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$500 million boost for Reef protection

$500 million boost for Reef protection

Has climate change become a fetish? No, not that kind of fetish.

How solar power is giving the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster a new beginning.

The author of a new book on the history of birds’ names found tales of conquest, myth and human endeavour

It’s easy to assume, with bird names, that we know what they mean, and often that assumption is quite correct. Woodpeckers peck wood, bee-eaters feed on bees, and whitethroats are indeed white around the neck.

Other names seem almost wilfully obscure: what on Earth does the name puffin mean? Or hobby? Why are turtle doves named after reptiles? And don’t get me started on some of the more bizarre bird names found around the world – from oleaginous hemispingus to zitting cisticola, leaflove to hardhead, and bananaquit to bearded mountaineer.

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Australia is halfway into the most expensive environmental program ever mounted—the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We've spent more than $8 billion trying to ensure the future of this crucial river system, but the plan is at risk of failing. Over two episodes, reporter Sarah Dingle investigates serious allegations that the money spent has been for very little environmental gain.

The money will help try to save the crown-of-thorns starfish and reduce pollution, Malcolm Turnbull to announce

The Turnbull government will allocate $500m to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.

The funding, to be unveiled on Sunday and confirmed in the May budget, follows a recent study finding that 30% of the reef’s corals died in a catastrophic nine-month marine heatwave in 2016.

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Exclusive: Co-author of study expresses shock at ‘complete ineptitude’ of government’s intervention

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The federal government has successfully put pressure on the United Nations to delete all criticism of Australia’s $13bn effort to restore the ailing Murray-Darling river system from a published study, according to the author of an expert report.

The so-called “Australia chapter” has been removed from the UN report “Does Improved Irrigation Technology Save Water?” published online by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

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Forestry Commission reports invasion of oak processionary moths in south-east England

An infestation of caterpillars that can trigger asthma attacks, vomiting and skin rashes has appeared in south-east England.

Oak processionary moths, in their larval stage now, have been spotted in areas that include Croydon, Twickenham, Epping Forest, Watford, Ealing and several London suburbs. Other infestations have been spotted in Bracknell Forest, Slough and Guildford.

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The female bird of prey was given a traditional Native American farewell in Canada.

Hairs on the caterpillars can cause fevers and eye and throat irritations, officials say.

Beldoo Moss, Cumbrian Pennines: Brontë, bog-body, Baskerville, Brady – it’s as if we are impelled to fill all that bare, bleak, vacant space

Think of this place and most people see the road: the high crossing road that climbs one side of England’s back and descends the other. A second thought might be of the Roman road that once ran this way, itself over the course of an already ancient bronze age pass.

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Despite all the noise of planes coming and going, the echidnas at Hobart airport are digging in to hibernate.

A waste management worker at the US Antarctic base at McMurdo sound revealed a stifling bureaucracy. The termination of his contract led to a tragic result. Now news to the base has been blocked.

As more heat is being trapped on Earth, much of this heat is being stored in ocean water and the effects are now being seen in an accelerated thinning of the edges of ice shelves in western Antarctica.

Simon Linke plays some of his recordings and explains what they reveal about environmental health.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Data released by California regulator ARB for Q4 2017 this week shows that the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) recorded a yearly deficit for the first time in the programme’s history, with the publication coming alongside the agency handing out several fines and conducting the first board meeting on a series of possible amendments.

A couple of weeks later than usual, the first species to emerge from the chrysalis, is on the wing

Most of us have a favourite first that signifies the true beginning of spring. For me, it’s the first orange tip. While butterflies that hibernate as adults have been flying for a while, the orange tip is usually the first species to emerge from a chrysalis.

Last spring I complained that I didn’t see my first in Norfolk until 2 April. This year it was 19 April. Other spring butterflies, from the holly blue to the increasingly scarce dingy skipper, are at least a week later than average.

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Saving a vulnerable species that's not cute and cuddly; go bush with landcare volunteers; meet the 'apple island wife' blogger; and join Roly Lennox on his last delivery run.