Exclusive: public health and environment at risk as water companies overuse emergency overflows, says pressure group
Water companies discharged raw sewage into bathing water beaches almost 3,000 times in the past year, polluting the environment and risking public health, new analysis shows.
Related: Face masks and gloves found on 30% of UK beaches in clean-up
Continue reading...Population of crustaceans at one national park has exploded amid drop in tourist numbers
Hermit crab numbers in southern Thailand have boomed as foreign tourists have stayed away – so much so that the national park authority are appealing for the public to donate extra shells for them to live in.
The population of the crustaceans, which protect themselves by wearing and living inside the discarded shells of other animals, has exploded on some islands in the Mu Koh Lanta national park, and marine biologists believe the lack of tourists could be a factor.
Continue reading...Mutation that led to government order fuels debate about future of fur and safety of farms
John Papsø is devastated. You can hear it in his voice over the phone from Jutland. Like every other fur farmer in Denmark, he has 10 days to kill his mink.
“It’s horrible. I’m not even sure it’s dawned on me how grave the consequences will be for us. We are shellshocked. I was up at 4am because I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been pacing up and down the floor, and I’ve cried. It’s a state of shock,” said Papsø, who has more 30,000 mink on his farm.
Continue reading...Cylinder left in ice by 50 Years of Victory ship travelled 2,300 miles to county Donegal
When the crew and passengers of the nuclear-powered icebreaker ship 50 Years of Victory reached the north pole in 2018, they placed a time capsule in the ice floe.
The metal cylinder contained letters, poems, photographs, badges, beer mats, a menu, wine corks – ephemera from the early 21st century for whomever might discover it in the future.
Continue reading...Huge fleets’ intrusions into Pacific fishing territory prompt Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to join forces
Related: 'It's terrifying': can anyone stop China's vast armada of fishing boats?
Four South American countries have joined forces in a bid to combat illegal fishing by huge Chinese fleets off their coasts.
Continue reading...Evidence is now strong enough that preventive action should be taken, scientists say
A small rise in people’s long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with an 11% increase in deaths from Covid-19, research has found. Another recent study suggests that 15% of all Covid-19 deaths around the world are attributable to dirty air.
The available data only allows correlations to be established and further work is needed to confirm the connections, but the researchers said the evidence was now strong enough that levels of dirty air must be considered a key factor in handling coronavirus outbreaks.
Continue reading...Mutated virus infects 12 humans, sparking concerns that effectiveness of future vaccine could be affected
The world’s largest mink producer, Denmark, says it plans to cull more than 15 million of the animals, due to fears that a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said 12 people are already infected with the mutated virus and that the mink are now considered a public health risk.
Continue reading...Trump administration set US withdrawal in motion a year ago but it didn’t take effect until 4 November
The United States on Wednesday officially became the only country in the world refusing to participate in global climate efforts, with the fate of the crisis hanging on the still uncalled presidential election.
Donald Trump as of Wednesday has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement, an international pact to try to avert dangerous temperature increases that are already leading to more extreme weather and threaten to shrink world food supplies, force millions to flee their homes and deprive many of basic human rights. Trump’s administration set the US exit in motion a year ago, but it didn’t automatically take effect until 4 November.
Continue reading...Fears the 150km long A-68A iceberg, which broke away from Larsen C ice shelf in 2017, could disrupt wildlife and shipping routes
A massive Antarctic iceberg the size of a small country is heading for the island of South Georgia with concerns it could disrupt the British territory’s economy and its wildlife.
Iceberg A-68A broke off the Larsen C ice shelf on the east of Antarctica’s peninsula in July 2017 and is about the same size as South Georgia, where it’s feared it could be heading.
Continue reading...Human activities are increasing wind-blown dust, depleting crucial freshwater supply
Himalayan snow and ice is diminishing fast. Global heating is certainly playing a significant role, but now a recent study in Nature Climate Change reveals that wind-blown dust is worsening the melting effect.
Winter snowfall and spring snowmelt provide more than half of the annual freshwater needs of around 700 million people in south Asia, but over the last 30 years the overall snow mass on the high mountains of Asia, which include the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, has decreased.
Continue reading...Navy joins forces with rescuers and volunteers in effort to push pilot whales back into ocean
Rescuers and volunteers were racing to save about 100 pilot whales stranded on Sri Lanka’s western coast in the country’s biggest mass beaching.
The short-finned pilot whales began beaching at Panadura, 15 miles (25km) south of Colombo, shortly before dusk. Within an hour their numbers swelled to about 100, a local police chief, Sanjaya Irasinghe, said.
Continue reading...Indonesia’s Citarum is relied upon by millions, but decades of pollution have choked it with chemicals and rubbish
The smell is the first thing that hits you on the banks of the Citarum River in West Java, Indonesia. The odour is dense: rubbish rotting in hot sun mixed in with an acrid tone of chemical waste.
