Environment | The Guardian

Northern states on alert for invasion of cross-bred pig that threatens flora and fauna – and is difficult to stopFor decades, wild pigs have been antagonizing flora and fauna in the US: gobbling up crops, spreading disease and even killing deer and elk.Now, as fears over the potential of the pig impact in the US grow, North America is also facing a new swine-related threat, as a Canadian “super pig”, a giant, “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive” beast capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, is poised to infiltrate the north of the country. Continue reading...

Countryside feels let down by 13 years of Tory rule but other parties will not pick up votes by defaultWhen Keir Starmer takes to the stage at the National Farmers’ Union conference next week, he may find his audience more receptive than expected.The rural vote is swinging away from the Conservatives, and seats in communities that have been true blue for years could be going to Labour or the Liberal Democrats at the next election if recent opinion polls are borne out by reality. Continue reading...

OdySea Aquarium in Scottsdale salutes ‘tiny arrivals’ in its population of 40 endangered seabirdsAn aquarium in Arizona has welcomed three new arrivals in its population of endangered African penguins.In an Instagram post, the OdySea Aquarium in Scottsdale showed the fluffy chicks being gently held by staff, as they were yet to fully stand up on their own. Continue reading...

Report finds that supply chains for major industries, including iron and steel, could cut annual CO2 to 17m tonnes by mid-century

Work on HS2 was halted after a mysterious five-metre square pool of bubbling foam appeared above an area where tunnelling was being carried out in Ruislip, west London. Locals spoke of a 'sinkhole' but an HS2 spokesperson said it was a 'slurry pool'. HS2 said the foam had been cleared, but white foam was seen 24 hours later. Tunnelling has now resumed but the area has been cordoned off and an investigation is under way

Tunnelling stopped briefly after brown bubbling substance emerged from the ground on rugby pitch in RuislipWork on HS2 was halted on Saturday after a mysterious five-metre square pool of bubbling foam emerged above the ground where tunnelling was being carried out.The area on a rugby pitch in Ruislip, to the west of London, has been cordoned off, danger signs have been erected, and an investigation is under way. Local residents described it as a “sinkhole”, but a HS2 spokesperson said what had emerged from the ground was a slurry pool. Continue reading...

Officials say they will keep close eye on Eurasian eagle-owl, who has been successful at hunting the city’s plentiful supply of ratsFor two weeks, an owl that escaped the Central Park Zoo has eluded capture as legions of fans worry about its ability to survive in New York City.Would Flaco, a majestic Eurasian eagle-owl, go hungry because he had not developed an ability to hunt while in captivity? The answer was a resounding no: Flaco is feeding on park rats. Continue reading...

Startups rush to gain foothold in a burgeoning industry as New York and California move to legalize human compostingAmericans are looking for greener ways to die, and a new wave of deathcare startups are rising to the occasion.After death, bodies are typically handled in one of two ways: embalmed and buried in a casket, or incinerated and turned into ashes. But both of these options have contributed to the environmental crisis – with fossil fuel-intensive cremation emitting chemicals such as carbon monoxide into the air, and burials taking up large swathes of land. Continue reading...

Authorities have blamed the growing of coca – the base ingredient of cocaine – for clearcutting, but a recent study shows otherwiseCattle-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. Continue reading...

A veteran naturalist and writer picks the species that have played a key role for humans, from ancient civilisations to today’s climate crisisFor the whole of human history, we have shared our world with birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; worshipped them in our religions; placed them at the heart of our myths and legends; poisoned and persecuted them; and celebrated them in our literature, art and music. Even today, despite a very worrying disconnection between ourselves and the rest of nature, birds continue to play a role in our lives.The current official list of the world’s birds stands at roughly 10,800 different species. But there are 10 whose stories stand out, for the way they influenced a crucial aspect of our history, and shaped our lives. Continue reading...

Residents of East Palestine grapple with mixed safety messages two weeks after leak of hazardous chemicals from trainDuring his Thursday visit to the site of a fiery train derailment that may have poisoned a small eastern Ohio town with a range of highly toxic chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, Michael Regan, told residents: “All families need to know that they are safe.”But Regan’s words, along with those from the Ohio governor Mike DeWine’s administration and Norfolk Southern officials, have been of little comfort to Jami Cozza. Continue reading...

Legislation could see companies fined millions of pounds for making unproven environmental assertions to sell their productsWhen the hydrogen-powered Hyundai Nexo car was launched in the UK in the spring of 2019, it was described as “so beautifully clean” that it “purifies the air as it goes”.Hyundai Motor UK claimed that if 10,000 of its cars were on the road, carbon emission reduction would be “equivalent to planting 60,000 trees”. Continue reading...

