Category Archives: Conservation

Global calls to revoke ‘misleading’ sustainable farming certification for salmon in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour

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Letters sent to two accreditation schemes say pollution is contributing to the extinction of a critically endangered fish species

More than 80 organisations around the globe have called for two international accreditation schemes to revoke sustainability certifications for salmon and trout farmed in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour, with letters labelling the certification “misleading”.

The letters to the Best Aquaculture Practices (Bap) and GlobalG.A.P schemes come as federal and state government workshops are held in Hobart to determine what urgent action is necessary to prevent the extinction of the critically endangered Maugean skate, an ancient fish species found only in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast.

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‘Get rid of all the green crap’: Tory PMs’ strange attitude to the environment

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As both Labour and Conservatives ponder their green policy, we look back at the Tories’ propensity to promise much – and deliver little

Conservative party support for environmental causes has generally been vocal at election time but hesitant and half-hearted in power. On one hand, the party – with the exception of a few hardcore climate crisis deniers – has never reached the total opposition to green causes that disfigures rightwing parties in other nations, in particular the US Republicans. On the other, it has generally failed to enact the kind of legislation that would allow the UK to take a global lead in the battle against global heating, as can be seen from the records of three recent Tory prime ministers.

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Scientists battle to save Guam kingfisher after snakes introduced

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A species almost wiped out by tree snakes is being returned to the wild and, eventually, to its Pacific island home

As arks go, the shipping container that has been placed inside Sedgwick County Zoo, in Wichita, Kansas, looks an unlikely vehicle for saving species.

Nevertheless, work there is expected to play a key role in undoing one of the world’s worst conservation disasters: the accidental introduction of brown tree snakes to the Pacific island of Guam. The snakes’ arrival, at the end of the second world war, eventually wiped out huge numbers of indigenous birds, mammals, and lizards including the Guam kingfisher, the Guam rail, and the Guam flycatcher.

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NSW at ‘extreme risk’ of fire ant invasion after nest discovered 5.5km from border

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Federal agriculture minister says ‘additional effort’ needed after new infestation found on the Gold Coast

The discovery of a nest of red fire ants just 5.5km from New South Wales’ northern border has prompted calls for urgent action to stop the spread of the destructive invasive insect.

The nest, found at Tallebudgera on the Gold Coast, is the farthest south the pest has been detected, prompting accusations that governments have been dragging their feet on properly funding eradication programs.

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Environment charity bids to encircle London in ‘M25 for nature’

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CPRE London hopes to surround capital in trees by weaving existing areas of green belt in outer boroughs

An environmental charity is bidding to create an “M25 for nature” that would encircle London in woodland, hedgerows and street trees to boost biodiversity, carbon capture and wellbeing.

The countryside charity CPRE London hopes to weave together existing areas of green belt in the city’s 18 outer boroughs to create an uninterrupted ring of trees around the capital.

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Scottish ministers have ‘duty’ to protect seabed from harmful fishing, says court

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Licensing for scallop dredging and trawling must comply with National Marine Plan after judicial review by Open Seas charity

The Scottish government should stop approving licences for fishing vessels using methods believed to cause harm to habitats, a charity working to protect marine life has urged, after a court declared a routine licensing decision to be unlawful.

Scotland’s highest court ruled that the Scottish government had failed to act in accordance with Scotland’s National Marine Plan (NMP) when varying fishing licences last December, after a judicial review by the conservation charity Open Seas. It is legally obliged to act in accordance with its environmental duties, as stated in the NMP, when making these decisions.

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EU passes nature restoration law in knife-edge vote

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MEPs back law to place recovery measures on 20% of EU’s land and sea by 2030 by dozen votes

The EU has narrowly passed a key law to protect nature – a core pillar of the Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s European Green Deal – after months of fiery debate and an opposition campaign scientists criticised as misleading.

The nature restoration law will place recovery measures on 20% of the EU’s land and sea by 2030, rising to cover all degraded ecosystems by 2050.

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Brazil says illegal miners driven from Indigenous territory, but ‘war’ not over

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Country’s top cop said 90% of miners despoiling Yanomami land had been expelled, though experts say they are only displaced

Brazil’s top federal police chief for the Amazon has celebrated the government’s success in driving thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous territory but warned the “war” against environmental criminals is not yet over.

Speaking during a visit to the Amazon city of Belém, Humberto Freire estimated environmental and police special forces had expelled 90% of the 20,000 miners who had been devastating the protected Yanomami territory, since launching their clampdown in February.

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Rare and ‘seriously, seriously cute’ chubby-cheeked rat discovered near Melbourne

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Shy broad-toothed rat found after a detection dog tracked down its bright green poo

A detection dog has unexpectedly discovered a new population of rare native rodents in Melbourne’s outer east.

The previously unrecorded broad-toothed rat population was found by a four-year-old labrador called Moss who was searching the Coranderrk bushland near Healesville sanctuary.

