Though protected in a cool, damp ‘frost pocket’, beaver dams are restricting water flow, threatening Maryland’s deciduous conifersGripping the long branch of a speckled alder tree, ecologist Deborah Landau slowly steps into the waist-deep murky water. “You can’t see anything, so watch your step,” she warns as she makes her way through the chilly labyrinth of the Finzel swamp preserve in Maryland. The swamp is a meditation for the senses: the sweet aroma of red spruce, the call of the locally rare alder flycatcher and an array of colour in what appears as endless blueberry and rhododendron shrubs.The preserve, owned by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the central Appalachians of far western Maryland in the US, protects a rare boreal fen. Its most notable resident is the American larch (Larix laricina), or tamarack tree, a deciduous conifer that is the reason for Landau’s sojourn in the swamp. Lying within a “frost pocket” – a microclimate where cold air is trapped by the adjoining slopes and subject to frequent frosts – Finzel swamp provides a favourable year-round climate for the locally endangered larch and other more northern flora and fauna. It is as if a piece of the Pleistocene survived the warming epoch to remind us what life was once like in these ancient mountains. Continue reading...

Labor government recommends minimum wage be increased in line with inflation; Anthony Albanese says stopping new gas projects ‘doesn’t reflect the needs’ of economy; new monkeypox cases reported in NSW and Victoria; nation records at least 50 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a rock goby, a fox-chasing crow and a frolicking Icelandic horse Continue reading...

As the Ukraine war and climate crisis act as a wake-up call for the industry, one UK farm is leading the wayLettuces are sprouting, the wildflowers are in bloom and a buzzard is circling above the meadow on a sunny spring day at Huxhams Cross Farm near the village of Dartington in Devon. From the top of a hill, Marina O’Connell can survey most of the 15 hectares (37 acres) she has dedicated the past six years to transforming.When she took over running the farm in 2015, she recalls, the farm contractor called this a “miserable bit of land”. Now the fields and hedgerows buzz with wildlife, and young farm workers chat as they sow carrot seeds and plant out early spinach. Further downhill, chickens peck about near polytunnels full of vegetables and soft fruit. Continue reading...

This week’s Queensland news in brief: action over forensics lab, discrimination law slammed

Trump restricted states’ power in favor of fossil fuel development but proposed rule would empower local officials to protect waterThe Biden administration on Thursday proposed undoing a Trump-era rule that limited the power of states and Indigenous American tribes to block energy projects like natural gas pipelines based on their potential to pollute rivers and streams.The Clean Water Act allows states and tribes to review what effect pipelines, dams and other federally regulated projects might have on water quality within their borders. Continue reading...

Pupils’ vital attention skills stunted by ‘toxic’ peaks of road noise heard from the classroomRoad-traffic noise significantly slows the development of crucial memory and attention skills in primary school children, research has found.The study of almost 2,700 children aged between seven and 10 in 38 schools in Barcelona, Spain, is the first to assess the impact of traffic noise on child cognitive development over time and to determine the impact of peaks in noise. Continue reading...

Most widely used pesticide in history harms critical ability of bumblebee to regulate nest temperatureThe critical ability of wild bumblebees to keep their colonies at the right temperature is seriously damaged by the weedkiller glyphosate, research has revealed.Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in history, intended to kill only plants. The harm to bumblebees – vital pollinators – was not identified in regulatory risk assessments, which only test whether a pesticide rapidly kills healthy, individual bees. However, the collective failure to regulate colony temperature could have a massive impact on its ability to produce the next generation, the scientists said. Continue reading...

New study finds 44% of world’s land surface needs increased protection, with 1m wildlife species at risk of extinction

Little things like home insulation hacks and avoiding the dryer are important – and if you’re struggling, you can ask for help

Environmentalists threaten legal action over UK permit for Shell to develop Jackdaw fieldEnvironmentalists are threatening legal action in an attempt to halt the development of a new gasfield in the North Sea that has been given the green light by the UK government.Climate experts reacted with anger after the government announced it had given the Jackdaw field, to be developed by the oil multinational Shell, “final regulatory approval” on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Officers make several arrests after protesters jump over barriers during trooping the colour paradeAnimal rights activists linked to Extinction Rebellion have been arrested after disrupting the start of platinum jubilee celebrations by storming the Mall during the trooping the colour parade.Scotland Yard said officers made several arrests after the protesters jumped over barriers lining the Mall and confronted marching Grenadier Guards with leaflets demanding an end to hunting on royal land. Continue reading...

