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Fishing club chaired by singer threatens court action over abstraction it says is putting rare trout population at risk
The singer and environmentalist Feargal Sharkey is threatening to take the Environment Agency to court for draining a river that hosts the oldest fishing club in England and putting a rare population of brown trout at risk.
The former Undertones frontman chairs the Amwell Magna Fishery, which has used the secluded stretch of the River Lea in Hertfordshire since 1841.
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While famously rainswept, climate crisis, population growth and profligacymean the once unthinkable could be possible
During the drought of 2022, London came perilously close to running out of water. Water companies and the government prayed desperately for rain as reservoirs ran low and the groundwater was slowly drained off.
Contingency plans were drafted to ban businesses from using water; hotel swimming pools would have been drained, ponds allowed to dry up, offices to go uncleaned. If the lack of rainfall had continued for another year, it was possible that taps could have run dry.
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Elongated area of low pressure likely to bring higher-than-usual levels of rainfall to normally arid region
Unusual levels of rainfall are due to hit the southern Arabian peninsula this week, as a tropical wave – an elongated area of low pressure – progresses across theregion, triggering a marked increase in convective activity across western Yemen and south-western Saudi Arabia this week. There is a risk of thunderstorms until Wednesday, with forecast rainfall totals reaching about 50mm for Al Hudaydah region in Yemen and the Jazan province of Saudi Arabia.
Although 50mm is not a particularly large rainfall total in most places, in this region it is enormous: Al Hudaydah typically records only 65mm annually, while Jazan averages about 150mm.
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Edinburgh: Otters upstream, a tern colony down … I’m happy to be somewhere in-between watching dippers and wagtails
You remember your first. Mine was in 1978 – a turquoise flash zipping low over a murky Oxfordshire river. A moment in the eyes, a lifetime in the memory.
I’ve seen plenty more kingfishers since then, but you never spurn an opportunity, and the Water of Leith – a tranquil haven minutes from Edinburgh’s centre – fits the bill. Just over 20 miles from source in the Pentlands to outflow into the Firth of Forth, it has earned its reputation as Edinburgh’s hidden jewel. You could spend a month here and never suspect its existence, yet for the initiated it offers respite from the relentlessness of fringe season.
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For more than two months, the bright orange butterflies have been descending on Nannup in WA’s south-west, attracted by invasive plant species
Lounging on the tulips, roosting in the eucalyptus, humming around the bottlebrush – a butterfly swarm has invaded a rural Australian town to the delight of locals and tourists alike.
Thousands of monarch butterflies have taken over Nannup, in south-west Western Australia, although experts warn their high numbers are evidence of the advance of invasive weeds.
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Exclusive: Study expected to confirm there are enough suitable sites to support bird of prey’s return
After more than 150 years, golden eagles could be set to return to England, as a study is expected to confirm there are enough suitable sites to support the reintroduction of the UK’s most iconic bird of prey.
Golden eagles, which can have a wingspan of more than 2 metres, are occasionally seen in areas such as Northumberland. However, these birds come from a growing population in southern Scotland. A recent project to reintroduce the birds in Scotland is likely to be a model for any reintroduction in England.
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The Cooling Solution is a photographic and scientific project that aims to show how people are adapting to high temperatures and increasing humidity across different countries, cultures and socioeconomic conditions
As temperatures rise around the world, the inequality between those who can afford to stay cool and those forced to suffer is laid ever more bare. For some, air conditioning is a given; for others it is an unaffordable luxury.
The photographer Gaia Squarci and researcher Jacopo Crimi visited Brazil, India, Indonesia and Italy to photograph the stories of people in extreme heat and how they are learning to adapt to it.
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Canada’s response to the extreme weather threat is being upended as the traditional epicentre of the blazes shifts as the climate warms
Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos and stern warnings from officials have become fixtures of Canada’s wildfire season. But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction.
Instead, the worst of the fires have been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat that is only likely to grow as the climate warms.
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After a historic land buyback by the US Forest Service, Tlingit crew members are demolishing culverts to restore streams, salmon runs and cultural history deep in the Tongass national forest
The morning begins with a sense of anticipation – the calm before 1,200lbs of explosives detonate a stream culvert buried 10ft in Alaska’s Tongass national forest.
Jamie Daniels, 53, and his crew of Tlingit forestry workers take cover in a glade of alders.
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They helped create the modern world but are dangerously overused. How can we harness them sustainably?
In 1954, just a few years after the widespread introduction of antibiotics, doctors were already aware of the problem of resistance. Natural selection meant that using these new medicines gave an advantage to the microbes that could survive the assault – and a treatment that worked today could become ineffective tomorrow. A British doctor put the challenge in military terms: “We may run clean out of effective ammunition. Then how the bacteria and moulds will lord it.”
More than 70 years later, that concern looks prescient. The UN has called antibiotic resistance “one of the most urgent global health threats”. Researchers estimate that resistance already kills more than a million people a year, with that number forecast to grow. And new antibiotics are not being discovered fast enough; many that are essential today were discovered more than 60 years ago.
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