Some 9 million people live in close contact with the river, where levels of faecal coliform bacteria are more than 5,000 times mandatory limits, according to the findings of the Asian Development Bank in 2013.
Continue reading...What started 15 years ago as a modest promotion to draw attention to native birds, many of which are endangered, has become a phenomenon
Normally on a post test-match Monday in New Zealand, the talk is all about the national rugby team’s latest performance. But this week, while the All Blacks’ destruction of the Wallabies was on everyones’ lips, there was another topic of conversation: birds.
Voting began on Monday in the hotly contested and brutal election of New Zealand’s Bird Of The Year.
Continue reading...The drowning of a family of five in the Channel and a fire on a ship off the coast of Senegal should prompt action – ‘thoughts and prayers’ are not enough
“We don’t see migration as a problem at all: we see people dying at sea as a problem and the existence of the mafias as a problem.” Such was the view expressed last week by Hana Jalloul, secretary of state for migration in Spain. Days earlier, more than 140 people had died off the coast of Senegal, after their ship caught fire and capsized, in the deadliest shipwreck recorded this year. Ms Jalloul spoke of efforts to support the regional government of the Canary Islands, which is struggling to cope with the number of arrivals, and stressed her determination to combat organised crime. She also pointed to migrants’ crucial role in Spanish life, including as care workers during the pandemic.
British politicians could profit from studying her example in the aftermath of the drowning of a family of four Kurdish Iranians in the Channel. (A fifth member of the same family, aged 15 months, is missing and presumed dead.) Reports of the deaths of Rasul Iran Nezhad, Shiva Mohammad Panahi and their children drew forth platitudes from the home secretary, Priti Patel, about “thoughts and prayers”. But nothing said by her or Boris Johnson did anything to dispel the impression that their attitude to people trying to reach the UK to seek asylum is chiefly antagonistic. While Ms Patel repeated her opposition to “callous criminals exploiting vulnerable people”, there was no serious attempt to sympathise with the migrants’ desperation – or acknowledge that their reliance on smugglers is a matter not of accident but of political choice.
Continue reading...Energy minister says Moscow will also focus on clean-burning hydrogen and carbon capture
Russia has no plans to rein in its production of fossil fuels in the coming decades despite the global efforts to shift towards low-carbon energy, according to its energy minister.
Alexander Novak told the Guardian that Russia did “not see that we will achieve a peak in [gas] production anytime soon” because the world’s appetite for gas would continue to grow in the decades ahead despite its growing number of climate targets.
Continue reading...Chris Looney helped dismantle the first nest of Asian giant hornets in the US. Now he’s preparing for the next step
The eradication of the first nest of Asian giant hornets on US soil somewhat resembled a science fiction depiction of an alien landing site. A crew of government specialists in white, astronaut-like protective suits descended upon the hornet nexus to vanquish it with a futuristic-looking vacuum cleaner, to the relief of onlookers.
The nest of the fearsome invasive insects, notoriously known as “murder hornets”, was found in a tree crevice near Blaine, in Washington state, via a tracking device attached to a previously captured worker hornet. The Washington state department of agriculture (WSDA) confirmed the nest had been successfully removed, with dozens of live captives taken back for inspection.
Continue reading...Farmers complain feral birds eat pasture their livestock depend on, and their numbers are increasing thanks to hunting of stoats and possums
A bird renowned around the world for its beauty has showed its ugly side by causing havoc on farms in New Zealand; eating crops, evading control efforts and driving landowners to distraction.
The jade and green peafowl, commonly known as the peacock, has become naturalised in New Zealand after what New Zealand Birds Online calls “benign neglect of birds kept for display”.
Continue reading...Scientists find several living specimens of Voeltzkow’s chameleon during expedition
Scientists have found an elusive chameleon species that was last spotted in Madagascar 100 years ago.
Researchers from Madagascar and Germany said on Friday they had discovered several living specimens of Voeltzkow’s chameleon during an expedition to the north-west of the African island nation.
Continue reading...UK millionaire Dale Vince says lab-grown gems will be ‘world’s first zero-impact’ diamonds
A British multi-millionaire and environmentalist has set out plans to create thousands of carats of carbon-negative, laboratory-grown diamonds every year “made entirely from the sky”.
Dale Vince, the founder of green energy supplier Ecotricity, claims to have developed the world’s only diamonds to be made from carbon, water and energy sourced directly from the elements at a “sky mining facility” in Stroud.
Continue reading...A controversial $1.3bn project brings together angry voters from across the political spectrum in Mark Robinson’s electorate of Oodgeroo
This week residents in Cleveland, a bayside community south of Brisbane, received a letterbox flyer from their local MP, the ultraconservative Liberal National Mark Robinson, talking up his environmental credentials.
All things being equal, the election campaign in Robinson’s safe seat of Oodgeroo would be a foregone conclusion. The born-again evangelical, who employs former Australian Christian Lobby head Lyle Shelton in his local office, won the seat with 52% of the primary vote in 2017.
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