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Trump ratcheted up his questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it
In the past decade at the forefront of US politics, Donald Trump has unleashed a barrage of unusual, misleading or dubious assertions about the climate crisis, which he most famously called a “hoax”.
This year has seen Trump ratchet up his often questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it. In a year littered with lies and wild declarations, these are the five that stood out as the most startling.
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National Trust says these are ‘alarm signals we cannot ignore’ as climate breakdown puts pressure on wildlife
Extremes of weather have pushed nature to its limits in 2025, putting wildlife, plants and landscapes under severe pressure, an annual audit of flora and fauna has concluded.
Bookended by storms Éowyn and Bram, the UK experienced a sun-soaked spring and summer, resulting in fierce heath and moorland fires, followed by autumn floods.
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Hove, East Sussex: I’ve had to create a halfway house for him, between the rescue centre and the wild. Only, he’s named after an escapologist for a reason
In the dark, a three-legged hedgehog trundles clumsily by, gathering leaves to make his bed more comfortable, although apparently not comfortable enough to hibernate. This may be his eighth winter; hedgehogs lose pigment with age and his bright pink nose suggests he’s well over five – the average age of a wild hog. Except he’s not wild, or not for now. I’ve had to lock him in the garden.
His name is Houdini. He came into my life three years ago, captured on my trail camera with bone exposed from a partially missing leg. I caught him to take to the rescue centre, but he escaped before I got a chance – twice. I finally nabbed him and named him after the great escapologist. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a journey together.
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Planet’s oldest bee species and primary pollinators were under threat from deforestation and competition from ‘killer bees’
Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere.
It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting – now have the right to exist and to flourish.
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Attenborough, 99, enthuses about tube-riding pigeons, foxes, parakeets and others in Wild London for the BBC
Filming the wildlife of London requires an intrepid, agile presenter, willing to lie on damp grass after dark to encounter hedgehogs, scale heights to hold a peregrine falcon chick, and stake out a Tottenham allotment to get within touching distance of wary wild foxes.
Step forward Sir David Attenborough, who spent his 100th summer seeking out the hidden nature of his home city for an unusually personal and intimate BBC documentary.
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In 2014 the Malaysian Airlines jet vanished over the Indian Ocean. Now the team that located Shackleton’s Endurance is looking again with the latest undersea robots
More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing after veering thousands of miles off course, its location remains unknown.
The Malaysian government has promised to pay a private company, Ocean Infinity, $70m (£56m) to search for the plane on a “no find, no fee” basis.
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Spring-like weather experienced by many Americans to end, while heavy snow in Japan brings deadly conditions
A week of extremes in the US as Arctic air plunges southwards across many states, sweeping away record-breaking warmth from last weekend. With low pressure in the west drawing up warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico, much of the south and midwest basked in spring-like weather this weekend with temperatures widely an extraordinary 15-20C above normal for late December.
This week, however, most people will ditch their summer clothes for hats and scarves as a ridge pressure builds across the west, allowing for a polar air mass to dive southward, bringing freezing temperatures and the risk of snow.
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When the hot winds hit Roebourne, as many as 16 people pile into Yindjibarndi elder Lyn Cheedy’s home – one of the few with air conditioning
Few places are more exposed to extreme weather than Roebourne, a tiny cyclone-prone town on the Western Australian coast, where public housing residents endure 50C heat without air conditioning.
Lyn Cheedy, a Yindjibarndi elder, takes her grandson to the pool most afternoons.
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Action began in January, before an all-out strike in March. For locals, the flytipping, vermin, maggots and mess are taking a huge environmental and emotional toll
It’s an icy cold winter morning, and 80-year-old Mohammed Bashir is armed with a broom, tackling the large pile of rubbish that has accumulated outside his terraced house in Small Heath, Birmingham.
This has become an almost daily activity for Bashir since the city’s bin strike started 50 weeks ago and, like many in the city, he is starting to lose patience.
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Just 70km from Melbourne yet only accessible by ferry, the island’s isolation is the source of its appeal and its biggest drawback
Approaching French Island on the ferry at dawn, if you’re lucky you might be greeted by the sight of hundreds of ibis in flight. From far away, they look like starlings in murmuration, the flock constantly swelling and shifting like the sea far beneath them.
Just 70km from Melbourne in the middle of Western Port Bay, French Island is a remote haven hidden in plain sight. While nearby Phillip Island boasts popular holiday attractions, a motorcycle grand prix, a population of nearly 14,000 and a bridge to the mainland, French Island – twice its size – can only be accessed by an expensive, intermittent two-car barge from the small town of Corinella, or passenger ferry from Stony Point. It’s a refuge for native wildlife and for a small human population – just 139 in the last census – who live entirely off-grid and prefer things to stay quiet.
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