The Guardian

PM says Tories ‘committed to nuclear’ but fails to offer support for Moorside plant after losses by one of its backers

The prime minister has been accused of ducking the issue of whether the government supports a new nuclear power station in west Cumbria on a visit to Copeland ahead of the constituency’s byelection.

The accusation was levelled after Theresa May said the Conservative party was “committed” to nuclear, but did not offer state support following huge losses reported by one of the backers of a deal to build the Moorside nuclear plant near Whitehaven.

Just under half of requests for exceptions to the neonicotinoids ban were filed by industry not farmers, legal analysis shows

The EU has been criticised after a new legal analysis showed it had allowed scores of “emergency authorisations” of banned pesticides that threaten bee colonies.

The research emerged as the European court of justice began hearing a case by Syngenta and Bayer to overturn the pesticides ban. A ruling is expected shortly.

UK is one of five countries persistently contravening legal nitrogen dioxide levels with pollution from factories and vehicles, particularly diesel engines

The European commission has sent a “final warning” to the UK for failing to address repeated breaches of legal air pollution limits in 16 areas including London, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow.

The UK is one of five countries served with the warning over persistent breaches of nitrogen dioxide ((NO2) levels, which come from sources including factories and vehicles, particularly diesel engines.

Document obtained by the Guardian states existing quotas will remain despite promises made by leave campaigners

The hopes of British fishermen that the UK can win its “waters back” post-Brexit are expected to be dashed by the European parliament, despite the campaign promises of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, a leaked EU document reveals.

MEPs have drafted seven provisions to be included in Britain’s “exit agreement”, including the stipulation that there will be “no increase to the UK’s share of fishing opportunities for jointly fished stocks (maintaining the existing quota distribution in UK and EU waters)”.

It remains a mystery as to where most of Scotland’s bats hibernate. Anne Youngman, Scottish officer for the Bat Conservation Trust, and the ecologist John Haddow conduct a survey in a disused quarry tunnel and at Doune Castle

Bere Ferrers, Devon On sheltered riverside land, toppled fruit trees encrusted in lichen remain from once productive orchards

Near to Bere Ferrers rail station a muddy way crosses poached and splashy pastures towards Thorn Point, where a causeway, submerged at high tide, used to be the landing place for horticultural produce ferried from Cargreen in Cornwall.

Spring flowers and summer strawberries would have been unloaded here, destined for London and upcountry markets via the railway, a mile across the hill. These days yachts moor out in midstream and the expanse of choppy water downstream is spanned by power lines, by Brunel’s Royal Albert and the Tamar road bridges.

Caroline Lucas MP rightly points to “a cocktail of threats” to the environment from leaving the EU (A ‘green guarantee’ could stop Brexit ruining our environment, theguardian.com, 13 February). She neglects to mention her own role in bringing on these threats: the vote she cast to hold the EU referendum in the first place. In her statement to the Commons on 9 June 2015, when the EU referendum bill was under review, she pointed to the EU’s many environmental protections; called nonetheless for its “radical reform”; noted that achieving this “by walking away from the EU makes no sense at all”; and then, along with hundreds of other pro-remain MPs, invited the voters to walk away. It was a classic muddle of cross-purposes all too familiar from the left on Europe.

At the time, Lucas could have demanded, or at least suggested, that the likely environmental and other costs be specified and advertised to the public ahead of any Brexit vote. Instead she agreed to a simple in/out vote with no further conditions. So perhaps she means to say that the “real fight starts now”?
Jeff Smith
Brno, Czech Republic

Conservationists hope second group of 14 scimitar-horned oryx bred in captivity will help repopulate original habitat in Chad

A group of scimitar-horned oryx, an antelope declared extinct in the wild, have been reintroduced to their original home on the edge of the Sahara desert.

Fourteen captive-bred animals were released in a remote area of Chad and joined a first group reintroduced in August 2016, conservationists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said.

French photographer Gabriel Barathieu has been named this year’s winner for his ‘balletic, malevolent’ dancing octopus, while British winner Nick Blake captured a lone diver among the otherworldly sunbeams of a Mexican cave

Owner of proposed Carmichael coalmine say they’ll take ‘all steps available’ if supporters of Galilee Blockade obtain confidential information from company

Adani has threatened legal action against an activist group that is encouraging its supporters to infiltrate the miner by signing up for jobs with its proposed Queensland mining project.

A law firm acting for Adani wrote to the Galilee Blockade on Tuesday to signal it would take “all steps available to it” should the activists obtain confidential information from employees.

South Downs, West Sussex The buzzard raises its wings and lifts its talons up towards the kite, which responds and the two clash

Dark shadows tumble across the hillside. The clouds are being hurried along by the wind, and the rain is subsiding. A chattering flock of linnets bounces from hedge to hedge, across the shining, wet chalk track in front of me. In the middle of the field is a brown shape, like a large mound of mud. It shifts its position every few minutes. Looking through binoculars, I see it’s a brown hare, hunkered down in the ground, its long ears flat against its head and over its back, munching the grass. It shifts its position again, still chewing, but always scanning the horizon.

A buzzard swoops in and lands a few metres from the hare. It struggles, flapping hard, as if trying to hold on to the ground in the wind, and then it lowers its wings. It has caught something – a small mammal, presumably – but I can’t see what it’s mantling in the grass. It begins to eat, snatching at the prey with its bill. The hare sits up, still chewing, and watches the buzzard.

