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Environmental charity Fidra says 168 of 195 SSSIs it surveyed are contaminated with tiny pellets
Plastic nurdles have been found in 84% of important nature sites surveyed in the UK.
Nurdles are tiny pellets that the plastics industry uses to make larger products. They were found in 168 of 195 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), so named because of the rare wildlife they harbour. They are given extra protections in an effort to protect them from pollution.
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Environmental body says modest investment and changes can help preserve long list of animals, fungi and lichen
Almost 3,000 species ranging from glorious birds to tiny lichen are in peril in Wales because they are clinging on in a handful of locations or even fewer, a groundbreaking report has revealed.
The report from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) highlights that, since the millennium, 11 species have already been lost to Cymru, including the turtle dove and belted beauty moth. It warns that 2,955 other terrestrial or freshwater species are at serious risk because they are confined to five locations or fewer.
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Wellington, Somerset: The five years we’ve spent transforming this patch has been recognised with an RHS award. We’re proud, but we’re not done yet
Volunteers from Transition Town Wellington (TTW) are out in the rain on Fox’s Field this morning – there’s always work to be done, whatever the weather. Five years back, this 8.5-acre field was just rough grass and nettles; today, it’s a thriving forest garden encircled by a food hedge, or “fedge”. Saplings we’d planted as knee‑high muddy twigs now spread their branches above us. There are winding woodchip pathways, a riot of herbs, seven‑foot high cardoons holding their fat black seedheads up to the lowering sky.
We’re clearing the grass and old hay from on top of the black plastic clearance mulch, heaving it into wheelbarrows and piling it up into new heaps to make compost for next year’s mulch.
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It took some oblique wording, but Saudi Arabia made a last-minute decision to sign deal that marks departure for Cop
Dawn was breaking over the Amazonian city of Belém on Saturday morning, but in the windowless conference room it could have been day or night. They had been stuck there for more than 12 hours, dozens of ministers representing 17 groups of countries, from the poorest on the planet to the richest, urged by the Brazilian hosts to accept a settlement cooked up the day before.
Tempers were short, the air thick as the sweaty and exhausted delegates faced up to reality: there would not be a deal here in Brazil. The 30th UN climate conferencewould end in abject failure.
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The Nature inFocus photography competition 2025 announced its winners at the Nature inFocus festival hosted at Jayamahal Palace in Bengaluru, India.
Close to 16,000 images were submitted by more than 1,250 photographers from more than 38 countries.
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Scarborough and Bognor Regis among places where water is so polluted it is not recommended for swimming
One in seven (13%) of England’s bathing waters are rated as polluted, and one in 14 so polluted they are not recommended for swimming.
Famous beaches including Bognor Regis, Scarborough’s South Bay and Littlehaven Beach in South Shields were all rated “poor” in the latest classifications from the Environment Agency, which means they are not recommended for swimming.
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At Maple Farm, nature is returning in droves: nightingales, grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects. All due to the vision of a group determined to accelerate its recovery
The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded spot in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders, pointing to the woodland around us. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, but the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba, the group’s engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”
Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the results are already visible, and audible. The farm used to be a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
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Scientists excited by progress in bold project to see if native species can train themselves to survive alongside cats
In the middle of the Australian outback’s arid deserts, many of the country’s distinctive small marsupials – the bilbies, bandicoots and quolls – have been missing for a century or more, wiped out by land clearing and the hunting prowess of feral cats. Felis catus – introduced by European invaders and settlers – was too fast and too agile for the native mammals that had not evolved with this voracious and adaptable new predator.
While efforts to rid the landscape of cats have so far failed, a group of scientists have entered into a bold project to see if small marsupials can train themselves to survive alongside the cats that drove their species almost to extinction.
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As Mumbai sees increased energy demand from new datacenters, particularly from Amazon, the filthiest neighbourhood in one of India’s largest cities must keep its major coal plants
Each day, Kiran Kasbe drives a rickshaw taxi through his home neighbourhood of Mahul on Mumbai’s eastern seafront, down streets lined with stalls selling tomatoes, bottle gourds and aubergines–and, frequently, through thick smog.
Earlier this year, doctors found three tumours in his 54-year-old mother’s brain. It’s not clear exactly what caused her cancer. But people who live near coal plants are much more likely to develop the illness, studies show, and the residents of Mahul live a few hundred metres down the road from one.
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Blazes that smoulder in the permafrost, only to reignite, are extending fire season though winter, leaving vegetation struggling to recover
In May 2023, a lightning strike hit the forest in Donnie Creek, British Columbia, and the trees started to burn. It was early in the year for a wildfire, but a dry autumn and warm spring had turned the forest into a tinderbox, and the flames spread rapidly. By mid-June, the fire had become one of largest in the province’s history, burning through an area of boreal forest nearly twice the size of central London. That year, more of Canada burned than ever before.
The return of cold and snow at the close of the year typically signal the end of the wildfire season. But this time, the fire did not stop. Instead, it smouldered in the soil underground, insulated from the freezing conditions by the snowpack. The next spring, it reemerged as a “zombie fire” that continued to burn until August 2024. By then, more than 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) had been destroyed.
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