Category Archives: Trees and forests

Simon Armitage savours spring ‘ecstasy and melancholy’ on World Poetry Day

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Poet laureate celebrates a plum tree in poem commissioned by the National Trust for its blossom campaign

The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has written a new poem which pays homage to spring, in celebration of World Poetry Day.

Plum Tree Among the Skyscrapers is the first in a collection of poems inspired by blossom and commissioned by the National Trust. Its publication marks the beginning of the Trust’s annual blossom campaign, in which the charity will vow to bring blossom back to landscapes across the UK by planting 20m trees by 2030 to help tackle both the climate and nature crises.

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NSW Labor vows to fix ‘broken’ environmental offsets system if elected

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Spokesperson Penny Sharpe says current system has ‘no red lines’ and party will deliver changes within first 18 months of government

New South Wales Labor has promised to fix the state’s “broken” environmental offsets system if it wins government in March, saying current policies are causing decline of endangered ecosystems instead of avoiding more damage.

“I think there’s a role for offsetting but the current system is skewed the wrong way,” the party’s environment spokesperson, Penny Sharpe, said.

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Nearly half of English neighbourhoods ‘have less than 10% tree cover’

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Analysis for Friends of the Earth also finds lower-income areas have far fewer trees than wealthier ones

Nearly half of English neighbourhoods have less than 10% tree cover, with lower-income areas having far fewer trees than wealthier ones, analysis has found.

England’s tree cover is just 12.8%, according to the research by Friends of the Earth, with only 10% made up by woodland – paling in comparison with the EU, where woodland cover stands at 38%.

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Scientists prove clear link between deforestation and local drop in rainfall

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Study adds to fears Amazon is approaching tipping point after which it will not be able to generate its own rainfall

For the first time researchers have proven a clear correlation between deforestation and regional precipitation. Scientists hope it may encourage agricultural companies and governments in the Amazon and Congo basin regions and south-east Asia to invest more in protecting trees and other vegetation.

The study found that the more rainforests are cleared in tropical countries, the less local farmers will be able to depend on rain for their crops and pastures.

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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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Cattle, not coca, drive deforestation of the Amazon in Colombia – report

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Authorities have blamed the growing of coca – the base ingredient of cocaine – for clearcutting, but a recent study shows otherwise

Cattle-ranching, not cocaine, has driven the destruction of the Colombian Amazon over the last four decades, a new study has found.

Successive recent governments have used environmental concerns to justify ramping up their war on the green shrub, but the research shows that in 2018 the amount of forest cleared to cultivate coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, was only 1/60th of that used for cattle.

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Thousands to protest in Madrid over ‘barbaric’ plan to fell over 1,000 trees

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Coalition of neighbourhood groups and NGO seek to halt park works that are part of extension of Spanish capital’s metro system

Thousands of people are due to gather in Madrid on Saturday to protest against “barbaric” plans to cut down more than 1,000 trees in two popular parks to make way for an extension of the city’s metro system.

Although the regional government of Madrid had originally planned to build two new stations on line 11 of the metro in streets south-west of the city centre, it has now decided that the stations will be located in the old Arganzuela section of the Madrid Río park and in the nearby Comillas park.

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Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s Marina Silva

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Exclusive: Environment minister calls for ex-president to be held to account as she prepares to tackle illegal gold miners

Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.

In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.

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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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Lula names staunch Amazon defenders as ministers in Brazil

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Ministry for Indigenous peoples is created but new government faces huge challenges from Bolsonaro era

Two internationally celebrated Amazon defenders, Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara, have been named as ministers in Brazil’s new government in an attempt to contain the intensifying assault on Indigenous territories and the environment.

The announcement was made by incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will take office on Sunday after the country’s four years of rainforest-wrecking under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

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Rewilded former golf course in Cheshire to be transformed into woodland

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Frodsham golf course joins growing number of sites being put to new, more community friendly use

It was once an immaculate golf course where footballers such as Michael Owen and Dietmar Hamann teed off.

These days, the only holes are those made by badgers and woodpeckers. Instead of golfers, self-sown silver birch saplings march over the greens.

