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UK Climate Change Committee voices concern over Scotland’s progress on decarbonising buildings and reliance on unproved technologies
Scotland has finally produced realistic short-term plans on cutting its climate emissions, but there is “real concern” about the credibility of its overall strategy, the UK’s climate policy watchdog has found.
Nigel Topping, the chair of the UK Climate Change Committee, said there were “flashing amber lights” about the quality and seriousness of some of the Scottish government’s medium- and long-term proposals to reach net zero by 2045.
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Researchers say solitary bottlenose has adapted well to city waters, but tighter controls on boat traffic and human behaviour are needed
Italian scientists monitoring the movements of a dolphin in the Venice lagoon have said humans are the ones who need managing, rather than wildlife.
Known as Mimmo, the bottlenose dolphin has been spotted on several occasions since it made its first appearance in June last year, prompting a research team from the University of Padova to spring into action.
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Thousands more people across Devon and Cornwall could join case against water firm
A group legal claim against South West Water alleging sewage pollution into coastal waters is harming businesses and individuals has been expanded across Devon and Cornwall.
Thousands more individuals could now join the first environmental community group legal action against a water company over the impact of sewage pollution.
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Walthamstow Wetlands, London: They’re professional skulkers, loud but highly elusive. And yet there one is, out of the reeds, to be remembered for ever
It’s weather you’d emigrate to avoid. Gloomy and cold – Tupperware sky and drizzle in the air. But tranquil, at least. Small mercies. Walthamstow Wetlands – a 211-hectare nature reserve centred on 10 reservoirs in north-east London. Jewel in the Lee Valley’s crown, and as good a place for waterbirds as any in the capital.
Six tufted ducks drift across – a posse of monochrome floaters on a mission to nowhere. A little grebe – floating powder puff – does its trademark jump-and-dive, surfacing 30 seconds later, 25 yards to the left of where I expected. Extreme peace descends on me. Birdfulness, the best way to be.
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Volunteer group Citizens of the Reef made the find as part of the Great Reef Census
Citizen scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the largest coral colonies ever documented on the Great Barrier Reef.
The coral spans approximately 111 metres in maximum length and covers an estimated area of 3,973 sq m – about half the size of a soccer field.
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Researchers discover rare periods of a few thousands years when climate unexpectedly awoke from slumber
During the ”snowball Earth” period about 700m years ago, Earth’s climate shut down. The planet was encased in ice and insulated from seasonal variations: spring, summer, autumn and winter all stopped. Or at least that was the theory.
Recent examination of some ancient rocks from the west coast of Scotland have now overturned that thinking, suggesting there were periods during snowball Earth when the climate woke up.
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Critics say proposal to fold department into a new ‘mega ministry’ will dilute accountability and put nature protections at risk
New Zealand’s government is seeking to abolish its dedicated environment ministry to cut down on bureaucracy, a move critics say could dilute environmental protections.
Under the plan, the department would be folded into a new “mega-ministry” that will cover housing, urban development, transport, local government and the environment.
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Armed groups and a state-owned refinery’s oil leaks have displaced Barrancabermeja’s fishing community and poisoned a paradise once full of manatees and jaguars
Standing on her wooden canoe, a machete in her hand, Yuly Velásquez hacks away at reeds matted with blackened sludge. Close by, a burst oil pipe has released a slick of crude into the San Silvestre wetlands in Barrancabermeja, Colombia’s oil city, choking the water and its wildlife.
“The destruction is immense,” says Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, a sustainable fishing organisation. “For the fish, the animals and flora, it means immediate death.”
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The Belgian ceremony attracts beekeepers from the Netherlands, France and Germany keen to boost dark bee numbers and stop the spread of the hybrid honeybee
Every summer, 1,000 virgin queens descend on the Belgian town of Chimay. During the “wedding flight”, a male attaches to the female. His endophallus (penis equivalent) is torn off and he falls to the ground and dies. Mission accomplished.
Beekeepers come and pick up their fertilised queens in small colourful hives, driving them back home, sometimes more than 300km away. They will use the genetic material gathered in south Belgium to build new colonies in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
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In an edited extract from her latest book, Hazel Sheffield sets out a new blueprint for community stewardship
It was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales. People are used to a spot of rain. No one realised how bad it would get.
For two days, it hammered on the windows of the houses at the top of the South Wales Valleys, where people tucked in their children before a sleepless night. It poured into the rivers at the bottom. By the time the rain departed again, many people would be standing in water up to their knees.
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