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Powered by sun and wind, the uncrewed vehicle will collect data to help Australian scientists better understand how oceans absorb emissions
A small uncrewed vessel has embarked on a lap around Antarctica and may not return for months.
The seven-metre craft, which looks like a large kayak in hi-vis orange, is expected to travel about 22,000km through inhospitable waters, propelled by powerful westerly winds and energy from the sun. The journey is seven times the distance between Sydney and Perth.
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Lewes, East Sussex: Owls, bats, badgers and countless birds are my new neighbours, but I’ve been particularly taken by a mystery tree – and its resident treecreeper
I have made the woods my home, moving from Brighton to the outskirts of Lewes, where the garden backs on to the remains of an old oak wood. Here there’s a riot of wildlife: a badger that makes snuffle holes in the lawn, a family of tawny owls in the trees and a cauldron of bats in the chimney.
I have plans to let the wood expand into the garden, but in the meantime there’s a mystery tree whose branches almost reach my bedroom window. It’s nearly dead, stressed from too many droughts, perhaps, or coming to a natural end. Some have suggested it’s a willow, but I suspect it’s a cultivated species I’m not familiar with.
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After the available money ran out after just six hours, some fear they will have to reverse efforts to boost nature
On Tuesday morning, farmer Peter Hatley logged on to his computer at 10am. England’s 2026 sustainable farming incentive (SFI) was opening for applicants and, after three bad harvests, the money would be a lifeline.
But Hatley, who runs a 240-hectare family farm in Cambridgeshire, was faced with repeated error messages. He called the government’s helpline, which he says acknowledged there were problems with the scheme, but says by the time the problem was fixed, the money had gone.
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Award-winning novelist celebrates late partner’s love of birds with gift to establish the Graeme Gibson chair in avian biology
If she could be any bird, Margaret Atwood would transform into a raven. “They’re very smart. They’re social, playful and just a very successful bird,” she says while seated in a corner of a bird observatory in the Lake Erie Islands archipelago. “They’re quite an intelligent problem solver.”
The observatory, which she set up with her late partner, Graeme Gibson, is located on the west shore of Pelee Island – the southernmost community in Canada – and is so new that there are no lightbulbs in a handful of lamps.
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After years of illegal mass flytipping in Gospić, fed-up residents decided to take matters into their own hands
“Gospić is our home,” Željka Šikić shouted to a crowd of 40,000 people outside the Croatian parliament earlier this month. The slogan is the name of a campaign she helped to set up to protest against the illegal dumping of waste in Gospić, a town in the mountainous Lika region of central Croatia.
Between 2022 and 2024, waste was illegally abandoned at several sites in the town. At one of the biggest, just 50 metres from Šikić’s home, an estimated 35,000 tonnes of waste, some of it hazardous, was dumped and buried.
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National Trust has transformed Sandilands in Lincolnshire into a nature reserve with wetlands and wading pools
There is no chance of a birdie or an eagle any more. But there are skylarks, short-eared owls, avocets and curlew.
Sandilands, a former golf course on the Lincolnshire coast, has been transformed by the National Trust into a 2km-long nature reserve with wetlands, wading pools, rough grassland and coastal scrub.
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Low Catton, East Yorkshire: It was King Harold’s last taste of victory. How chilling it is to visit this unassuming spot and imagine the bloody scene back in 1066
The field with freshly sprouted winter wheat sloping down to the River Derwent looks ordinary; however, today feels anything but. Just standing here, strange chills are swarming through my body and converging in my chest.
It happened here.
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Even before adding solar panels, your roof can help you keep cool and lower your energy bills
Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at [email protected]
With an historic El Niño under wayin the Pacific, Australia could face record temperatures this summer. For those in hot homes, reflective roof coatings can be a cost-effective way to beat the heat.
The upstairs bedrooms and office in Nic Jacobson’s two storey home in inner-suburban Adelaide used to get unbearably hot, even when his large air-conditioning system was running flat out.
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Many people despise these birds for violently defending their babies in nests they create in ridiculously vulnerable areas. My community, however, became devoted to them
It was early September when the two spur-winged plover chicks hatched.
They hit the ground running, literally. Shortly after emerging from the speckled brown eggs their mother had laid in a shallow divot, they were scurrying around on their disproportionately long, stilt-like legs. They looked like fluffy brown and white cotton balls that could blow away in the wind.
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Syngenta denies keeping relevant data from the EPA as paraquat stays in the US market despite global bans
Sweden started ringing the alarm bell more than 20 years ago, calling for a ban on the weedkilling chemical paraquat in 2004. One by one, dozens of other countries did the same as evidence of paraquat risks to human health mounted. Even the Chinese government, which owns the longtime paraquat maker Syngenta, halted domestic use of the pesticide a decade ago after conducting its own studies on paraquat safety and finding troubling results.
In the US, two states – Vermont and California – have recently also banned paraquat, citing risks that include an association between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease shown in years of scientific research. And California regulators announced in August that paraquat makers voluntarily agreed to stop selling the chemical after the state identified health concerns in connection with its use in new research. Several federal lawmakers have pushed for a nationwide ban.
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