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Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered
Once Art Borkent starts speaking about biting midges, he rarely pauses for breath. Holding up a picture of a gnat trapped in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, the 72-year-old taxonomist explains that there are more than 6,000 ceratopogonidae species known to science. He has described and named more than 300 midges, mostly from his favourite family of flies. Some specialise in sucking blood from mammals, reptiles, other insects and even fish, often using the CO2 from their host’s breath to locate their target, he says. Tens of thousands remain a mystery to science, waiting to be discovered.
But to Borkent’s knowledge, nobody will continue his life’s work of identifying and studying this group of flies once he has gone.
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Tebay, Cumbria: At this in-between moment where it’s both winter and spring, I’m reminded that nothing is permanent in farming
To make our new hedgerows as diverse as possible, we are planting a fruit tree every 200 metres in them, and last winter we planted a new apple and damson orchard at Low Park, our abandoned farm. This morning, I am popping some additional fruit trees into the hedges and checking on the orchard. The trees have been sourced from damson growers in the Lyth Valley and the apple trees from a local orchard group.
When I arrive at Low Park, which is nearby in the Lune gorge, I am cheered to see that some primroses are already flowering in the orchard as it is so sheltered. Elsewhere, winter still has us in its grip, with snow earlier in the week on the fells. As well as the primroses, my eye is drawn to some almost fluorescent orange fungi on some deadwood, which I believe is witches’ butter.
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Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand
Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.
Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.
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The juvenile freshwater crocodile was first spotted by a group of teenagers in Ironbark Creek in the Australian city on Saturday
An Australian freshwater crocodile has been captured in a city creek thousands of kilometres south of its normal range, after sightings shocked onlookers at a suburban park.
The crocodile was first spotted in Ironbark Creek in Newcastle – about 100km north of Sydney – around midday on Saturday, by a group of teenagers.
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Exclusive: Whistleblower figures show large rise in ‘serious’ to ‘minor’ downgrades based on water company evidence
Environment Agency (EA) staff have downgraded thousands of serious pollution incidents by water companies in England without visiting to investigate, data unearthed by freedom of information (FoI) requests suggests.
The figures were obtained by Robert Forrester, a whistleblower who left the agency in January and has spent nine years shining a light on the state of the water industry. His identity was revealed in the Channel 4 docudrama Dirty Business this week, and he has vowed to carry on fighting to expose the truth.
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There is no end in sight to the pollution caused by a ‘broken’ system. Experts say it could even be getting worse
Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water.
A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.
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Hood hill, North Yorkshire: It’s a huge sycamore on top of a hill with amazing views of the Dales. Now we just have to get to it
A crisp clear day and welcome relief from a soggy winter – we’re off on my favourite walk, to Sammy’s Tree. There’s nothing to beat a hill climb on a winter’s day – frost and ice underfoot, the odd patch of snow on the hills above. We start on a track through mature conifers and ancient cherry trees, passing some hazel trees, their catkins already fully extended. A fallow deer, all legs and mottles, scurries away through the trees (much better than seeing a dead one on the roadside) and a flock of finches races through the treetops.
Then we burst out on to the open hillside which is covered in dormant heather and bilberry. A pair of grey squirrels chase each other round a stunted scrub oak, the green and grey lichen on the branches letting us know how clean the air is up here. At last, we’re on the ridge, with a sharp drop on either side and views stretching more than 30 miles over the Vale of York to the Yorkshire Dales. The sharp nose of Penhill, the gateway to Wensleydale, sparkles in the sunlight. We pass a crater showing where a bomber crashed in the second world war. Then, finally, we reach the top and the best bit of all – Sammy’s tree! It’s a huge sycamore that crowns the hill on the remains of a Norman motte-and-bailey fortress – and it just has to be climbed.
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For months it has been adding to my mother’s distress when all she wanted was feed-in tariff payments go into her account
When my father died last year, nearly all thecompanies we had to notify were kind and empathetic, but notScottishPower.
It had been paying feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for electricity produced from my parents’ solar panels into his account. My parents hadbought the panels jointly in 2011, and my mother is named on the certification and was ScottishPower’s main point of contact, so she thought it would be a simple matter for the payments to be switched to her bank account. It was not.
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Litter picking groups struggle to stem tide of rubbish after reported incidents rose 10% in last year
Last Wednesday, in a layby outside Brackley, Northamptonshire, Trish Savill and her band of self-styled Wombles proudly took photos of their morning’s work: 28 bags stacked neatly against the verge.
It had taken them an hour, but they had barely made a dent in the sprawl of unrecognisable, rotting refuse already working its way into the soil, mixed with dumped white goods and some more dubious finds.
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Falling groundwater, extreme heat and water-intensive farming are accelerating land collapse, forcing a rethink in agricultural practices
Fatih Sik was drinking tea with friends at home when he heard a rumbling sound outside that grew to a loud boom, like a volcano had erupted nearby. From the window, he saw water and mud shoot into the sky, as high as the tallest trees, less than 100 metres away.
The 47-year-old knew what it was, because it is common in Karapınar, Konya, a vast agricultural province known as Turkey’s breadbasket. A giant sinkhole had opened up on his land. Fifty metres wide and 40 metres deep, it had appeared almost a year to the day after a previous one had formed. It was August – the hottest month of the year.
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