-
Heavy rain likely to cause low yields in Britain and other parts of Europe, with drought in Morocco hitting imports
The UK faces food shortages and price rises as extreme weather linked to climate breakdown causes low yields on farms locally and abroad.
Record rainfall has meant farmers in many parts of the UK have been unable to plant crops such as potatoes, wheat and vegetables during the key spring season. Crops that have been planted are of poor quality, with some rotting in the ground.
Continue reading...
-
Loss of intensity and diversity of noises in ecosystems reflects an alarming decline in healthy biodiversity, say sound ecologists
Read more: No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent
Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent action to halt environmental destruction, international experts have warned.
As technology develops, sound has become an increasingly important way of measuring the health and biodiversity of ecosystems: our forests, soils and oceans all produce their own acoustic signatures. Scientists who use ecoacoustics to measure habitats and species say that quiet is falling across thousands of habitats, as the planet witnesses extraordinary losses in the density and variety of species. Disappearing or losing volume along with them are many familiar sounds: the morning calls of birds, rustle of mammals through undergrowth and summer hum of insects.
Continue reading...
-
As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all
Read more: World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts
The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco. He chose a spot near an old bigleaf maple. Many people loved this place: there was a creek and a scattering of picnic benches nearby.
As a soundscape recordist, Krause had travelled around the world listening to the planet. But in 1993 he turned his attention to what was happening on his doorstep. In his first recording, a stream of chortles, peeps and squeaks erupt from the animals that lived in the rich, scrubby habitat. His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove.
Continue reading...
-
In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town – and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has ‘opened Pandora’s box’
One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.
Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.
Continue reading...
-
Humanitarian work in Afghanistan and Yemen now classified as climate finance, FoI request reveals, as £11.6bn pledge slips
The UK government has been accused of double counting £500m of overseas aid as climate finance in an attempt to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement .
Money for humanitarian work in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia is now being classified as climate finance, according to documents released under a freedom of information request by the website Carbon Brief.
Continue reading...
-
Paris claims ban breaches UK-EU trade deal but environmentalists say dispute is ‘hypocrisy’, given Macron’s rhetoric on saving oceans
France has been accused of hypocrisy by conservationists over a fresh post-Brexit dispute with the UK over fishing rights.
France launched an official protest after the UK banned bottom trawling from parts of its territorial waters last month, with the aim of protecting vulnerable habitats.
Continue reading...
-
The 2013 documentary Blackfish turned orca trainers into pariahs in the US. Now some are hitting it big in China
Some people spend a long time deciding what they want to do in life. Hazel McBride feels lucky that she’s always known. As a child in Scotland, she watched a VHS tape of Free Willy on repeat. That was the first time she felt a connection with killer whales. The second time was at age eight, on a trip to SeaWorld Orlando in 2000. Shamu was the animal world’s greatest celebrity, and in the US, SeaWorld ads were ubiquitous. Kids wanted to see the killer whales, and after they saw them, they told their parents they wanted to become killer whale trainers. McBride actually did it.
It wasn’t easy. Scotland didn’t have a SeaWorld, or warm water, or anywhere, really, where McBride could get experience with marine mammals. She had horses she cared for, and she was on the national swim team – a modest start. She sent out volunteer applications to local zoos and worked with California sea lions at a safari park. She reached out to trainers online and one told her a psychology degree would help, so she got one.
Continue reading...
-
It is taking fast fashion to ever faster and ever cheaper extremes, and making billions from it. Why is the whole world shopping at Shein?
For another five hours and 47 minutes, I can buy a Royal Blue Twist Front Cloak Sleeve Slit Back Dress for $5.90, a Striped Pattern High Neck Drop Shoulder Split Hem Sweater for $8.50, or a Solid Sweetheart Neck Crop Tube Top for $1.90. When today’s 90%-off sale ends at 8pm, the crop top will revert to its original price: $4. There are 895 items on flash sale. On today’s “New In” page, there are 8,640 items (yesterday there were 8,760). The most expensive dress of the nearly 9,000 new arrivals – a floor-length, long-sleeved, fully sequinned plus-size gown, available in five sparkly colours – is $67. The cheapest – a short, tight piece of polyester with spaghetti straps, a cowl neckline and an all-over print of Renaissance-style flowers and cherubs – is $7.
I can buy casual dresses, going-out tops, workout leggings, winter parkas, pink terry-cloth hooded rompers, purple double-breasted suit jackets with matching trousers, red pleather straight-leg pants, cropped cardigans with mushroom embroidery, black sheer lace thongs and rhinestone-trimmed hijabs. I can buy a wedding dress for $37. I can buy clothes for school, work, basketball games, proms, funerals, nightclubs, sex clubs. I see patchwork-printed overalls and black bikinis with rhinestones in the shape of a skull over each nipple designated as “punk”. I can buy Christian-girl modesty clothing and borderline fetish wear.
Continue reading...
-
Bludy Beershop, Bill Stickers, Red Biddy: with their unlikely pseudonyms, the members of ‘Ferguson’s Gang’ raised a fortune for the National Trust – and rescued many landmarks from oblivion. But who were they?
Hanging from a drawing pin in Shalford Mill, in a tiny room just a couple of metres above its mighty water wheel and the tumbling River Tillingbourne, is a brown paper bandit’s mask. It is almost invisible in the shadows of the hefty 18th-century beams, and its aura of intrigue seems at odds with this chocolate box National Trust site, tucked at the end of a quaint, daffodil-dotted lane in deepest Surrey. Yet the mask is part of the reason this beautiful building stands today.
It is a relic from a theatrical arsenal worn by Ferguson’s Gang: a clandestine society active from the late 1920s to the postwar years. Far from their criminal-sounding name, they were actually a bunch of well-to-do guerrilla conservationists, who conspired to save England’s history for posterity for the National Trust. What’s more, they were young women.
Continue reading...
-
Underwater mountains are biodiversity hotspots and researchers exploring the Salas y Gómez ridge off Chile have found 50 species probably new to science. How much more has yet to be discovered?
- Photographs by ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute
Squat lobsters, bright red sea toads and deep-sea dragon fish were among more than 160 species never previously seen in the region that were spotted on a recent expedition exploring an underwater mountain range off the coast of South America. Researchers from the California-based Schmidt Ocean Institute believe that at least 50 of those species are likely to be new to science.
A Chaunax (member of thesea toad family) found to the south of Rapa Nui, near the western end of the Salas y Gómez ridge
Continue reading...
