-
District judge orders record fine for region and says incidents of pollution cannot be tolerated
A water company has been ordered to pay a record fine of almost £8m for hundreds of sewage spillsat popular bathing spots and sensitive habitats in Cornwall and Devon.
On one occasion, untreated sewage gushed through a harbour wall on a bank holiday weekend but South West Water (SWW) engineers took 10 hours to attend.
Continue reading...
-
Food and Agriculture Organization urges governments to make forest restoration a national priority
The world faces a “narrowing window” to restore forests essential for food security and resistance to the climate emergency, a United Nations report has warned.
More than 489m hectares (1.2bn acres) of forests have been cleared since 1990, while an even greater area is degraded, the world body said in a call for governments to make forest restoration a national priority.
Continue reading...
-
If more cities start regulating outdoor lighting, we humans could make the environment better for all living creatures
Every night, I can turn off the lights in my room – but I can’t do anything about the outdoor lights in the walkway or parking lot that leak through the curtains.Living in Portland, where the night is still illuminated by street lights, porch lights and parking lot glare, I forgot what it actually feels like to sleep in darkness.
I was excited when I realized my travels to a residency in south-east Oregon would show me a sky I hadn’t experienced in decades. In the Oregon outback, part of the International Dark Sky Places network, I would be surrounded by 2.5m acres of unpolluted night in every direction.
Continue reading...
-
The Marches, Shropshire: On a day of micro-dramas past and present, we witness a Welsh victory over the English, just as it was 861 years ago
I’m telling the story from a pub in the bailey opposite the ruins of Oswestry Castle. There in 1165, Henry II, the Angevin (Anglo-Norman) king of England, gathered troops from the Marcher Lords to advance on an alliance of Welsh princes for control of the Marches.
The previous Sunday, 861 years later, we went the same way as Henry’s army to Chirk Castle, Castell Y Waun a’r Ardd, to see a re-enactment of the Battle of Crogen. The present castle wasn’t built back then and the battle at Crogen was in the Ceiriog Valley below. Henry had sent woodsmen to raze woodland in the valley to remove the Welsh advantage, but he left one oak, Quercus petraea, at which Owain Gwynedd gathered his army.
Continue reading...
-
People living next to a chemicals plant near Blackpool were tested for ‘forever chemicals’. Last week they received the alarming results
Last February, I got a call from a woman called Sam Hammond. We had been speaking on and off for a while over her growing concern that her garden could be affected by pollution from a nearby chemical plant.
That morning, Sam had been hand-delivered a letter from her council informing her that her pet ducks’ eggs, reared in her garden, were contaminated with Pfas chemicals.
Continue reading...
-
Indigenous communities play crucial role, as ‘genetic bank’ area of wetland offers hope for critically endangered reptile
In the 1990s, conservationists in Cambodia feared the Siamese crocodile had disappeared for good. Fishing and hunting had devastated the species throughout the 20th century, leaving populations across its native south-east Asia on the brink of extinction.
But in villages dotted among the wetlands of the remote Cardamom mountains, Indigenous Chorng communities still reported seeing them. Passing this knowledge to researchers surveying the area in 2000 led to an official recording of the species – and bolstered the mission to revive the population.
Continue reading...
-
Amanda Blanc says flooding threat is ‘absolutely increasing’, as she also warns ministers over ‘kite flying’ before budget
The boss of Britain’s biggest insurer has said that homes being built now in England could become uninsurable in the future because they are sited in flood-risk areas.
Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of Aviva, said the flooding threat was “absolutely increasing”.
Continue reading...
-
Kalpana Nepali was seven months pregnant when the catastrophic flash floods hit last month, while Pooja Pariyal spent three days on a hospital roof waiting to be rescued. Now, they are living precariously in temporary shelters
For three days, Pooja Pariyal waited on the roof of Trishuli hospital with her three-month-old daughter, Ridhika. On the ground below and around the building, most of her town had been destroyed and churned into a sea of mud in the catastrophic flash floods that surged through the Himayalan border region of Nepal and Tibet in August.
“Those three days were living hell for me, with no food, no working toilet and no one to help with the baby,” she says. “I had nothing to clean my baby’s soiled clothes. My milk supply had reduced because I was hungry and this poor little thing would cry her lungs out.
Continue reading...
-
Six months ago, Samba made a brave, unprecedented escape from Marwell zoo. Her life on the lam continues today. We join the team hunting desperately to find her in the Hampshire countryside
Samba the capybara is still at large. Along with her older sister, Tango, the intrepid rodent made her escape from Marwell zoo in Winchester in March. Tango all but gave herself up on day two; Samba broke for the marshy wetlands of the River Itchen. Word spread and within days the fugitive was an international social media star. But despite an intense search, the dense Hampshire countryside has afforded her a haven. Six months on, Samba remains elusive.
Marwell’s staff still aren’t sure how the capybaras escaped, although they have their suspicions. Tango and Samba were born on Jimmy’s Farm and Wildlife Park in Suffolk in the summer of 2025. They arrived at Marwell zoo on Monday 16 March, to great excitement. “They were a little bit shy when they got here, as you would expect,” says Laura Read, the chief executive of Marwell Wildlife. “But they were fine.” They were immediately placed in a quarantined habitat, as is standard procedure for new arrivals. The plan was to keep them there for 30 days.
Continue reading...
-
As gold prices surge, illegal mining has laid waste to swathes of Tambopata National Reserve’s rainforest
“Halt, stop right there,” shouts a Peruvian Navy Seal, firing warning shots into the air. But the fleeing man pays no attention, scrambling up to the rim of a football pitch-sized crater and disappearing into the dense rainforest as the commandos give chase, swearing and shooting.
Meanwhile, other marines set dynamite charges on a makeshift wooden raft that floats in the crater, which is essentially an enormous pit of opaque, stagnant water. The raft has a diesel-fuelled suction pump motor with thick plastic tubing used to suck up and sift through river sediment for tiny particles of gold.
Continue reading...
