Category Archives: Environment

Will Australia’s wildlife recover from this bushfire season?

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Images of burned koalas and native animals fleeing the fire front have been beamed around the world. There are estimates that 1 billion animals have been impacted and experts fear that some plants and animals have been pushed to extinction. So how bad is the damage? And will Australia’s wildlife bounce back?

You can read Graham Readfearn’s articles on the impact of the fires on Kangaroo island wildlife, plus the mass fish kills in the wake of the fires.

Environment editor Adam Morton has written about the latest figures from the government on threatened species, and environment reporter Lisa Cox has written about the world heritage areas burned, plus a guide to the animals most at risk.

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Trump blasts ‘prophets of doom’ in attack on climate activism

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Comment came as Greta Thunberg demanded immediate action in Davos

Donald Trump told the world’s business leaders to stop listening to “prophets of doom” as he used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum to attack the teenage activist Greta Thunberg over her climate crisis warnings.

The US president hailed America’s growth record and compared campaigners against global heating with those who feared a population explosion in the 1960s and mass starvation in the 1970s.

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‘The river is our home’: Bangladeshi boatmen mourn their receding waters

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Decreased flows caused by water-hungry neighbours, especially India, are damaging river communities

• All photographs by Kaamil Ahmed

Holding his downturned palm level with his waist, Musana Robi Das indicates how tall he was when he started working on Bangladesh’s rivers.

As a child he helped his father ferry villagers across local waterways. Now a tall and spindly 50-year-old, he has had to abandon that life as a boatman. The waters now sit so low that his services are unnecessary. So the past decade has instead been spent repairing shoes inside a dimly lit wooden booth in the village market.

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Huge hail batters Canberra as severe thunderstorms hit south-eastern Australia

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Hail smashes into Parliament House and brings down trees in the ACT, with heavy rainfall hitting NSW, Queensland and Victoria

Australia’s south-east has been lashed by severe thunderstorms and large hailstones that destroyed buildings and cars in Canberra and left two tourists in hospital after they were injured by lightning.

Two supercell thunderstorms brought hail and heavy rain to cities and towns across the east coast on Monday, battering the outer suburbs of Sydney about 3pm, with 4.5cm hailstones recorded and strong winds bringing trees down over cars in the Sutherland area.

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‘The streets are more alive’: Ghent readers on a car-free city centre

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We asked locals in the Belgian city to tell us how things have changed since the shake-up

The city has become a pedestrians and cyclists’ joy, especially for people like me who live in the city centre and have no car. As I type, they are busy turning our street into a low-traffic, communal woonerf or ‘living street’. It has become easier and safer to navigate the town on foot or by bike. Having recently returned from the Middle East the changes are even more striking, especially when it comes to my son. We were not ready for him to cycle before but teaching him to cycle on the roads here has been a fun and relatively stress-free experience. The changes have made an enormous difference to people’s quality of life. Khaled Diab, journalist and writer

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How a Belgian port city inspired Birmingham’s car-free ambitions

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Ghent’s transformation produced shorter journeys, cleaner air and a cycling explosion


Birmingham – once, proudly, the UK’s “motorway city” – has announced plans to entice people out of cars and on to bikes and buses. If officials get their way, the city will be split into zones, and, rather than driving direct, motorists will have to use the ring road for all zone-to-zone journeys.

Those travelling by foot and bicycle in the new Brum won’t be inconvenienced: their journeys will be simple and – with fewer cars – safer. With cars out of the way, bus journeys will become swifter and more reliable.

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Climate refugees can’t be returned home, says landmark UN human rights ruling

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Experts say judgment is ‘tipping point’ that opens the door to climate crisis claims for protection

It is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis, a landmark ruling by the United Nations human rights committee has found.

The judgment – which is the first of its kind – represents a legal “tipping point” and a moment that “opens the doorway” to future protection claims for people whose lives and wellbeing have been threatened due to global heating, experts say.

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Huge dust storms in Australia hit central New South Wales

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Videos posted to social media show the clouds turning day into night in some areas

Damaging winds produced by thunderstorms across central New South Wales have whipped up dust storms that turned daytime into night in some towns.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a series of severe thunderstorm warnings on Sunday evening for inland NSW with the associated winds generating massive dust clouds.

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Extinction Rebellion listed as ‘key threat’ by counter-terror police

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Awareness training across London led to ‘intelligence’ tip-offs, according to report

A police force in London labelled Extinction Rebellion one of its “key threats” in a counter-terrorism assessment and provided awareness training on the climate crisis group across the capital, resulting in “intelligence” tip-offs.