While voters have cited environment as a top priority, the issue has become secondary to the homelessness crisis and crimeAs Los Angeles heads to the polls for the first round of voting to elect a new mayor, the climate future of America’s second largest city may hang in the balance.Los Angeles has built a reputation as a leader on sustainability and climate solutions, setting first-in-the-nation goals to decarbonize and plans to achieve them. But the progressive metropolis – home to nearly 4 million people – faces environmental challenges that will only get worse as the climate grows more extreme. The temperature is rising, water is waning and LA smog is nearly as renowned as the world-famous Hollywood sign. Continue reading...

Three former UN climate heads say gap between government promises and actions will change environment irreversiblyThe policies currently in place to tackle the climate crisis around the world will lead to “catastrophic” climate breakdown, as governments have failed to take the actions needed to fulfil their promises, three former UN climate leaders have warned.There is a stark gap between what governments have promised to do to protect the climate, and the measures and policies needed to achieve the targets. At the Cop26 summit last November, countries agreed to bring forward plans to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – the limit of safety, according to scientists. They have so far submitted pledges that would limit temperatures to under 2C.This article was amended on 2 June 2022 to correct a conversion from celsius to fahrenheit. Continue reading...

Calls for faster transition away from ‘volatile’ fossil fuel supply as SA burns large amounts of gas and diesel

One ecologist counted 160 dead wild birds while walking round a Scottish loch, and figures from other countries are just as worryingAs he walked along the shoreline of a Highland loch on a fine May evening, ecologist and wildlife photographer Peter Stronach could hardly believe what he was seeing. The beach was littered with dead and dying birds: male eider ducks, several species of gulls, a gannet, a puffin and no fewer than 26 pink-footed geese, which should by now have been on the way back to their Icelandic breeding grounds.In all, Stronach recorded 72 individual birds of 17 species at Loch Fleet national nature reserve on the east coast of Scotland on that one day, plus many more in the following days. Continue reading...

Greg Mullins says Chris Bowen’s invitation to meet with experts is a ‘stark contrast’ to outgoing Coalition government

Bowen says mechanism designed to limit energy price rises, if used, would have no impact until next January

The path to net zero is plagued by claims that LNG is less dirty than coal, but there is practically no evidence to back them up

Market operator warns of possible shortfall of gas supplies on Thursday in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania amid cold snap

Thursday’s meeting of oil-producing nations will be first since EU imposed sanctions on Russian crudeOil prices have risen before Thursday’s meeting of the Opec cartel of oil-producing nations, as ministers prepare to set output targets for July in their first gathering since the EU imposed sanctions on Russian crude.Opec is under pressure from some members to exclude Russia, the world’s third largest oil producer, from future quotas, in a move that could pave the way for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to pump more oil. Continue reading...

‘On what sort of planet does the commonwealth think they don’t need a recovery plan for a Tasmanian devil’, asks Wilderness Society

Deflationists and Tyre Extinguishers both say they want to make SUV ownership impossible in urban areasA new group of climate activists targeting the owners of sports utility vehicles has set itself up as a friendly rival to the Tyre Extinguishers by deflating the tyres of dozens of vehicles in the suburbs of Glasgow.In a statement, the group, which calls itself the Deflationists, claimed to have let down the tyres of 50 vehicles in the city’s affluent Newlands area and the neighbouring Shawlands. Continue reading...

Calls for action as decline is seen as evidence of harm caused by climate crisis, pollution and fish farmingSalmon anglers have called for urgent action to protect Scotland’s wild salmon after the lowest number on record were caught last year.The latest official data shows that 35,693 Atlantic salmon were caught by anglers on Scottish rivers last year, the lowest number since records began in 1952 and just 75% of the average over the last five years. Continue reading...

Ohio woman, 25, was tossed 10ft in air after getting close to female bison on boardwalkAn Ohio woman was gored by a bison after approaching the animal while visiting Yellowstone national park in Wyoming, park officials said on Tuesday.The 25-year-old was visiting the national park from Grove City, Ohio, about 20 minutes outside Columbus. Continue reading...

Ohio woman, 25, was tossed 10ft in air after getting close to female bison on boardwalkAn Ohio woman was gored by a bison after approaching the animal while visiting Yellowstone national park in Wyoming, park officials said on Tuesday.The 25-year-old was visiting the national park from Grove City, Ohio, about 20 minutes outside Columbus. Continue reading...

