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Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential
In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home.
Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed after an agonising search.
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Subspecies driven to extinction by hungry whalers returns after ‘back breeding’ programme using partial descendants
Giant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years.
The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thousands from the volcanic island to provide a living larder during their hunting voyages.
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Romney Marsh, Kent: It’s a family outing, raking the wet sand looking for plump shellfish. Out of everyone, though, I’m the most enthusiastic
The vast tidal flats are empty save for the hunched figures of three black-backed gulls considering a decomposed dogfish, and four humans (one rather small) trudging through the endless silt. A light mist obscures the coast with its string of motley houses and, on the breeze, there is only the distant soughing of shallow waves chasing foam over the sand. There is the piquancy of seclusion and its attendant danger here, perhaps the closest thing Kent has to wilderness.
I’m relishing the long walk in this lonely place, but my children are less enthusiastic about our annual pilgrimage to the cockle beds, a typically cold affair as the quality of shellfish diminishes in spring and summer. We’re travelling well armed, brandishing handmade rakes with formidable tines of six-inch nails, while the youngest carries a hopeful white bucket. About half a mile offshore, our labour begins.
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Government announces tougher measures to tackle unlicensed sites as ‘prolific waste criminal’ is ordered to pay £1.4m
A new 33-strong drone unit is being deployed to investigate the scourge of illegal waste dumping across England, the government has announced.
The improvements to the investigation of illegal waste dumping – which costs the UK economy £1bn a year – come as the ringleader of a major waste crime gang was ordered to pay £1.4m after being convicted at Birmingham crown court.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health
As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.
“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.
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Government plans legislation giving landowners and tenants rights to cull deer to protect crops and property
It will be much easier to shoot deer in England under government plans that aim to curb the damage the animals are doing to the country’s woodlands.
Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, plans to bring forward new legislation to give landowners and tenants legal rights to shoot deer to protect crops and property.
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C M Taylor’s book, which will raise funds for charity, follows teenagers whose favourite swim spot is contaminated
A water company discharges sewage into a river with impunity and the government fails to stop them. The story may sound familiar, but this one is different: there’s a satisfying comeuppance all round.
The ongoing saga of sewage being pumped into the Thames has inspired a new YA (young adult) novel, Floaters – and when its limited first edition is published later this month, 50% of all profits will go to the conservation and campaign charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).
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In this week’s newsletter: The south-east of the country is suffering through the worst heatwave since 2019’s ‘black summer’, while the government continues to back fossil fuel projects
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Australians are no strangers to blistering weather – being a “sunburnt country” of “droughts and flooding rains” is baked into our national identity. But since the 2019-20 bushfires, which burned through an area almost the size of the UK, and killed or displaced 3 billion animals, the arrival of warmer weather each year is accompanied by dread. This summer has brought punishing extremes of heat and fire that are brutal even by Australian standards.
More, after this week’s most important reads.
‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations
The death of Heather Preen: how an eight-year-old lost her life amid sewage crisis
Trump lashes out at California governor’s green energy deal with UK
‘Landmark’ greenwashing case against Australian gas giant Santos dismissed by federal court
‘What’s more important, the electricity or food?’: extreme heat is driving up power bills in central Australia
What the Albanese government did on the environment amid the Liberals’ turmoil: threatened species, a new coal project and carbon leakage
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Wood is primary heating in 2% of homes but contributes to producing 21% of country’s wintertime particle pollution
Air pollution from home wood burning is estimated to lead to 8,600 premature deaths in the US each year, according to research.
Just 2% of US homes use wood for primary heating. Another 8% burn wood for pleasure, aesthetics or supplementary heating, but combined they produce 21% of the country’s wintertime particle pollution.
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