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Farmer Derek Sayer let a boggy field run wild and just one annual hay-cut has led to remarkable biodiversity
Tucked away on a country lane, a small field bursts with yellow and pink flowers. Quail and whitethroats call from the thick hedges and the plants, including common centaury, yellow rattle and marsh and common spotted orchids, bounce with hoverflies and butterflies.
More than 150 plant species have been recorded on Sayer’s Old Meadow, in north Norfolk, England, which is remarkable when there was just one – oilseed rape – growing there 21 years ago.
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Similar initiatives have been launched from Barcelona to Bogotá, but they have misinformation, political pressure and vested interests stacked against them
Ten years ago, Alastair Harper was an advocate for young people’s health sitting in a stuffy meeting room in London planning an air pollution campaign. “My phone started buzzing,” he said. “I took the call, and then told the room I needed to leave immediately.
“I had to get to UCLH [one of London’s major hospitals]. My own child was headed there in a blue-lit ambulance because she was struggling to breathe London’s toxic air.”
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Surge in proposals follows Labour’s lifting of de facto ban, with about 45 plans submitted in the year to March
Plans for new onshore windfarms in England have reached their highest annual level in a decade, after the government overturned the Conservatives’ de facto ban in 2015.
About 45 applications for new onshore windfarms were submitted in the year to March,according to a Guardian analysis of government data.
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North Sea oil, once the driving force of the UK economy, may be dwindling but it remains a symbol of prestige and a rich resource for political debate
When oil was first discovered off the north-east coast of Scotland in September 1969, industry folklore has it that the duty superintendent on the rig carefully poured it into a pickle jar commandeered from the canteen and took it back to Amoco’s Great Yarmouth office in Norfolk. There, it was emptied into an ash tray, sniffed and then set alight.
From that modest start, North Sea oil – as the huge basin of oil and gas reserves quickly became known – emerged as a driving force of the British economy and a symbol of national power and renewal as the UK emerged from the Opec oil crisis.
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Exclusive: campaigners warn 600-year-old New Barn at Harmondsworth could be ‘shaken to pieces’ by vibrations
Six hundred years after it was built, England’s largest surviving medieval timber-framed barn could now be “shaken to pieces” by aircraft vibrations, campaigners warn.
The public has until 1 September to submit objections to the Heathrow airport expansion, which could threaten the survival of the New Barn at Harmondsworth, considered a remarkable example of medieval architecture.
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Experts say fires caused by wrongly discarded lithium batteries, such as those in vapes, are putting lives at risk
Fires at recycling centres caused by wrongly discarded lithium batteries such as those found in vapes are occurring at the rate of more than 10 a week, according to new figures.
Experts say the sheer volume of battery fires now occurring at waste facilities has reached a crisis that is putting lives at risk, costing £1bn a year and frustrating fire chiefs.
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Athletes faced last-minute cancelling of 2.4-mile swim, as experts say pollution and extreme heat are causing blooms
As far as athletic accomplishments go, few are held in higher regard than completing an Ironman triathlon.
The amount of training required to tackle the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26-mile run that make up the course, as well as the expensive equipment required to train in the first place, means that only about 50,000 people in the world complete a full race and earn the title of Ironman every year.
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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions probes an intriguing scientific question in relation to the climate emergency
Readers reply: Is it inevitable that consumerism will literally fill up the planet?
If all the vehicles on the planet had their tyres pumped up with CO2, would this lock up enough carbon to lower the amount in the air significantly? Would there be other issues, such as the carbon cost of trapping it all into the tyres? Chris Coldwell, Lancaster
Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to[email protected]. A selection will be published next Sunday.
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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions considers whether there is sufficient global physical capacity for all our discarded and worn-out purchases
• This week’s question: If all car tyres were filled with CO2, would this cut atmospheric carbon significantly?
If consumer capitalism continues at its current rate, will we reach a point at which there is literally no space left on Earth for all the stuff that has been created? Alex Robinson, Alnwick, Northumberland
Send new questions to[email protected].
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An 1857 decree to drain swamps and plant a monoculture, detritus from the trees and global heating combined to produce the conditions for the Gironde inferno
The ruinous fires that overran parts of France this summer have burned more land than ever recorded, forced more people from their homes than at any point since the second world war and caused what scientists suspect is the country’s first firestorm thundercloud. The smoke from France’s biggest inferno in nearly 80 years choked Limoges, a city 125 miles (200km) from the flames, with more toxic dust than Delhi residents inhaled on the city’s worst day of smog last year.
The blaze that tore through forests outside Bordeaux in late July took just a few weeks to reforge France’s relationship with fire, but the conditions behind it were centuries in the making.
Continue reading...Nearly 600 practices in England have withdrawn from NHS dentistry over the last 10 years, as the service heads towards a two-tier system.
A new jab extended the length of time patients were cancer free, but it is unclear for how long.
Young carers face huge disadvantages growing up - one teenager explains what life is like.
Hundreds of thousands of people with type 2 diabetes could get access to a new weekly insulin jab to replace daily injections.
A Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has published a report with concerns vaping is a gateway to smoking
Hundreds have fallen ill with salmonella infections in an outbreak linked to imported eggs.
Children's lung capacity caught up with their peers in less polluted areas once a clean air zone came in, a study shows.
Most of the cases were in England in recent weeks, linked to eating imported eggs, experts believe.
Multiple children are feared to have been conceived using sperm and egg donors which were not the ones selected by the parents.
An eye surgeon says that fewer people have been seeking treatment for eye damage than after the UK's last total solar eclipse in 1999.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.