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Illegal tree felling in England to be punishable with jail and uncapped fines

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Exclusive: Forestry Act 1967 to change from 1 January to deter people from flattening trees and accepting paltry penalties

Illegal tree felling in England will be punishable by unlimited fines and prison sentences from 1 January, the government has announced.

The current fine for cutting down a tree without a licence, established by the Forestry Act 1967, is £2,500 or twice the value of the timber, whichever is the higher.

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Electricity generated by burning native Australian timber no longer classified as renewable energy

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Labor revokes Abbott government move which allowed energy from burning wood waste to be counted with solar and wind

Electricity generated by burning native forest wood waste will no longer be allowed to be classified as renewable energy under a regulatory change adopted by the Albanese government.

The decision, which Labor had promised to consider after it was recommended by a Senate committee in September, reverses a 2015 Abbott government move which allowed burning native forest timber to be counted alongside solar and wind energy towards the national renewable energy target.

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Canada accused of putting its timber trade ahead of global environment

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Weeks before Cop15 in Montreal, leaked letter to EU shows host tried to water down deforestation regulations

The Canadian government has been accused of putting its domestic timber industry ahead of the global environment, following a leaked attempt to water down the world’s most ambitious regulations on deforestation-free trade.

Weeks before the United Nations biodiversity conference, Cop15 in Montreal, the host nation sent a letter to the European Commission asking for a reconsideration of “burdensome traceability requirements” within a proposed EU scheme that aims to eradicate unsustainably sourced wood products from the world’s biggest market.

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Kenyan government halts baobab exports to Georgia after outcry

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President orders Ministry of Environment and Forestry to launch investigation over contractor’s licence for removing trees

The Kenyan government has halted the transportation and export of Kilifi baobabs to Georgia and ordered an investigation into how a foreign contractor received permission to transport the ancient trees out of the country.

Kenya’s president, William Ruto, ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to investigate whether Georgy Gvasaliya had the proper licence to take the trees out of Kenya under the Nagoya protocol, an international agreement that governs the conditions for the export of genetic resources, which has been incorporated into Kenyan law.

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The arrest that shocked the firefighting world – and threatens a vital practice

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A fire chief is under investigation for a prescribed burn gone wrong and stirred up long-simmering tensions over wildfire risk

Hours before Rick Snodgrass was cuffed and loaded into a squad car, he’d called the sheriff himself. The United States Forest Service burn boss had requested the help of local law enforcement in Grant county, Oregon, reporting his crew was being harassed while conducting a controlled burn within the Malheur national forest.

It was the second burn that crews had conducted in the area in two weeks, with flames intended to char around 300 acres. But that warm October afternoon, the treatment did not go according to plan.

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Bob Brown accuses Tanya Plibersek of putting industry above environment on Tarkine trip

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Environment minister visited Tasmania for two days and insists she’s taking mine decision seriously but Brown wanted her to visit rainforest with him

Bob Brown has accused the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, of prioritising industry over the environment by not accepting his invitation to tour Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine rainforest when she visited the site of a controversial mining proposal.

Plibersek visited Tasmania last week to meet with representatives and workers from the minerals company MMG about its proposal to build a tailings waste dam and pipeline infrastructure in rainforest near the town of Rosebery in the state’s north-west.

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Brazil, Indonesia and DRC in talks to form ‘Opec of rainforests’

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Spurred by Lula’s election, the three countries, home to half of all tropical forests, will pledge stronger conservation efforts

The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.

The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

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Brazil election goes to the wire after ill-tempered final TV debate

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Veteran leftist Lula da Silva holds slender poll lead over Jair Bolsonaro as national divide grows before Sunday vote

The two political heavyweights vying to become Brazil’s next president have locked horns during the final television debate before a momentous election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the global climate emergency and the future of one of the world’s largest democracies.

The former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro faced off in Rio at the studios of Brazil’s biggest broadcaster, with eve of election polls giving Lula a slender but not unassailable lead.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira remembered in Lancaster exhibition

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Exhibition at Halton Mill is part of a month of activities about the Amazon commemorating Phillips and Pereira

An exhibition in memory of the murdered Guardian journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira opens on Sunday ahead of an international conference on saving the Amazon rainforest which is being held next month.

The two men were killed in Brazilian Amazonia in June 2022 while researching a book Phillips was writing called How to Save the Amazon.

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