Authorities investigated after defanged and declawed animal was seen in TikTok videos in Phnom Penh
Cambodian authorities have confiscated a defanged and declawed pet lion that appeared in TikTok videos taken at a Phnom Penh villa.
The 18-month-old male, weighing 70kg (154lbs), had been imported from overseas by the owner, a Chinese national, to be raised in his home, environment ministry spokesman Neth Pheaktra said.
Continue reading...Conservationist aims to replace old bridge with bison preserve, benefiting environment and spotlighting Indigenous history
Between Iowa and Illinois, spanning the only stretch of the Mississippi River that flows from east to west, sits an exhausted 55-year-old cement bridge. Each day 42,000 cars drive across the ageing structure, which is slated to be torn down and replaced.
But when Chad Pregracke looks at the bridge, he has a different vision entirely – not an old overpass to be demolished, but a home for the buffalo to roam.
Continue reading...Projects that could produce more than 1.7bn barrels will not have to go through the government’s ‘checkpoint’, data reveals
Prospective oil projects in the North Sea with the capacity to produce more than a billion barrels will avoid a new test designed to assess their impact on the climate crisis, the Observer has learned.
In a development that has angered environmental campaigners, it has emerged that proposed new developments representing some 1.7bn barrels of oil will not have to undergo the forthcoming “climate compatibility checkpoint”, designed to determine whether they are consistent with the government’s climate commitments.
Continue reading...A water quality crisis has been hiding in the ritzy Hamptons, but the pandemic pushed it over the edge. Will clean-up efforts be too little too late?
Growing up in Southampton, Bryan McGowin spent his summers swimming in a beautiful local pond. Now in his 40s, McGowin won’t let his kids into the water.
“If you drink that now, you will get sick,” said McGowin. Across the New York coastal community better known as the Hamptons, residents face perilously declining water quality, which has shut down recreation in many freshwater ponds.
Continue reading...‘A crisis is brewing’, experts warn, with contaminated water exposing villagers to increased risk of cancer and affecting children’s brain development
Nine members of Pankaj Rai’s family have died from cancer over the past 20 years. But the 25-year-old farmer from Bihar only found out their deaths were likely a result of arsenic poisoning when his father got sick.
In 2017, Pankaj took his father, Ganesh Rai, to the Mahavir Cancer Institute & Research Centre in Patna. Ganesh had stage 4 kidney cancer. But Dr Arun Kumar, a scientist at the institute, identified the severe skin lesions on his body as signs of arsenic poisoning.
Continue reading...Scientists increasingly concerned about thresholds beyond which recovery may become impossible
Climate scientists are increasingly concerned that global heating will trigger tipping points in Earth’s natural systems, which will lead to widespread and possibly irrevocable disaster, unless action is taken urgently.
The impacts are likely to be much closer than most people realise, a a draft report from the world’s leading climate scientists suggests, and will fundamentally reshape life in the coming decades even if greenhouse gas emissions are brought under some control.
Continue reading...Around the world, dozens of ingenious projects are trying to ‘trick’ the ocean into absorbing more CO2. But critics warn of unforeseen consequences
Tom Green has a plan to tackle climate change. The British biologist and director of the charity Project Vesta wants to turn a trillion tonnes of CO2 into rock, and sink it to the bottom of the sea.
Green admits the idea is “audacious”. It would involve locking away atmospheric carbon by dropping pea-coloured sand into the ocean. The sand is made of ground olivine – an abundant volcanic rock, known to jewellers as peridot – and, if Green’s calculations are correct, depositing it offshore on 2% of the world’s coastlines would capture 100% of total global annual carbon emissions.
Continue reading...Cool Walks aims to help pedestrians avoid dangerous heat and find public drinking fountains
A new app promises to help Barcelona residents find the shadiest route between two places to avoid extreme heat.
Cool Walks, a routing tool for pedestrians first developed at a data visualisation contest, aims to show users a variety of walking routes to take for their intended destinations.
Continue reading...Temperatures reach 34.7C in Russian capital as weather bureau blames climate change
Moscow has sweltered through its hottest June day for 120 years after the temperature hit 34.7C with even hotter weather expected over the coming days.
Russia’s weather service, Roshydromet, which blamed climate change for the soaring temperatures.
Continue reading...It’s not the first time the reef has faced the threat of an ‘in danger’ listing. But what does it mean and why is this time different?
The Australian government says it has been blindsided by a recommendation by official United Nations science advisers that the Great Barrier Reef be placed on the world heritage “in danger” list.
Australia’s ocean jewel is the world’s biggest coral reef system – celebrated and adored for its array of unique species and colourful corals, drawing tourists from around the world.