Rewilding advocates say decision by royal estates is ‘an appallingly undemocratic affront to our futures’The duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, two of the royal family’s largest portfolios of land, have snubbed tree campaigners who are calling for the royals to rewild their estates.Rewilding advocates at the campaign group Wild Card have been meeting for months with the crown estate, which manages most of the royal land and pays the revenue into the Treasury. They say relations have been “really positive”. Continue reading...

Seaweed could help feed world and reduce climate crisis impact, Vincent Doumeizel tells Hay festivalSeaweed could help feed the world and reduce the impact of the climate emergency, a UN adviser on food has suggested.Speaking at the Hay festival in Wales, Vincent Doumeizel suggested that the term “sea forest”, which is how seaweed is referred to in Norway, would be more appropriate, “because we would understand that we need to protect and preserve them as we do with all the land forests”. Continue reading...

Experts believe plants in Sussex and Kent were 'stolen to order’A spate of thefts of rare orchids from sites in southern England has concerned scientists, who say endangered species may be at risk.Orchid experts believe that the plants, from locations including in Sussex and Kent, may have been “stolen to order”. Continue reading...

Rising seas choked the flora on the tiny mammals’ island habitat, and in just a few years they were goneNo one knows how the Bramble Cay melomyses – rodents with large, liquid eyes and reddish-brown fur, small enough to fit in the palms of your hands – ended up on Bramble Cay.The cay is speck of land about 50km (31 miles) off the coast of Papua New Guinea, at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Were the melomyses washed there on driftwood in a storm? Did they arrive thousands of years ago on a land bridge that no longer exists? Continue reading...

Katharine Hayhoe says the world is heading for dangers people have not seen in 10,000 years of civilisationThe world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases, a leading climate scientist has warned.Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilisation, and efforts to make the world more resilient were needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough. Continue reading...

The fossil fuel industry faces a reckoning in the Niger Delta after disasters made it one of the most polluted places on the planetOn 10 October 2004, Eric Dooh received an urgent call from one of his father’s employees: the waterway surrounding their houses was running black with oil. Near the outskirts of Dooh’s village of Goi, a pipeline built by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1960s carried oil from inland Nigeria to an offshore terminal where it would be barreled and exported around the world. Dooh suspected the pipeline had sprung a leak. He attempted to alert the pipeline operator, but both Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary had largely abandoned oil operations in Goi a decade earlier in response to local uprisings. On that day, Shell’s community relations officer was unavailable, Dooh recalled. He reported the leak to a nearby police station instead.It wasn’t until the next day that officials climbed onboard a helicopter, ascended over Dooh’s village situated on the banks of the Oroberekiri Creek in Nigeria’s southern Niger Delta region, and confirmed what villagers already knew: oil was spreading and not letting up. Continue reading...

African delegation says proposed new law ignores local voices and could harm rather than save wildlife

US president welcomes New Zealand’s PM to Oval Office and speaks of devastation caused by mass shootingsNew Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has met US president Joe Biden to discuss shared concerns about China’s growing influence in the Pacific, as well as extremism and dealing with the aftermath of mass shootings.The two leaders spoke for more than an hour, with Biden saying Ardern’s leadership on issues like climate change, violence and extremism was of international importance. Continue reading...

New climate minister says calls to raise Labor’s emissions target are ‘odd’ and asks Greens and independents to ‘respect our mandate across the country’

Environmental Protection Agency apologises over lack of community consultation over soil dumping

Despite farmers planting a record 24m hectares this year, higher fuel and fertiliser costs mean produce prices will remain high

Exclusive: PM told there could be eight years’ decline before any gains despite already being at ‘rock bottom’The government has set damaging and illogical targets for species recovery in England that could mean there is eight years of decline before any improvement, despite already being at “rock bottom”, scientists have warned the prime minister.Twenty-three leading scientists from institutions including Oxford and Cambridge universities, the Natural History Museum, the Zoological Society of London and the RSPB have written to Boris Johnson expressing their alarm over the nature targets. Continue reading...