UK environment secretary calls on business and finance to make meaningful investment in nature-based solutionsThe financial sector must be encouraged to invest in nature conservation for the world to meet this decade’s UN biodiversity targets, the UK environment secretary has said.Thérèse Coffey, speaking at an event at Lancaster House in London to mobilise private finance after Cop15, said the private sector had a critical role to play in meeting this decade’s deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems.Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features Continue reading...

Former environmental activist Erin Mendenhall leads a fast-growing city threatened by toxic dust from the lake’s shrinking water levelsErin Mendenhall was once an environmental activist, campaigning for clean air. Now, in a fitting but grim twist, she is the mayor of a fast-growing US city that faces being enveloped by a huge toxic cloud of dust.Mendenhall, who is 42, became animated by the issue of air pollution after learning that the air quality in Salt Lake City had become so bad from cars, trucks and industry that it could take two years off the life of her newborn son. In 2010, she co-founded a non-profit group, called Breathe Utah, before embarking upon a political career that saw her become Salt Lake City’s mayor in 2020. “I had to do something [about the air pollution] or move,” she says. Continue reading...

In Grasse, droughts, heatwaves, and excessive rainfall have made growing flowers increasingly difficultWhen heatwaves used to hit the French town of Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, townspeople didn’t water their flowers. Instead, they marched along the town’s cobblestone streets, in a procession towards the church.“They were calling for rain from the spirits,” says Carole Biancalana, a fourth-generation perfume flower producer whose grandmother participated in the rain ceremonies. “But I don’t think this procession would cut it in today’s climate.” Continue reading...

Leading athletes call on International Ski and Snowboard Federation to overhaul sustainability strategyTop skiers have signed a letter to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) demanding action over the climate emergency.This season, there has been a notable lack of snow across Alpine resorts, leaving holidaymakers disappointed and causing some ski tournaments to be called off. Continue reading...

A train derailed and flooded a town with cancer-causing chemicals. But something larger, and more troubling, is at workEarlier this month, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, exploding into flames and unleashing a spume of chemical smoke on the small town of East Palestine. The train’s freight included vinyl chloride, a chemical known to cause liver cancer and other sicknesses.In response, government and railway officials decided to “burn off” the vinyl chloride – effectively dumping 1.1m lbs of the chemical into the local community, according to a new lawsuit. Officials said that they did so to avert the vinyl chloride from exploding; in contrast, an attorney for the lawsuit has said that the decision was cheap, unsafe, and more interested in restoring train service and appeasing railway shareholders than protecting local residents.Steven Donziger is a human rights and environmental lawyer, a Guardian US columnist, and the creator of the Substack newsletter Donziger on Justice Continue reading...

Victims – among them environmental defender Edwin Chota – were tortured before their deaths in Peruvian Amazon in 2014Five illegal loggers in Peru have been given 28-year jail sentences for the murder of four Indigenous leaders, among them the prominent anti-logging campaigner Edwin Chota, in a rare win for environmental justice.Nearly eight years after the 2014 quadruple murder, a court in Pucallpa in the Peruvian Amazon found the loggers, Eurico Mapes Gómez and the brothers Segundo and Josimar Atachi Félix, guilty of aggravated homicide against the leaders, and sentenced them on Thursday to 28 years and three months in prison. Continue reading...

Designer’s tie-up is latest stage of plan to put fully recyclable plastic bags into every supermarketShe first made reusable shopping bags chic 16 years ago, now Anya Hindmarch is teaming up with the Co-op and Asda in the latest step of a plan to put fully recyclable plastic bags into every supermarket.Asda will begin stocking the bag – putting its bright green spin on the large tote which features a smiley face and stripy straps – in 300 stores from the end of February and the Co-op’s turquoise version will appear next month. Continue reading...

Coalition of neighbourhood groups and NGO seek to halt park works that are part of metro system extensionThousands 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 Madrid government 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. Continue reading...

Vast areas along Po River already parched, raising fears for farming, hydropower and drinking waterItaly’s rivers and lakes are facing another year of severe drought after a winter of little rain and snowfall, raising the alarm on the implications for farming, hydropower and access to drinking water.Vast areas of the Po – the country’s longest river that nourishes several northern and central regions – are already parched, while the water level on Lake Garda is the lowest during winter in 35 years. Continue reading...