Continue reading...Deputy minister for climate change will announce move as part of plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050
The Labour-led Welsh government is to freeze new road-building projects as part of its plans to tackle the climate emergency, and an external panel will review all proposed schemes.
The deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters, is to tell the Welsh parliament on Tuesday afternoon: “Since 1990, Welsh emissions have fallen by 31%. But to reach our statutory target of net zero emissions by 2050, we need to do much more.
Continue reading...C-230 would require government to study effect of pollution and industry on marginalized people but conservatives could sink plan
For generations, marginalized communities in Canada have feared that heavy industry is slowly poisoning their air, land and water.
Related: America's dirty divide: how environmental racism leaves the vulnerable behind
Continue reading...They may be vine-smothered ruins today, but the lost cities of the ancient tropics still have a lot to teach us about how to live alongside nature
Visions of “lost cities” in the jungle have consumed western imaginations since Europeans first visited the tropics of Asia, Africa and the Americas. From the Lost City of Z to El Dorado, a thirst for finding ancient civilisations and their treasures in perilous tropical forest settings has driven innumerable ill-fated expeditions. This obsession has seeped into western societies’ popular ideas of tropical forest cities, with overgrown ruins acting as the backdrop for fear, discovery and life-threatening challenges in countless films, novels and video games.
Throughout these depictions runs the idea that all ancient cities and states in tropical forests were doomed to fail. That the most resilient occupants of tropical forests are small villages of poison dart-blowing hunter-gatherers. And that vicious vines and towering trees – or, in the case of The Jungle Book, a boisterous army of monkeys – will inevitably claw any significant human achievement back into the suffocating green whence it came. This idea has been boosted by books and films that focus on the collapse of particularly enigmatic societies such as the Classic Maya. The decaying stone walls, the empty grand structures and the deserted streets of these tropical urban leftovers act as a tragic warning that our own way of life is not as secure as we would like to assume.
Continue reading...Australian government ‘stunned’ by recommendation and will strongly oppose draft decision, environment minister Sussan Ley says
The Great Barrier Reef should be placed on to a list of world heritage sites that are “in danger”, according to a recommendation from UN officials that urges Australia to take “accelerated action at all possible levels” on climate change.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization says the world’s biggest coral reef system should be placed on the list at the world heritage committee meeting next month.
Continue reading...The system would also have very little impact on the environment, in contrast to livestock farming, scientists say
Combining solar power and microbes could produce 10 times more protein than crops such as soya beans, according to a new study.
The system would also have very little impact on the environment, the researchers said, in stark contrast to livestock farming which results in huge amounts of climate-heating gases as well as water pollution.
Continue reading...Woman finds hungry elephant rummaging for late-night snack – and it’s not the first time he’s stopped by
Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon was awoken in the early hours of Saturday morning by crashing and banging. When she went to find out what had happened, she discovered an elephant’s head poking through her kitchen wall beside the drying rack.
The male elephant, named Boonchuay, appeared to be looking for something to eat. His trunk rummaged through the kitchen drawers, knocking pans and cooking paraphernalia to the floor. He chewed on a plastic bag as Ratchadawan, unsure what to do, filmed the episode on her phone.
Continue reading...Marsupials introduced to Maria Island, east of Tasmania, to safeguard their numbers but have decimated birdlife
An attempt to save the Tasmanian devil by shipping an “insurance population” to a tiny Australian island has come at a “catastrophic” cost to the birdlife there, including the complete elimination of little penguins, according to BirdLife Tasmania.
Maria Island, a 116-square-kilometre island east of Tasmania, was home to 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins around a decade ago.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia
Continue reading...Proposals would allow common plastics to be used despite valid concerns about possible harms, scientists say
New rules on chemicals to be debated by the EU this week would allow most polymers to be used without further checks, according to a group of scientists.
Only about 6% out of about 200,000 polymers would require extensive safety checks under proposals being discussed as part of Europe’s Reach chemicals regulations.
Continue reading...Countrywide scheme is flourishing after being set up to reverse a 75% decline in insect populations
To escape the Berlin bustle on a summer afternoon, all that Derek O’Doyle and his dog Frida have to do is lap the noisy building site outside their inner-city apartment, weave their way through the queue in front of the ice-cream van, and squeeze between two gridlocked lorries to cross over Baerwaldstrasse.
Bordered by a one-way traffic system lies a bucolic 1,720 sq metre haven as colourful as a Monet landscape: blue cornflowers, red poppies, white cow parsley and purple field scabious dot a sea of nettles and wild grass as armies of insects buzz through the air. Two endangered carpenter bees, larger than their honey bee cousins and with pitch-black abdomens, gorge themselves on a bush of yellow gorse.
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