© Vivian Grisogono
© Vivian Grisogono
Exclusive: Study released at Cop28 misused research to underestimate impact of cutting meat eating, say academics
A flagship UN report on livestock emissions is facing calls for retraction from two key experts it cited who say that the paper “seriously distorted” their work.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) misused their research to underestimate the potential of reduced meat intake to cut agricultural emissions, according to a letter sent to the FAO by the two academics, which the Guardian has seen.
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Superfund law requires industries responsible for PFOA and PFOS contamination in water or soil to pay for cleanup
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday designated two forever chemicals that have been used in cookware, carpets and firefighting foams as hazardous substances, an action intended to ensure quicker cleanup of the toxic compounds and require industries and others responsible for contamination to pay for their removal.
Designation as a hazardous substance under the Superfund law does not ban the chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS. But it requires that release of the chemicals into soil or water be reported to federal, state or tribal officials if it meets or exceeds certain levels. The EPA then may require cleanups to protect public health and recover costs that can reach tens of millions of dollars.
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Royal Horticultural Society hopes punters will be inspired by Salford winner of pub garden competition
Pub gardens often feature barren patios, characterless lawns and – worst of all – fake grass.
Now, the Royal Horticultural Society is asking landlords across the country to plant up their patios, saying they are full of untapped potential for urban green space and wildlife.
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More than 50% of the planet’s species live in the earth below our feet, but only a fraction have been identified – so far
Read more: No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent
The sound of an earthworm is a distinctive rasping and scrunching. Ants sound like the soothing patter of rain. A passing, tunnelling vole makes a noise like a squeaky dog’s toy repeatedly being chewed.
On a spring day at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution in Hertfordshire, singing skylarks and the M1 motorway are competing for the airways. But the attention here is on the soundscapes underfoot: a rich ecosystem with its own alien sounds. More than half of the planet’s species live in the soil, and we are just starting to tune into what they are up to. Beetle larvae, millipedes, centipedes and woodlice have other sound signatures, and scientists are trying to decipher which sounds come from which creatures.
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Experts celebrate discovery of secretive and endangered Australasian bittern in recently restored wetlands
The “bunyip bird” – named after a mythological river-lurking, human-eating monster – is as elusive as its namesake. Also known as the Australasian bittern, it is heard more often than it is seen.
It means that when bittern expert Geoff Shannon discovered the bird at Tasmania’s recently restored Lagoon of Islands – the first time it had been seen there in 40 years – it was a “very special moment”.
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Climate campaigners complain of short-termism as country abandons target to cut carbon emissions by 75% by 2030
Climate campaigners have accused Scottish ministers of being “inept” and “short-termist” after they scrapped Scotland’s target to cut carbon emissions by 75% by 2030.
Màiri McAllan, the Scottish net zero secretary, confirmed her government had abandoned that target and would also drop legally binding annual targets on reducing carbon emissions, after damning criticism from a UK advisory committee.
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Birdwatching may have started out as a hobby, but active volunteers are helping bridge data gaps of threatened species and reaping real world outcomes as they go
Sean Dooley first started birdwatching as a 10-year-old with a notebook in hand at a place then known as the “Seaford swamp”, a freshwater wetland beside his primary school in Melbourne’s south-east.
“I was just going out as a kid doing what I loved but recording the birds I saw as I did,” he says. On one of his early visits he met another birdwatcher, Mike Carter, who had been recording birds there and also at nearby Edithvale swamp for some years.
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Dead and dying shrubs and trees – some of which are found nowhere else on Earth – line more than 1,000km across the state’s south-west
A couple of weeks ago, Joe Fontaine stood in the middle of one of Western Australia’s eucalypt forests on another hot and dry day that was stripped of the usually raucous backing-track of bird calls.
“I could hear this scratching-crunching noise coming from the trees,” says Fontaine, a forest ecologist at Perth’s Murdoch University.
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On the banks of the River Roding, authors explain how they are putting the concept of ‘wild service’ into practice
It is a call to action that might just be the founding text for a new environmentalism. A forthcoming book by a diverse band of right to roam campaigners offers a radical new vision of how people can repair both the natural world and their broken relationship to it.
Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You, inspired by the rare wild service tree, calls on communities to develop new relationships with the natural world, combining the hard graft of conservation science with the ceremony, gratitude and fun bound up in festivals, Indigenous traditions and even church services.
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In 2002, high explosives were laid in oil wells across 20 sq km of forest. The firm has gone but the pentolite remains, despite a court ruling, putting lives and the ecosystem at risk
Living on the banks of the Bobonaza River, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Indigenous communities in Sarayaku have always lived in harmony with nature. The rainforest, says Patricia Gualinga, is a sacred, conscious being.
So when an Argentinian company was allowed to place a huge amount of high explosive around the rainforest to prospect for oil, the local Kichwa people fought back and eventually took their case to an international court. More than a decade after winning their legal battle, however, the explosives remain strewn around the community’s territory.
Continue reading...They were given infected blood products in trials without their knowledge, the BBC has found.
Specialist clinics are helping increasing numbers of young ketamine users with damaged bladders.
The regulator calls the data a "wake up call", and says parents and industry need to do more.
The PM wants to strip GPs of power to issue sick notes but Labour says he has run out of ideas.
Younger women could benefit from targeted interventions to tackle the apparent rise, researchers say.
It follows a landmark review of gender services in England which warned of a lack of research.
Swedes have been able to change their legally recognised gender since 1972 - but this will make it easier.
The implentation of a UK childhood stroke registry is critical, a paediatric consultant says.
The football commentator pays tribute to a speech therapist who helped him talk again after surgery.
The government wants to stop people smoking by raising the legal age limit for buying cigarettes.
A new documentary takes viewers on a trip around the world to explore one of nature’s most powerful — yet overlooked — climate allies: blue carbon.
Kenya’s Reteti Elephant Sanctuary — the first community-owned elephant sanctuary in East Africa — provides a place for injured elephants to heal and a home for elephants orphaned by poaching.
Earth lost 3.7 million hectares (9.2 million acres) of tropical forest last year, an area nearly the size of the Netherlands. Yet amid these sobering findings, there are signs of hope.
Earth has lost 2 billion metric tons of “irrecoverable carbon” since 2018 — an amount greater than the United States’ annual greenhouse gas emissions — underscoring the need to halt deforestation and expand protected areas.
Around the world, women beekeepers are helping to protect bees by sharing their knowledge and traditions. This International Women’s Day, we highlight the work of three beekeepers who live in very different geographies, but are united in their passion for the pollinators.
A recent deep-sea expedition off the coasts of Chile and Peru is revealing the secrets of a vast underwater mountain system — and could help make the case for future ocean protections there.
As dangerous heatwaves shatter records around the world, a new study provides the most comprehensive review yet of how to stop deforestation — a major cause of climate-warming greenhouse gases, second only to fossil fuel emissions.
Every day, billions of cups of coffee are consumed around the world — and experts say demand could triple over the next 30 years. So, how will all those lattes, espressos and cold brews affect the environment?
In an announcement today at New York Climate Week, nine philanthropic organizations pledged US$ 5 billion over the next decade to support the creation and expansion of protected areas, sustainable management of the world’s oceans and Indigenous-led conservation.
Ana Gloria Guzmán-Mora is the executive director of Conservation International’s Costa Rica program, where she works with local communities and governments to help them meet their goals for protecting the planet.