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Cockrow Bridge in Surrey will open in the coming weeks to provide wildlife, including lizards and insects, with the ability to move between fragmented habitats
When James Herd moved near to Wisley Common 17 years ago, the heathland nature reserve was teeming with wildlife. “I’d take the dog around the common in spring and summer, and every few hundred metres I’d hear the rustle of a lizard in the undergrowth – and I’d see adders,” he says.
But over the past decade, the Surrey Wildlife Trust’s director of reserves management, who oversees the internationally important habitat, has seen that wildlife become depleted.
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Levels of Pfas in northern gannet eggs in Canada fell up to 74% over 55-year period of study
Levels of some of the most dangerous Pfas compounds have dramatically fallen in Canadian seabird eggs, which the authors of a new peer-reviewed study say illustrates how regulations are effective.
Researchers looked at Pfas levels in the eggs of northern gannets in the St Lawrence Seaway basin over a 55-year period. Pfas levels shot up from the 1960s through the peak of the chemicals’ use in the late 1990s and early aughts, then fell.
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After a series of deaths on the beaches of Brittany, one bereaved family set out to prove the foul-smelling bloom was to blame
When her phone rang at around 5pm on 8 September 2016, Rosy Auffray was still at work. It was one of her daughters, distressed, calling to tell her that their father, Jean-René, had not come back from his daily run. Only the family dog had returned, alone and exhausted. Rosy rushed back home.
When she arrived, Rosy noticed that the dog was behaving bizarrely: she refused to walk, then collapsed under a bush. Her fur stank of rotten eggs, of overflowing sewers. Rosy knew where that smell came from: the mudflats roughly three miles from the family home in Brittany, where seaweed had been accumulating and putrefying. The soggy, decomposing seaweed stretched for miles along the shore, sometimesas much asfive feet thick, killing other plants and suffocating fish and small birds.
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Data from missions showing critically low snowpack on mountains across the west raises alarm among experts
High above the jagged peaks of California’s Sierra Nevada, the view from the cockpit is breathtaking. At first glance, the mountains appear draped in a pristine white blanket. But as the flight crew gears up for a high-stakes mission, the sensors onboard this specialized aircraft prove that looks can be deceiving.
“This is a distinct dry year,” says Tom Painter, CEO of Airborne Snow Observatories.
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Move by largest donor to environment programme poses further uncertainty for already troubled negotiations
The largest donor to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has paused funding to the body before its revised budget on 12 May, triggering concern among member states and NGOs.
The news could carry significance for the already troubled plastic treaty negotiations being overseen by Unep. Since 2022 countries have been struggling to agree on how to deal with the volume of plastics being produced and used, a subject widely acknowledged to be one of the most serious environmental issues of the age, but despite six rounds of talks there has been no agreement in sight.
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Hunt’s Cross, Liverpool: A survey of the roadside verge turns up 21 species including cuckoo flower and yarrow. But not everyone likes it
The impact was visceral. For days last spring I watched an army of confederates, with their uniforms of fiery gold bands and anthracite hoops, advancing up the road. They were cinnabar moth caterpillars, gathered on their host plant, common ragwort. And thanks to Liverpool city council’s observance of No Mow May, there were plenty of both in the roadside verge near my home.
But days before the month ended, the mowing team arrived, like pilgrims breaking their Lenten fast early. The ragworts and their parties of travellers were churned up and spat out. I was desolate.
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With the help of citizen scientists, researchers studying rare humpback ‘jaw-gaping’ believe the move could be a social display
Off the coast of Western Australia, a humpback whale is “pirouetting”, sweeping its pectoral fins through the water, its massive jaw hanging wide open. Surrounded by companions, the animal isn’t lunging for a meal: rather, it is putting on a mysterious behavioural display.
This underwater ballet, captured on camera by an onlooker and shared online, is one of the clearest examples of a rarely documented phenomenon known as “gaping”.
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As dingoes vanish from parts of Australia, a new documentary is calling on governments to move away from eradication and towards solutions that benefit both farmers and animals
Carol Pettersen was a small child when her family moved deep into the bush around the Fitzgerald river, on Western Australia’s south coast. It was the 1940s, and her white father and Aboriginal mother had broken the law simply by being together. So the bush became their refuge.
In that country of mallee heath, banksias and low coastal scrub, dingoes were part of the family’s hidden world. At night, Pettersen could hear them calling through the dark; by day, she glimpsed them moving through the bush – a flicker of red fur among the trees.
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London mayor talks up coalition-building, highlights his environmental record, and worries national Labour party is on the wrong track
When Sadiq Khan was first elected as mayor of London 10 years ago, Barack Obama was US president, the UK was still in the European Union and Leicester City had just been crowned the unlikely champions of the English Premier League.
In the intervening decade, Donald Trump has gone from reality TV star to two-time US president, the UK has had six different prime ministers, and Brexit has convulsed the country. London has been rocked by tragedies ranging from terror attacks to the Grenfell Tower fire.
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Warming ocean waters are priming beaches and raw shellfish for Vibrio even as scientists are trying to stay one step ahead
Bailey Magers and Sunil Kumar cut strange figures on Pensacola Beach. Bags of disinfectant solution surrounded them on the white sand; their gloved hands juggled test tubes while layers of rubber and plastic shielded their skin from the elements. As the two organized their seawater samples on the popular Florida shoreline last August, an older woman wearing a swimsuit walked over to ask what they were doing.
“We’re just actively monitoring water quality,” they told her, but she pressed on.
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