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Driven out by decades of conflict, native giraffes make a return to Angola

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In a ‘message of hope’ the animals have been brought in from Namibia to establish a group in their historical homeland

After an epic 36-hour journey, the first native giraffes to be returned to an Angolan national park arrived from Namibia this week, in what many hope to be the first of multiple translocations to return the animals to their historical homeland.

The giraffes, seven males and seven females, travelled more than 800 miles (1,300km) from a private game farm near Otjiwarongo in the Otjozondjupa region of central Namibia to Iona national park in the south-west corner of Angola.

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Tory MPs back mandatory swift bricks in all new homes to help declining birds

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Calls grow for legislation requiring developers to include hollow bricks for endangered nesting species

Conservative MPs are joining calls for a new law to guarantee swift bricks in every new home to help the rapidly declining bird and other endangered roof-nesting species.

Pressure is growing to amend the levelling up bill so that developers are required to include a hollow brick for nesting birds in all new housing, with MPs to debate the issue in parliament on 10 July.

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Cane toads’ spread through Western Australia’s Kimberley revealed by motion sensor cameras

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Cane toads first crossed into WA from the Northern Territory 15 years ago and have slowly spread through the Kimberley

Motion sensor cameras have revealed the confronting spread of cane toads across Western Australia’s eastern Kimberley region.

Supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia, the Nyaliga Rangers deployed cameras at 141 locations between August 2020 and October 2022.

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Labor’s nature repair market must ban offsets and will need initial funding injection, scientists say

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Members of threatened species scientific committee say allowing environmental offsets would undermine the scheme

A “nature repair market” proposed by Labor will not succeed unless backed by substantial initial public funding and a ban on environmental offsets in the scheme, government scientific advisers have warned.

The Senate environment legislation committee heard a range of critical evidence about the bill on Friday, prompting the government to concede it will indefinitely postpone its passage in parliament.

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PwC walks back report used to claim Australia’s nature repair market could be worth $137bn

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Report cited by environment minister in support of offset bill was criticised for inflated figures and lack of clarity on outcomes

PwC has walked back a report used to claim the nature repair market could be worth $137bn, accepting it measures “indirect spending towards biodiversity” but the amount spent on “threatened species conservation, with clear outcomes, is likely much less”.

The consultancy firm made that submission to a Senate inquiry examining the Albanese government’s nature repair market bill in response to a critique of the report from progressive thinktank the Australia Institute.

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Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

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An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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Nature at risk of breakdown if Cop15 pledges not met, world leaders warned

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Author of landmark UK review into the economic value of nature joins UN environment chief in calls for ‘action, not just words’ on biodiversity goals

Humans are exploiting nature beyond its limits, the University of Cambridge economist Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta has warned, as the UN’s environment chief calls on governments to make good on a global deal for biodiversity, six months after it was agreed.

Dasgupta, the author of a landmark review into the economic importance of nature commissioned by the UK Treasury in 2021, said it was a mistake to continue basing economic policies on the postwar boom that did not account for damage to the planet.

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Dancing Capercaillie bird makes a tentative comeback in Scotland

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Exclusive: Ecologists say there are early signs that the population is recovering in remote forests

It is a discotheque for Britain’s biggest type of grouse. Before dawn, male capercaillie will begin their courtship rituals, their black tail feathers erect and fanning out, chests puffed out, their heads thrust high into the cold spring air.

Their dancefloors are forest clearings in the Highlands which echo the males’ wheezing, popping and clattering mating calls. Often perched in surrounding pine trees, hens will carefully watch as their potential mates compete to win their affection.

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Massive strike pits African fishers against ‘superprofitable’ EU firms

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About 2,000 crew members withdrew labour over pay and conditions, as well as citing serious breaches of overfishing rules by Spanish and French companies

The waters of west Africa and the Indian Ocean boast some of the world’s largest, healthiest populations of tropical tuna, and that makes them havens for industrial tuna fishing fleets, owned by countries vastly richer than the nations whose borders form these coastlines.

In order to protect the fish populations of poorer African nations from rapacious overfishing by richer countries, EU tuna vessels are bound by agreements centred on the sustainability and “social empowerment” of third countries.

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Giant saltworks proposed for Exmouth Gulf a threat to Ningaloo and endangered species, conservationists say

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German company’s plan for 210-sq-km development in WA could ‘block the water that runs over that coastline into the gulf’

A proposal to build a giant saltworks in the Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia has been condemned by conservationists as a threat to endangered species.

German industrial company K+S has submitted its proposal to build a 210-sq-km saltworks on the pristine gulf – a crucial part of the adjacent world heritage-listed Ningaloo coast.

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Activists take Canada’s environment minister to court in fight to save northern spotted owl

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Advocacy group says continued destruction of critical habitat leaves it no choice but to take legal action against Steven Guilbeault

Environmental groups in Canada are taking legal action against the country’s environment minister, arguing his delay in protecting old growth forest is harming the critically endangered northern spotted owl.

In February, Steven Guilbeault said he would recommend an emergency order after determining the species was facing “imminent threats” to its survival.

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