Shadow justice secretary Steve Reed will criticise ministers’ attempts to repeal Human Rights ActA new wave of human rights legislation to guarantee clean air quality and nutrition could be rolled out by the next Labour government, under plans announced by the shadow justice secretary on Friday.Steve Reed will vow to fight “tooth and nail” against any attempt by the government to repeal the Human Rights Act, and instead look to roll out the “next frontier” of “fundamental freedoms”. Continue reading...

SSW phenomenon is linked to polar vortex, an area of low pressure across the North PoleThere has been keen interest over recent weeks in the much-anticipated sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event, which only began this week but is now well under way. The SSW phenomenon is linked to the polar vortex, an area of low pressure across the North Pole that forms within the stratosphere during autumn, as temperatures plummet in the absence of solar radiation.SSW events are very common and occur two in every three winters. It remains unclear how climate change will affect these events in the future. As the vortex develops during autumn and into winter, westerly stratospheric winds increase in strength. But in the event of a SSW episode, stratospheric temperatures rise rapidly in the space of only a few days, leading to the weakening or even reversal of these winds. The zonal mean winds at 10hPa pressure – about 30km high – turned to an easterly direction on 15 Wednesday February, significantly displacing the polar vortex away from the North Pole. The vortex and zonal winds are forecast to stay much weaker than normal for the remainder of February and into the first half of March. Continue reading...

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a lucky sea eagle, a hungry monkey and a dozing panda Continue reading...

RHS gardeners say buds on trees suggest glorious spring blooms and season will potentially last longerThe UK is expected to have a spring of beautiful blossom, after a heatwave followed by a cold early February set the trees up for peak condition blooms.Gardeners at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) have been studying the buds on the trees in their gardens across the country. They say buds suggest trees will be floriferous with blossom this spring because of the perfect conditions last year for bud formation, and also because early flowering has been prevented by the cold this February. Continue reading...

Testing of birds is continuing but Wildlife Victoria believes paralysing infection is to blame

Researchers say Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up household energy costs by between 62.6% and 112.9%Soaring energy prices triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict could push up to 141 million more people around the globe into extreme poverty, a study has found.The cost of energy for households globally could have increased by between 62.6% and 112.9% since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a modelling study by an international group of scientists published in Nature Energy. Continue reading...

Company says vessel’s construction will help ‘pass on our whaling culture to the next generation’A Japanese company is building a new whaling ship designed to travel as far as Antarctica, sparking fears commercial operations could resume in the Southern Ocean.Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, reaffirmed the Albanese government’s commitment to a global moratorium on commercial whaling, while Greenpeace condemned the practice as “brutal and unnecessary”. Continue reading...

Australian Academy of Science points to over-reliance on volunteers and says more regular surveys needed

Fair Work Commission intervenes after union files lawsuit against waste contractor Cleanaway

Environment secretary tells farming conference in Washington she ‘won’t be going all vegan or vegetarian’

A government decree welcomed for protecting marine life has left artisanal fishers breaking the law to surviveEvery morning, Paola Arbolera loads a few crates of smoked shark and stingray on to her wooden canoe and drags it to the river. Before the sun rises, she rows in darkness to the market in Guapi, a small fishing town on Colombia’s Pacific coast, to sell her goods.She leaves her canoe under the rafters of the dock’s large loading bay, wedged between rubbish and other canoes, while fellow vendors unload bananas and plantain.A fish vendor takes to the river in Guapi, Colombia, with her children Continue reading...

David Malpass’s decision to quit has delighted frustrated developing nations, donors, experts and campaignersThe resignation of David Malpass, president of the World Bank, was greeted with relief and joy on Wednesday evening by climate experts and campaigners, who said it should open up a new era for financing the global shift to a low-carbon economy.Malpass, who was appointed to the role by the then US president Donald Trump in 2019, had been facing mounting calls to step down after a series of missteps, including lacklustre plans for green investment, and appearing to deny climate science when confronted by a journalist. Continue reading...

David Pocock tables anonymous statement in parliament describing 25,000L spill of condensate off northern WA in 2022

The largest salt lake in the western hemisphere risks ‘one of the worst environmental disasters’ as it faces the prospect of disappearing in just five yearsTo walk on to the Great Salt Lake, the largest salt lake in the western hemisphere which faces the astounding prospect of disappearing just five years from now, is to trudge across expanses of sand and mud, streaked with ice and desiccated aquatic life, where just a short time ago you would be wading in waist-deep water.But the mounting sense of local dread over the lake’s rapid retreat doesn’t just come from its throttled water supply and record low levels, as bad as this is. The terror comes from toxins laced in the vast exposed lake bed, such as arsenic, mercury and lead, being picked up by the wind to form poisonous clouds of dust that would swamp the lungs of people in nearby Salt Lake City, where air pollution is often already worse than that of Los Angeles, potentially provoking a myriad of respiratory and cancer-related problems. Continue reading...

