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Corridors of nectar-rich plants encourage pollination and brighten up city streets at the same time
Take a closer look at the colourful plants dotted along an initially unassuming Bristol alleyway and you’ll see them teeming with insects. Bumblebees, hoverflies and ladybirds throng around a mixture of catmint, yarrow, geraniums and anemones. “It’s buzzing with pollinators now,” Flora Beverley says.
Just over a year ago, the alley we are walking down was a dreary, litter-strewn dumping ground. Now, thanks to the pollinator pathways project, it is filled with nectar-rich plants and bee hotels. Colourful murals line the walls. A neighbour and her son passing by stop to tell Beverley they watered the plants yesterday. The local people who helped to transform the pathways continue to maintain them too.
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Data shows more than 1m hectares torched so far this year, with records also broken for CO2 and other air pollutants
Wildfires ravaging the EU have torched more than 1m hectares this year, marking 2025 as the worst year on record, a full month before the fire season ends.
Deadly infernos that have emptied out villages and forced farmers to become firefighters have engulfed four times as much land this year as the average for the same period over the past two decades, according to official data that was updated on Friday and may be revised further.
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Researchers ‘shocked’ to discover some species settling down for sleep 50 minutes later than rural counterparts
Urban birds stay up significantly later than their rural counterparts, according to research that highlights the impact of light pollution on wildlife.
The study, based on recordings submitted by bird enthusiasts to a popular species identification and mapping website, showed that light pollution caused birds to sing for an average of 50 minutes longer each day, with some species waking up an hour earlier and settling down for the evening an hour later.
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Glenisla, Angus: Scottish thatchers are few and far between, so I’m lucky to be working on this roundhouse in a glen that’s rich in wildlife
As I drive north through Angus, birch and rowan begin to replace ash and oak, and by the time I reach the foot of the glen, the purple-streaked tops of the Cairngorms have come into view. Glenisla is the last lowland valley before the mountains begin, and it’s home to a rare sight on either side of the Highland line: a thatched roof.
The building is a lodge house on the Knockshannoch estate, and is believed to be the only remaining thatched roundhouse in Scotland. I’ve driven three hours north from the Scottish Borders to repair a hole in its roof (Scottish thatchers are few and far between, so travelling long distances is not unusual here).
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More than 300 dead after downpours in mountainous regions and several killed in Indian city of Mumbai
Heavy monsoon rains have continued to pummel the Indian subcontinent over the past week, bringing devastating flooding and landslides and leaving hundreds of people dead in what has already been one of the deadliest monsoon seasons in recent years.
Moist air surging inland from the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea was driven into Pakistan and north-west India late last week by strong southwesterly monsoon winds. Combined with developing areas of low pressure, this triggered a succession of torrential downpours.
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Researchers also suggest system could resolve problems with irregular and weather-dependent Earth-based supply
Solar panels in space could cut Europe’s terrestrial renewable energy needs by 80% by 2050, a study has found.
Using a detailed computer model of the continent’s future power grid, the researchers found that a system of space-based panels designed by Nasa could reduce the cost of the whole European power system by as much as 15%. It could also cut battery use by more than two-thirds.
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Britain’s promises of a post-Brexit green revolution have unravelled, with protections for wildlife, water and air weaker now than at any point in recent decades
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Brexit has been terrible for environmental legislation in this country, since we left the EU in 2021. While the EU has strengthened its environmental protections, the UK has drifted away from those regulations, in some cases our politicians deciding to rip up EU environmental laws entirely.
I have been spending the past couple of years tracking this divergence, alongside some excellent analysts from the Institute for European Environmental Policy. And as we reported this week, it’s looked pretty bleak, with laws on important areas from air pollution to water quality weakened.
UK ‘used to be a leader on climate’, lament European lawmakers
‘High-risk sites’: where are the UK’s ‘forever chemical’ hotspots?
Labour using Brexit to weaken nature laws, MPs say
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Satellite mega-constellation missions behind threefold increase in emissions of climate-altering soot and CO2
Scientists are calling for a new global regime to address air pollution caused by the space industry.
Prof Eloise Marais’s team at University College London (UCL) began tracking space activities in 2020. Their latest figures reveal 259 rocket launches in 2024, and 223 launches in 2023. These burned more than 153,000 tonnes of fuel.
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A town had big plans for the facility site, until the Trump administration ordered it to stay open, a move it extended this week
Donald Trump has made several unusual moves to elongate the era of coal, such as giving the industry exemptions from pollution rules. But the gambit to keep one Michigan coal-fired power station running has been extraordinary – by forcing it to remain open even against the wishes of its operator.
The hulking JH Campbell power plant, which since 1962 has sat a few hundred yards from the sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan, was just eight days away from a long-planned closure in May when Trump’s Department of Energy issued an emergency order that it remain open for a further 90 days.
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