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Exclusive: Ministers accused of trying to keep investment firm’s withdrawal from partnership with NatureScot under wraps
A funding deal to raise £100m from private investors for urgently needed nature restoration in Scotland has fallen through without the Scottish parliament being told.
The Guardian has learned that Aberdeen, the investment firm, decided to withdraw from a partnership with the agency NatureScot to raise at least £100m for conservation projects from commercial and private investors late last year.
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The government hails the ‘green revolution’ as a solution to economic decline, but some young jobseekers say the rhetoric does not match their experience
On paper, Jake Snell, 19, sounds like the perfect candidate for a role in the UK’s burgeoning green energy sector. He has high grades in maths and physics A-level, a distinction in BTec engineering and another distinction in an extended engineering diploma. He has also done work experience at an engineering company.
He is from Lowestoft, a coastal town in Suffolk, outside Great Yarmouth. Both towns contain areas that fall within the most deprived 20% in England and are part of a wider pattern of coastal places with low employment opportunities.
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Amid growing evidence of fungi’s key role in ecosystems and storing carbon, African scientists are championing the need to preserve ‘funga’ as much as flora and fauna
Madagascar has long been celebrated for its remarkable wildlife, with the vast majority of its species – from ring-tailed lemurs to certain species of baobab trees – found nowhere else on the planet. But when discussing the island nation’s endemic treasures, fungi are often left out of the conversation.
Yet “fungi are some of the most important things in the world”, says Anna Ralaiveloarisoa, a Malagasy scientist. “They feed 90% of terrestrial plants. Without them, there is no life on the Earth.”
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Rising temperatures and extreme drought are driving more destructive spring fires across the American Great Plains. This year, forces aligned to create the perfect storm in Nebraska
In a normal year, the vast grasslands that roll across the American Great Plains would be starting to green. But at the center of the US, where most of the nation’s beef producers graze their herds, this spring brought fire instead of moisture, leaving more than a million acres black and barren.
Multiple blazes raged across Nebraska, where the records for the annual acreage burned were obliterated in a single month. The state logged the largest blaze ever recorded when the Morrill fire cascaded across more than 642,000 acres before it was contained in March.
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A skull fragment found in a tray of unsorted fossils collected more than a century ago leads to discovery
A prehistoric fossil, hiding in plain sight in museum storage for more than a century, has revealed that giant echidnas once roamed Victoria.
The Owen’s giant echidna, Megalibgwilia owenii, lived during the Pleistocene, a geological epoch that began 2.5m years ago. It grew to about 1 metre long and weighed up to 15kg – about twice the size of Australia’s modern echidnas.
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Dozens of feral pachyderms linked to drug kingpin to be killed because of threat to native species and villagers
Colombian officials have authorized a plan to cull dozens of hippos descended from animals brought to the country in the 1980s by Pablo Escobar, after the feral beasts displaced native species and threatened local villagers.
The environment minister, Irene Vélez, said the decision was reached because other methods to control their population had been expensive and unsuccessful, including neutering some of the animals or moving them to zoos. Vélez said that up to 80 hippos would be affected by the measure. She did not say when the hunting would begin.
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Ventnor, Isle of Wight: On the hottest day of the year, both a wall lizard and I are having a good bask
Up early for once. The moon’s still there, miraculous white ghost in the clear morning sky. If my eyes were better I might glimpse a capsule containing the four remarkable humans who have travelled further from our planet than anyone in history. With this knowledge, seeing the moon hits differently.
I sit on the terrace, taking in the view. For Easter, this Londoner seeks tranquillity by the sea, and the Ventnor Undercliff – the Isle of Wight’s deep south – ticks both boxes. On a clear day you’ll believe you can see France.
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In Artemisa, the country’s agricultural heartland, sanctions and fuel shortages have made a tough life almost impossible
Abraham Rodríguez stares at the corn furrows he must plough before the end of the day. It is not even noon in Artemisa, Cuba, but the sun beats down hard and he’s already tired: working the land is a tough job. He has done it for almost half his life, since he was 13 and his mother got a divorce. He is turning 26 this year.
Farming has always been hard, he says, but now it is almost impossible to sustain. “I make 1,200 pesos (£1.80) a day, so I have to work two days to buy a bottle of oil.”
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For long a dumping ground for pollutants, the Great Lake is being seeded with sensor buoys to make it the world’s largest digitally connected body of freshwater
There was a time in the 1960s that the lakes and rivers around Cleveland were so polluted with petrochemicals and other contaminants that they frequently caught on fire.
While water quality on Lake Erie today has improved since the days of it being used as a large-scale industrial dumping ground for steel mills and chemical plants, it still struggles with poor water quality.
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Swedish retailer continued to advertise partnership with Soly and failed to offer me any advice
I am one ofmany left thousands of pounds out of pocket after signing upfor solar panels via Ikea’s website late lastyear.
Ikea had partnered with the European installer Soly, and the fact the panels were being advertisedvia such a well-known company gave us confidence.
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