City of London police grouped the environmental protest movement alongside “far-right organisations” in an assessment of its counter-terrorism operations seen by the Guardian.

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Tanzania to relocate 36 Serengeti lions after attacks on humans and cattle

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The lions, which live on the edge of the national park, will be moved to avoid conflicts with people and livestock

Tanzania will find a new home for 36 lions following a slew of attacks by the big cats on people and cattle.

The lions, an increasingly endangered species, live on the edge of the safari mecca of the Serengeti national park, but have been affected by encroaching human activity.

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‘It’s a monster’: the Skipsea homes falling into the North Sea

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Residents on fastest-eroding coastline in northern Europe told of ‘imminent risk’

For those who long to live by the sea, the thought of gently breaking waves and waking by the beach sums up the irresistible charm of coastal life. But not, perhaps, in the Yorkshire village of Skipsea.

Residents in the tiny seaside parish were warned this week that a large number of homes are at “imminent risk” of tumbling into the North Sea within 12 months because of the rapid erosion of the East Yorkshire coast.

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Hundreds of thousands of fish dead in NSW as bushfire ash washed into river

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Ecologist fears the Macleay River may take decades to recover, with heavy rains likely to affect other waterways

Hundreds of thousands of native fish are estimated to have died in northern New South Wales after rains washed ash and sludge from bushfires into the Macleay River.

Parts of the Macleay River – favoured by recreational fishers – have been turned into what locals described as “runny cake mix” that stank of rotting vegetation and dead fish.

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Greenpeace included with neo-Nazis on UK counter-terror list

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Exclusive: Extinction Rebellion and Peta also named in anti-extremism briefing alongside Combat 18 and National Action

A counter-terrorism police document distributed to medical staff and teachers as part of anti-extremism briefings included Greenpeace, Peta and other non-violent groups as well as neo-Nazis, the Guardian has learned.

The guide, produced by Counter Terrorism Policing, is used across England as part of training for Prevent, the anti-radicalisation scheme designed to catch those at risk of committing terrorist violence.

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Yosemite national park: 170 recent visitors suffer norovirus symptoms

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Two cases of upset stomach and diarrhea confirmed as norovirus, as park says it is undertaking ‘extensive cleaning’ efforts

Roughly 170 people who have visited Yosemite national park in recent weeks have suffered upset stomachs and diarrhea, symptoms that park officials say are consistent with norovirus.

Two of those cases have been confirmed as norovirus, park officials say. The park spokesman Scott Gediman issued a written statement that most of those who fell ill had spent time in Yosemite Valley around the first week of January.

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Huge ‘hot blob’ in Pacific Ocean killed nearly a million seabirds

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  • Thousands of bodies washed up on North America’s Pacific coast
  • Study finds common murres probably died of starvation

A million seabirds died in less than a year as a result of a giant “blob” of hot ocean, according to new research.

A study released by the University of Washington found the birds, called common murres, probably died of starvation between the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016.

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YouTube ads of 100 top brands fund climate misinformation – study

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Avaaz says firms are unaware commercials being played alongside misleading videos

Some of the biggest companies in the world are funding climate misinformation by advertising on YouTube, according to a study from activist group Avaaz.

The group found that more than 100 brands had adverts running on YouTube videos on the site that were actively promoting climate misinformation. The brands, including Samsung, L’Oreal and Decathlon, were unaware that their adverts were being played before and during the videos.

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Climate emergency: 2019 was second hottest year on record

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Last decade was also hottest yet in 150 years of measurements, say scientists

The year 2019 was the second hottest on record for the planet’s surface, according to latest research. The analyses reveal the scale of the climate crisis: both the past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years.

The succession of records being broken year after year is “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”, said one scientist, and is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts and wildfires.

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‘The dates are drying’: profits shrivel for farmers as the heat rises in Tunisia

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Irrigation systems and oases in the arid south are failing to keep up with the demands of thirsty palm plantations

Mansour Rajeb is wrapping a plastic protective sheet around the branch of a date palm in his oasis near the village of Bchelli, in southern Tunisia. Tying it up, he lingers.

“I’m worried,” he says. “The quality is getting worse. The dates are getting drier.”

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More than 300 human rights activists were killed in 2019, report reveals

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Colombia was the bloodiest nation with 103 murders and the Philippines was second, followed by Brazil, Honduras and Mexico

More than 300 human rights defenders working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ rights and indigenous lands in 31 countries were killed in 2019, a new report reveals.

Two thirds of the total killings took place in Latin America where impunity from prosecution is the norm.

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