Recent revelations that Democratic West Virginian senator quietly made millions from his coal business could come back to haunt him as he eyes a run for re-electionNancy Hilsbos, a former coalminer living in the West Virginia county that Senator Joe Manchin calls home, barely noticed the nondescript office block she passed almost daily.The property, at the top of a rise on the road out of the small city of Fairmont, bears a large sign: “Manchin Professional Building”. Nameplates announce the offices of accountants, financial advisers and insurers. But there is no mention of the most profitable and influential company registered at the address – the Democratic senator’s own firm, Enersystems. Continue reading...

The billions now going to fossil fuel exploitation could have funded efficiency measures that cut energy bills for goodBillions of pounds given away in a tax break for UK oil and gas exploitation could have permanently cut the energy bills of 2m homes by £342 a year if invested in insulation measures, according to a green thinktank.Rishi Sunak announced the 91% tax break alongside a windfall tax on the huge profits of oil and gas companies last week. The E3G thinktank calculated that the tax break would hand between £2.5bn and £5.7bn back to the oil companies over three years, while an energy efficiency programme of £3bn over the same period would upgrade 2.1m homes making them less reliant on gas. Continue reading...

New data shows ‘mystifying’ lack of progress in post-Brexit pledge to curb bottom-trawling, two years after landmark legislationMore than 90% of Britain’s offshore marine protected areas are still being bottom-trawled and dredged, two years after analysis of the extent of destructive fishing exposed them as “paper parks”, according to data shared with the Guardian.The UK’s network of marine parks, set up to safeguard vulnerable areas of the seabed and marine life, is a cornerstone of the government’s target to protect 30% of ocean biodiversity by 2030. Continue reading...

Report into contaminated soil at site of West Gate Tunnel finds environmental watchdog did its job, but failed to convince the community

EDF Energy tells staff reactors will be shut down in summer despite concerns of blackouts later this yearThe owner of one of the UK’s six nuclear power plants has said it will not extend its life beyond a planned shutdown in summer, despite officials raising concerns over the danger of blackouts in the months that follow.The French-owned EDF Energy sent a memo to staff on Monday in which it said it would not postpone the closure of the two reactors at Hinkley Point B in Somerset, which are scheduled to be shut down on 8 July and 1 August. Continue reading...

With electricity bills soaring, a national Renewable Electricity Storage Target may be one way of achieving lower emissions – and lower prices

Queen’s Green Canopy scheme’s ‘platinum supporters’ include firms that have been connected to environmental harm, say campaignersThe Queen’s jubilee tree planting scheme has been sponsored by companies with links to deforestation, say campaigners.Across the country, people have been asked to “plant a tree for the jubilee” in honour of the Queen’s 70 years on the throne. Continue reading...

UK scientists say carbon capture is ‘hard and expensive’ and focus must be on reducing emissionsMany of the UK’s top scientists working on carbon capture technologies do not believe they will be developed and scaled up in time to reach net zero and limit global heating to 1.5C.Experts speaking at a Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub event in London warned that these techniques, including direct air capture, biofuels, biochar, afforestation and advanced weathering, are not a silver bullet and should make up just a fraction of the efforts to decarbonise. Continue reading...

Terminally ill and disorientated orca believed to have been suffering from disease not seen before in EuropeA gravely ill orca which became separated from its pod and swam dozens of miles up the Seine in France has died of natural causes, the campaign group Sea Shepherd said on Monday, after attempts to guide it back to sea failed.“We found him late this morning,” said Lamya Essemlali, the chair of Sea Shepherd France. Continue reading...

Ministers from world’s biggest economies reach agreement that could shift estimated $33bn a year to clean energy sourcesThe world’s biggest economies are to stop funding any overseas fossil fuel development from the end of this year, in a move likely to choke off some of the investment in “carbon bombs” that are imperilling efforts to meet the world’s climate targets.The agreement could shift about $33bn (£26bn) a year from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, according to analysts’ estimates. Continue reading...

What happens from here is unclear, but the company’s turmoil can’t be divorced from the Coalition’s policy failures

Niue is creating a marine park to protect its waters, an area the size of Vietnam, from illegal fishingThe Pacific island state of Niue has announced that it will protect 100% of the ocean in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which spans 317,500 sq km (122,000 sq miles), roughly the area of Vietnam.The water that surrounds one of the world’s largest raised coral atolls is the only place where the katuali is found – a sea snake that lives in the island’s honeycomb of underwater caves. Humpback whales migrate to Niue from Antarctica to give birth, spinner dolphins swim near the coast and Niue boasts the world’s highest density of grey reef sharks. Continue reading...