‘They are going to get a surprise and I am worried about them,’ says Catherine Tanna, joining push for transition to renewables

The boss of one of Australia’s largest energy suppliers says she is worried about customers’ power bills after the latest heatwave in the country’s south-east.

Energy Australia’s managing director, Catherine Tanna, has joined the push for a transition to newer forms of energy, saying bipartisanship is needed to draw up a national energy policy. The company operates sites including the Yallourn plant in the Latrobe valley, a brown-coal power station in Victoria that supplies nearly a quarter of the state’s electricity.

Climate change is threatening about 700 endangered species and policymakers must act urgently to lessen impact

The impact of climate change on threatened and endangered wildlife has been dramatically underreported, with scientists calling on policymakers to act urgently to slow its effects before entire species are lost for good.

New analysis has found that nearly half (47%) of the mammals and nearly a quarter (24.4%) of the birds on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species are negatively impacted by climate change – a total of about 700 species. Previous assessments had said only 7% of listed mammals and 4% of birds were impacted.

Presence of manmade chemicals in most remote place on planet shows nowhere is safe from human impact, say scientists

Scientists have discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the most remote and inaccessible place on the planet – the 10km-deep Mariana trench in the Pacific ocean.

Small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.

Climate change, poaching, competition for food and water … elephants have never faced such threats. Here are more than 50 ways to give them a helping hand. Can you add to the list?

There is so much being done to help stop elephants being wiped out in the wild. We’ve identified more than 50 campaigns and organisations around the world, from well-known charities like the World Wide Fund for Nature to grassroots groups like Elephanatics in Canada and Laos-based ElefantAsia. If you think we’ve missed anyone or anything, let us know at elephant.conservation@theguardian.com. We’ll update the list with your suggestions.

Journalists try to get facts right. Tabloid propagandists try to advance an agenda

Wikipedia editors recently voted to ban the Daily Mail tabloid as a source for their website after deeming it “generally unreliable.” To put the severity of this decision in context, Wikipedia still allows references to Russia Today and Fox News, both of which display a clear bias toward the ruling parties of their respective countries.

It thus may seem like a remarkable decision for Wikipedia to ban the Daily Mail, but fake news stories by David Rose in two consecutive editions of the Mail on Sunday – which echoed throughout the international conservative media – provide perfect examples of why the decision was justified and wise.

Suresh Kumar Sharma is an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi, a city with some of the world’s dirtiest air – and where many locals don’t know how unhealthy it is. We monitored the dangerous PM2.5 particles surrounding Suresh’s rickshaw for 12 hours, then had his lungs tested: ‘I was shocked’

Glenridding, Lake District Warned off by the fell top assessor, ill-prepared ramblers hurry out of the mist away from England’s third-highest mountain

I’m early for my appointment in the Helvellyn youth hostel car park, and the only sign of life is a raven croaking prukk-prukk as it dives from Edmund’s Castle crag, its black wings turning a sheeny purple. I pull down my beanie hat and zip up my jacket collar.

Rather than the crisp panorama to be expected on so chilly a day, banners of cloud wreathe me. Treading the path from Red Tarn, I cannot see the mountain above, though I know it’s shaped like an armchair, flanked by Striding Edge as one arm rest and Swirral Edge the other; the lumbar support being Helvellyn’s 950 metres. Cupped in between is Red Tarn, formed by ice age moraine damming water.

Green MP says 1,100 pieces of environmental law need to be moved on to UK statute books before Britain leaves EU

Britain is hugely unprepared for the potential impact of Brexit on environmental protection, with more than 1,100 pieces of EU green legislation needing to be moved into UK law for safeguards to be maintained, according to a report by the Green MP Caroline Lucas.

Lucas, who spent 11 years as an MEP before being elected to parliament, said environmental protections faced “a cocktail of threats from Brexit”.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 17 February 1917

Surrey
The vane above the old church tower moves uneasily a point, and scarcely more, from east towards the south. It is not much, but just enough this morning to make the top of the frosty earth crumble as you walk across a field which was ploughed weeks ago, to show cart tracks along the border way, and, what is more, to set the birds in movement and in voice over the hedgerows and among the trees. When snow not long since lay in the birch wood on the far side of the common the young trees appeared to be dull yellow, but now, with the snow gone, they are cream in colour. The thin shreds of bark peel off like knitted fragments and scatter among the lengthening tassels on hazel boughs. A plaintive note comes from the far side of the birches, then a pause; the swish of the wind goes through or between the long, hanging limbs; the note sounds again, and then, as if following it, a bullfinch flits, the rich red of his breast set off by the darker feathers, which in the lights and shadows among the trees are beautiful beyond belief. You wait a long while to catch sight of any company he may have, but to-day there is none; a stormcock flies on to the highest branch of an ash at the corner of the copse and fills the empty air with singing; you move, and he drops, almost like a stone, below the boughs, but in the space of a short pause is up and again in full song. There is a clamour in the south where the sky is so heavy as to forbid the sight of what it all may mean, but momentarily a great flight of rooks ­– over a hundred – comes into view, well up in the air, wheeling in an almost solid body to the west. The noise seems to animate everything. Wood pigeons scatter into small flocks, some going this way and some that, a bantam crows, the sheep bleat and the lambs call, the cattle coming from the shed yonder sniff the air and low, halting in their march toward the mangold which lies in a heap near the slicing machine.