Report says simply coping with escalating impacts of climate crisis could override tackling root causeThe world is at risk of descending into a climate “doom loop”, a thinktank report has warned.It said simply coping with the escalating impacts of the climate crisis could draw resources and focus away from the efforts to slash carbon emissions, making the situation even worse. Continue reading...

East Palestine community holds meeting over health and safety concerns but Norfolk Southern Corporation skips eventNearly two weeks after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, community members packed a local high school auditorium on Wednesday night wanting answers to their health and safety concerns.Norfolk Southern Corporation, the Atlanta-based operator of the derailed train, ultimately skipped the meeting, which was the first community meeting in the town of 5,000 people since the incident. Continue reading...

The Currumbin rock pools have been closed since Monday after elevated levels of enterococci were detected

Guy Debelle points to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and warns ‘I’m really concerned that we are missing out on a huge opportunity’

Nearly 700 sheep, including 197 valuable merino ewes, allegedly stolen from a property near Logan

Authorities looking into ‘unusual mortality events’ amid concern from conservatives and activists that wind turbines are at faultA ninth dead whale has washed up on the New Jersey coastline, as conservationists and local authorities investigate the causes of an unusual number of such deaths along the US east coast.The humpback was found in Manasquan, New Jersey, on Monday. Continue reading...

Sea ice helps protect glaciers and ice caps that would cause massive sea level rise when lost, scientists warnThe area of sea ice around Antarctica has hit a record low, with scientists reporting “never having seen such an extreme situation before”. The ice extent is expected to shrink even further before this year’s summer melting season ends.The impact of the climate crisis in melting sea ice in the Arctic is clear in the records that stretch back to 1979. Antarctic sea ice varies much more from year to year, which has made it harder to see an effect from global heating. Continue reading...

Ocean voyage to study declining sea ice levels cancelled after RSV Nuyina required repairs, leaving climate scientists dismayed

Research by Global Canopy also finds many companies are not monitoring set commitmentsA third of the companies most linked to the destruction of tropical rainforests have not set a single policy on deforestation, a report reveals.Research by Global Canopy has found that 31% of the companies with the greatest influence on tropical deforestation risk through their supply chains do not have a single deforestation commitment for any of the commodities to which they are exposed. Continue reading...

Emergency allotments helped US families weather the Covid crisis and rising prices – but they’ll end in MarchNicole Stevens doesn’t know how much further she can stretch her grocery budget.Stevens, 40, based in Battle Creek, Michigan, is a single mother raising two teenage boys. She relies heavily on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), more commonly known as food stamps, to feed her family. Before the pandemic, Stevens recalls being able to spend just $300 on her family’s big monthly supermarket haul. This always meant that she had a little bit of money left over to make additional trips to the store whenever staples like milk and bread inevitably ran out. Today, the same monthly shopping trip costs her $500. Continue reading...

Families fight for benefits after victims allegedly developed cancer from drinking water tainted by toxic PFAS at New Hampshire baseFor decades, Ken Brock and Gary Enos largely toiled in the same hangars at New Hampshire’s Pease national air base. The career US national guard members were responsible for giving fuel planes tail-to-nose inspections that prevented crashes.“We were like general practitioners for planes,” Enos said. Continue reading...

While a boutique industry around converting vintage cars to electric is growing, it’s an exclusive, cost-prohibitive oneOver the next decade, millions of new battery-electric trucks, SUVs and cars are forecast to hit the market globally. In the US alone, Joe Biden is pushing for 50% of all new cars sold in 2030 to be zero-emission vehicles.What happens to all of the old gasoline- and diesel-powered cars that are on the road right now is trickier. One idea that’s recently been in the spotlight is converting them to electric vehicles. Toyota made waves when it showcased two vintage Corollas that had been converted to electric and hydrogen power at a recent industry event where the company’s CEO, Akio Toyoda, raised the prospect of the company getting into the conversion game. Continue reading...

Frontbenchers unleash on party for signalling it might vote with Coalition to stymie reform of safeguard mechanism

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Woods at Wembury will expand by 84 hectares with additional 90,000 trees along with hedgerows and banks full of wildlifeWithin a few decades, if all goes well, swathes of oaks and other native British trees will tumble down the banks of the River Yealm in Devon and provide a home to owls, woodcocks, hares and butterflies as part of a new community woodland project.There will also be an orchard planted in a place known to be favoured by bats and an area of wood pasture – a more open landscape of flower-rich meadows where animals can graze and shelter around trees and shrubs. Continue reading...