Category Archives: Biodiversity

‘Like a little dragon’: new gecko species discovered on rugged Queensland island

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The carnivorous Phyllurus fimbriatus is only found in the wettest, rockiest pockets of Scawfell Island

A new species of gecko that “looks like a little dragon”, with a beaky face and spiny leaf-shaped tail, has been discovered on an uninhabited Queensland island.

The new lizard was found on Scawfell Island, a rugged island about 50km offshore from the north Queensland city of Mackay.

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US firm to bid to turn DRC oil permits in Virunga park into conservation projects

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Exclusive: company plans to sell carbon and biodiversity credits in endangered gorilla habitat and Congo basin rainforest as alternative to drilling for fossil fuels

A New York investment firm is to launch a $400m (£334m) bid for oil concessions in the Congo basin rainforest and Virunga national park with plans to turn them into conservation projects, the Guardian can reveal.

EQX Biome, a biodiversity fintech company, has sent an expression of interest to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) government for 27 oil exploration blocks put up for auction last July, some of which are in critical ecosystems.

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Canadian minister calls for emergency order to save country’s last spotted owls

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Steven Guilbeault wants to block logging of critical old-growth forest to prevent owls from going extinct in British Columbia

Canada’s environment minister plans to use a rare emergency order to protect the last of an endangered owl species in an area where critical old-growth forest is slated for further clearcutting.

Steven Guilbeault advised the environmental groups Ecojustice and the Wilderness Committee that he believed the spotted owl was facing “imminent threats to its survival” and he would use the powers to block further destruction of its habitat in British Columbia, the groups announced on Thursday afternoon.

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Apples and pears could be next UK food shortage, farmers warn

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Growers say they do not get paid enough by supermarkets, as supply of leeks also comes under threat

Apples and pears could be the next food shortage in the UK, after it emerged that British growers are planting just a third of the number of trees needed to maintain orchards, saying their returns from selling to supermarkets are unsustainable.

Ali Capper, head of the British Apples & Pears trade association which represents about 80% of the industry in the UK, said 1m new trees would have to be planted each year to maintain the UK’s 5,500 hectares (13,590 acres) of production.

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Cacti replacing snow on Swiss mountainsides due to global heating

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Invasive species proliferating in Valais is encroaching on natural reserves and posing a biodiversity threat

The residents of the Swiss canton of Valais are used to seeing their mountainsides covered with snow in winter and edelweiss flowers in summer. But as global heating intensifies, they are increasingly finding an invasive species colonising the slopes: cacti.

Authorities say cactus species belonging to the genus Opuntia, or prickly pears, are proliferating in parts of Valais, encroaching on natural reserves and posing a biodiversity threat.

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Labor plan for nature repair market rehashes old proposal and risks failure, experts say

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The private sector is not seen to be ready to act as the main buyer and the draft is cited as nearly identical to a Morrison-era proposal

An Albanese government environment plan to encourage companies to invest in nature merely expands a Coalition proposal under Scott Morrison and is at risk of failing due to a lack of business interest, experts say.

The federal government is consulting on legislation to establish a scheme to incentivise investment in nature restoration by creating tradable certificates for projects that protect and restore biodiversity.

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Farmers will be key to plan to restore England’s green spaces and wildlife

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Environmental improvement plan includes many ambitious pledges but hard-pressed agricultural sector will need effective support

It has taken years of campaigns and mass trespasses for the government to put access to green space in England at the top of its agenda, as it has today in the environmental improvement plan.

During the pandemic, the importance of nature for our physical and mental wellbeing became ever more apparent – as did the inequality in access, with the poorest in society less able to access green space.

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Human activity and drought ‘degrading more than a third of Amazon rainforest’

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Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages have weakened resilience of 2.5m sq km of forest, says study

Human activity and drought may have degraded more than a third of the Amazon rainforest, double the previous estimate, according to a study that heightens concerns that the globally important ecosystem is slipping towards a point of no return.

Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages, have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5m sq km of the forest, an area 10 times the size of the UK. This area is now drier, more flammable and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of “megafires” in the future.

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Azerbaijan sues Armenia for wartime environmental damage

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Case brought under Bern convention on nature may set precedent for destruction of biodiversity in war

Azerbaijan has launched a landmark legal challenge against Armenia for allegedly destroying its environment and biodiversity during nearly three decades of occupation of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

An international tribunal will consider evidence of widespread environmental destruction during the conflict between the two nations, including deforestation and pollution, and will be asked to order Armenia to pay reparations.

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Thames Water’s real-time map confirms raw sewage discharges

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Effluent in Gloucestershire river pinpointed by digital map as water companies accused of routinely pumping out waste to rivers

The market town of Fairford, nestling in the Cotswold hills, is perhaps best known for its church, which has the only complete set of mediaeval stained glass windows in England.

But thanks to a more modern phenomenon, an interactive digital map produced by Thames Water, the Gloucestershire town, with its traditional honey coloured limestone houses, is becoming better known for its continuous, gushing, raw sewage overflow.

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Sint Maarten approves plan to cull entire population of vervet monkeys

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The Caribbean territory plans to exterminate at least 450 of the invasive primates – but critics disagree with the proposal

The government of Sint Maarten in the eastern Caribbean has approved a controversial plan to cull its entire population of vervet monkeys, as the proliferation of the invasive species becomes an increasing nuisance on the Dutch island territory.

