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Glyphosate is currently sprayed on cereal and pulse crops to dessicate them and make them easier to harvest
A new trade deal with the EU could lead to restrictions on the use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate on UK food crops.
The full-spectrum herbicide, which kills almost every plant it touches, is often sprayed on wheat, oats and other cereal and pulse crops shortly before harvest to desiccate them and make them easier to handle.
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Wastewater from nearly 40,000 people and businesses pumped straight into sea as territory still has no treatment plant
Raw sewage from nearly 40,000 people and businesses is being pumped straight into the sea because the British overseas territory of Gibraltar does not have, and has never had, a wastewater treatment plant.
For decades, untreated sewage has poured into the Mediterranean from the southern tip of the peninsula at Europa Point, where the government of Gibraltar says there are “high levels of natural dispersion”.
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Powerstock Common, Dorset: I’m hopeful that the mixed habitats here and bright weather will bring them out in their droves – and I’m not disappointed
The recent pulse of warm, sunny weather has encouraged butterflies to fly in large numbers in Dorset. They were everywhere when I visited Powerstock Common: the moment I opened the car door, a brimstone fluttered sulphur-yellow over the parking area, lifted on a stream of blackcap song.
Bright as butter in the sunshine, it’s possible that brimstones are the species that inspired the word “butterfly”. When this one settled on a hazel, its underwings merged green among the new leaves, the colours indicating it was a male. Females are much paler, sometimes almost white. Both sexes have a pair of browny-orange spots on their wings, which are foxed like the page edges of an old book.
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Exclusive: ‘Fish sludge’ in coastal waters now has nutrient levels equivalent to those in untreated effluent of country the size of Australia, report finds
Norwegian fish farms are filling fjords and other coastal waters with nutrient pollution equivalent to the raw sewage of tens of millions of people each year, a report has found.
Norway is the largest farmed salmon producer in the world, and nutrients in fish feed are excreted directly into coastal waters. Analysis from the Sunstone Institute found that Norwegian aquaculture released 75,000 tonnes of nitrogen, 13,000 tonnes of phosphorus and 360,000 tonnes of organic carbon in 2025.
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Appeal launched to buy Nottinghamshire cottage, where tree was planted in 19th century, and turn it into heritage centre
Campaigners have launched an appeal to try to save for the nation the mother tree of perhaps the most popular cooking apple in the world.
The original bramley apple tree, which grows in the garden of a cottage in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, is for sale, with the cottage put on the market by its owner, Nottingham Trent University.
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Orban Wallace’s documentary avoids big clashes between landowners and campaigners in favour of wide-ranging exploration
Orban Wallace’s film about the right-to-roam movement shows us a campaigning group with a simple, reasonable aim: to give walkers in England and Wales the same rights that people have in Scotland, courtesy of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, brought into being by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2003. There, walkers have the right to temporary, non-motorised access – which is to say walking, cycling and camping, carried out responsibly – to most land, public or private. These rights have now existed for some time without the apocalyptic end to the countryside as we know it.
Whether some in the right-to-roam movement in England want something more than that, or are prepared to protest more vehemently than simply organising peaceful mass trespass events, is another question. The film interviews landowners such as Francis Fulford, who has long been the media’s favourite outspoken reactionary toff, a sort of posh version of Viz Comic’s Farmer Palmer, snarling “Get off my land”. There are other, more thoughtful landowners, including Hugh Inge-Innes-Lillingston, who cheerfully admits how silly his name is, and is open to developing new ideas about managed access. As far as profiteering goes, I found myself thinking of a remark made by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson: “Land doesn’t really bring in a lot of money until they build a motorway through it.”
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Exclusive: Minister says proposals show government’s ambition, as it faces unprecedented pressure from Greens
Tree nurseries could be built at prisons, and military ranges could be turned into heathland or peat bogs as part of an ambitious plan to make government land more nature-friendly, the environment secretary has said.
Speaking before elections this week in which Labour is under pressure from the Green party, Emma Reynolds said such projects showed the government’s intent in restoring natural habitats.
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Group that worked with AOC and Bernie Sanders seeks to counter claim that climate policy is politically toxic
Americans do not care about the climate crisis, only economic issues: that’s the message some wonks have put forth in the past year, as the Trump administration has dismantled environmental protections. But the shift away from climate is misguided, an influential group of progressives is arguing.
“The climate crisis is a core driver of the cost-of-living crisis and instability we see across the economy,” says a new policy platform from left-leaning thinktank Climate and Community Institute (CCI).
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In December 1982, South African Rodney Wilkinson walked four bombs into Koeberg power station – the crown jewel of the apartheid state – pulled the pins and then left on his bicycle. How did he do it?
At 21, Rodney Wilkinson was the best fencer in South Africa: national champion in foil and sabre, second in epee. He had toured Europe and Argentina. He had not stood on the Olympic podium, because South Africa was banned. The apartheid state had taken that from him, along with everything else it took from everyone.
One evening in August 1971, Wilkinson stood in the gym at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, foil in hand. He was facing his coach Vincent Bonfil, a 25-year-old Englishman who had represented Britain as a reserve at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, and who was now in Johannesburg finishing a master’s thesis in metallurgy. They were working on a technique in which both fencers lunge simultaneously, and the one who reads the other’s move a split second earlier wins the point. They came at each other. Wilkinson’s foil caught the edge of Bonfil’s sleeve. There was a pop.
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Australia’s biobanks store everything from seeds of native plants to the cells and tissue of threatened animal species
In the mudflats of Swan Bay, Victoria, royal spoonbills sweep their paddle-shaped bills through shallow water. Nearby, under the grass-covered roof of the Queenscliff marine research centre, a team of scientists from Deakin University are trying to bring the ecosystems those birds and many others rely on back from the brink.
Some of that involves associate professor Prue Francis’s beakers – filled with bubbling brown gunk – that are bathed in red light inside a fridge equipped with sensors, alarms and a backup generator.
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