to the sea here the blackthorn grows very dwarf and hugs the stones, looking almost like a distinct variety.
Continue reading...Grey plaque scheme highlights NO2 pollution in London
London’s Choking initiative aims to draw attention to areas where nitrogen dioxide pollution threatens public health
They take their inspiration from the well-known signs linking people from the past with the buildings they once inhabited, but the symbols now appearing across London are to highlight a different connection.
In the last week grey plaques – direct copies of the English Heritage blue plaques identifying the homes of the dead and famous – have been put up on buildings across the capital to identify streets and houses in areas where air pollution threatens public health.
Continue reading...April cold weather could cause a shortage of British fruit, say farmers
National Farmers’ Union warns of ‘waiting game’ on apples, pears and plums after last month’s Arctic blast
Cold weather in April could lead to a shortage of British apples, pears and plums, farmers have warned.
Alison Capper, chairman of the National Farmers’ Union horticulture board, said she feared her own apple harvest, which includes varieties such as Gala, Braeburn and Red Windsor apples, could drop by 70-80% as a result of the cold snap.
Continue reading...The eco guide to green lawns
Manicured grass comes at a heavy cost in terms of pollution from pesticides. We need better legislation, and wildflowers happily mixed with the turf
As contenders for the 12th Britain’s Best Lawn competition will know, with a great lawn comes great responsibility. Despite the fact that the winner receives a lithium-ion-battery, self-propelled lawnmower (far more eco than a petrol version), lawn-keeping typically involves a shed-load of pesticides and herbicides.
The Mormon temple in LA let its famous lawn dry out in the sun
Continue reading...Peril of the deep – the killer poison that lingers unseen in British waters
The discovery of alarming levels of PCBs, a type of chemical banned 40 years ago, has led scientists to call for an urgent clean-up
The body of Lulu the killer whale was found on jagged rocks on the Isle of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides last year. A member of the only pod found in British waters, she died after getting entangled in fishing lines.
It was a sad discovery, especially as a postmortem revealed Lulu had never had a calf. But a recent autopsy also revealed something else that is alarming marine experts and offers a bleak, damning judgment on the state of Britain’s coastal waters. Lulu’s body had some of the highest levels of a particular type of manmade chemical ever recorded – more than 100 times above the level that scientists say will have biological consequences for a species.
Continue reading...Race is on to rid UK oceans of PCBs after toxic pollutants found in killer whale
Scientists say more must be done to eliminate the chemicals, which have a devastating impact on marine life and can end up in the food chain
The body of Lulu the killer whale was found on jagged rocks on the Isle of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides. A member of the only pod found in British waters, she had died last year after getting entangled in fishing lines.
It was a sad discovery, especially as a post-mortem revealed Lulu had never produced a calf. But the recent autopsy also revealed something else; something that is alarming marine experts and which offers a bleak, damning judgment on the state of Britain’s coastal waters. Lulu’s body contained among the highest levels of a particular type of man-made chemicals ever recorded – more than 100 times above the level that scientists say will have biological consequences for a species.
Continue reading...Can riverbank wildlife cope with another summer of drought?
Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, famous for its abbey, the Wars of the Roses battle in 1471 and the floods that ravaged the town in 2007, might seem an unlikely place to look for evidence of impending drought. But stroll along the riverbank at Abbey Mill Gate and the signs are there: the mud is cracked and dry, the reeds brown and withering, and the water is starting to form pools.
Continue reading...Sweet-scented scurvy-grass is a spring tonic in every sense
South Uist The bitter leaves of this hardy little plant once provided a welcome dose of vitamin C after a hard winter
Scurvy-grass is usually found in coastal regions, where its high tolerance of saline conditions enables it to flourish where other plants fail to thrive. It is an early flowerer and will grow abundantly on steep cliffs, sometimes forming sizeable, rather untidy clumps of stemmed white flowers.
There is something endearing about this unassuming yet resilient plant, whose presence here is so linked to the beginning of a fresh new season. Strangely, its scent is not mentioned in most of the plant identification guides, yet springtime walks with a warm breeze lifting and carrying up with it the sweet fragrance of the profusion of flowers unseen on the rocky faces below have always been a delight.
Continue reading...Free water from the bar tap? Get the app | Letters
I can quite understand why people feel awkward asking for tap water without making a purchase (British embarrassment over asking for tap water in bars fuels plastic bottle waste – survey, 11 May). Fortunately, the Refill app from refill.org.uk will help direct people to all sorts of lovely businesses who have made clear their commitment to plastic waste reduction. They will refill with no obligation to buy anything. If there are any businesses who would like to join, they can do so within the app, and together we can provide a robust alternative to plastic drinking bottles.
Guy Hodgson
Bath
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