Authorities will fund the Nature Foundation St Maarten NGO to capture and euthanise at least 450 monkeys over the next three years in the territory which borders French St Martin.

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France’s refusal to ban Sunday hunting angers anti-hunt campaigners

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Tougher sentences to be imposed for those causing accidents but activists dismiss alcohol ban as ‘laughable’

The French government has angered anti-hunt campaigners after refusing to ban hunting on Sundays during the season.

Instead, it has declared a ban on drinking alcohol and taking drugs while hunting, a move activists say is unenforceable, and will set up a voluntary application for hunters to indicate where they are active.

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UK wildlife ‘devastated by litany of weather extremes’ in 2022

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National Trust’s annual audit reveals a dire year for animals from toads and bats to birds and butterflies

This year’s tumultuous weather – including fierce storms, searing heat, deep cold snaps – has devastated some of the UK’s most precious flora and fauna, a leading conservation charity has said.

The extreme conditions have made survival very difficult for animals from toads and bats to birds and butterflies, and from great trees to meadowland flowers.

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Objection by DRC sours ‘paradigm-changing’ Cop15 biodiversity deal

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s last-minute bid for additional funds was dismissed on a legal technicality

It was almost a special moment in the early hours of Monday morning in the Palais des congrès in Montreal. China and Canada, two squabbling adversaries, had united for the good of the planet to help the world at Cop15 forge a once-in-a-decade deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems.

From the emphasis on indigenous rights to conserving 30% of Earth for nature, there is good reason to believe the Kunming-Montreal agreement could be a truly historic, hopeful turning point in humanity’s relationship with nature after decades of destruction and warnings of mass extinctions.

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‘We didn’t accept it’: DRC minister laments forcing through of Cop15 deal

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Democratic Republic of the Congo’s environment minister says country has not agreed to ‘30 by 30’ deal

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s environment minister has said her country has not agreed to a deal to halt the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems, prompting behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to keep the agreement alive just hours after it was adopted.

Ève Bazaiba, the DRC’s environment minister, said her country would be writing to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the Convention on Biological Diversity to express the DRC’s position on the final text. It comes after the Chinese Cop15 president, Huang Runqiu, appeared to force through the agreement in the final plenary just moments after the DRC negotiator had said did not support the deal, which is typically negotiated by consensus. His interventions prompted further objections from Uganda and Cameroon.

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Wong urged to raise human rights concerns on Beijing trip – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

It’s officially a week before Christmas, which means the forecasters at the Bureau of Meteorology are fairly confident they can tell us what whether we can set up for an al fresco Christmas lunch or not.

For some parts of the country, there is a chance of showers:

Particularly in the south, we can get some volatile weather but all the patterns really starting to change as we move into later part of this week.

So we’ll see a weather system move through southern parts of the country, Thursday and Friday. Then a big high-pressure system behind it will quickly move into the Tasman Sea and then kind of sit there over the Christmas weekend into early the following week and normally that drives a lot of warm weather across much of southern parts of the country and our guidance is showing a similar pattern with that as well.

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Cop15 negotiators close to agreeing nature deal as talks draw to end

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Final agreement could bring better protection for vital ecosystems and big reforms to agriculture

A potentially transformational agreement for nature is close to being reached at Cop15 in Montreal, which could bring better protection for Earth’s vital ecosystems such as the Amazon and Congo basin rainforests, big reforms to agriculture, and better protection of indigenous territories and rights – but there are concerns that key issues are being overlooked.

After four years of negotiations and 12 years since the last biodiversity targets were agreed in Japan, the Chinese president of Cop15 put forward its recommendations for a final agreement after two weeks of intense negotiations at the UN biodiversity summit in Canada.

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China’s return to wildlife farming ‘a risk to global health and biodiversity’

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Post-pandemic relaxation of restrictions could weaken animal protection and pose a hazard to public health, say experts

China appears to be weakening its post-Covid restrictions on the farming of wildlife such as porcupines, civets and bamboo rats, which raises a new risk to public health and biodiversity, warn NGOs and experts.

Before the pandemic, wildlife farming was promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich. But China issued an outright ban on hunting, trading and transporting wildlife, as well as the consumption as food, after public health experts suggested the virus could have originated from the supply chain.

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Cop15 half-time report: China prompts fears of new ‘Copenhagen moment’

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Negotiators say divisions mean risk is growing of a weak final agreement similar to Denmark summit in 2009

Talks to halt the destruction of nature “very much hang in the balance”, sources have said, as environment ministers from around the world begin to arrive in Montreal amid concerns about a lack of Chinese leadership of the Cop15 talks.

At the halfway stage of the summit in Canada, negotiators at the UN biodiversity summit have said divisions are contributing to the growing risk of a “Copenhagen moment”, referring to the 2009 UN climate summit when talks ended with a weak final agreement in the Danish capital, not the “Paris moment for nature” leading environmental figures had been calling for.

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Humanity has become ‘weapon of mass extinction’, UN head tells Cop15 launch

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António Guterres calls for end to destruction of nature as Canada pushes proposal to protect 30% of Earth

Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction and governments must end the “orgy of destruction”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said at the beginning of the biodiversity Cop15.

“We are out of harmony with nature. In fact, we are playing an entirely different song. Around the world, for hundreds of years, we have conducted a cacophony of chaos, played with instruments of destruction. Deforestation and desertification are creating wastelands of once-thriving ecosystems,” he said.

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