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As Cop17 kicks off, records since 1921 show more bee species declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alps
Most of Europe’s wild bee species and about half of its hover fly species have declined over the last century, a study has found, as a UN biodiversity summit begins in Armenia.
Records since 1921 show more bee species are declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alpine region. The richness of bee and hover fly species suffered a persistent drop in the Atlantic and Continental regions, the study found, though trends in other regions were mixed or even positive.
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Saudi Arabia, Russia and China among those claiming developed countries have skewed findings of IPCC review
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suspended an important meeting on Friday in Addis Ababa without setting out a firm timetable for its next report. The world’s governments are due to meet in less than a month for the Cop31 climate summit, and this leaves the future of scientific advice to governments on the climate in doubt.
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Elk, bear, frogs and other animals have used the overpass, which connects 39,000 acres of habitat, since its completion
Colorado officials have tracked herds of elk, bears, pronghorn and even northern leopard frogs ambling across its new wildlife overpass. According to a newly released report, the overpass, which acts as a bridge over a busy stretch of interstate, has helped cut wildlife-vehicle collisions by 91% since its completion 10 months ago.
The overpass is the centerpiece of a larger system built by the state to assist wildlife crossing the highway, which also includes miles of 8-ft tall fencing and five large wildlife underpasses.
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Failed rains and a dire El Niño threaten the waterway that sustains the country, with farmers selling cattle to survive
The cattle should be ambling, grazing contentedly, through Robert Delgado’s fields. Instead, the animals slump in the shade, tongues lolling, in futile attempts to avoid the blistering heat. Soon it will matter little whether their appetite returns, for there will be no grass left to graze.
In Azuero, an agricultural region in Panama’s Arco Seco (Dry Arc), the summer is generally relentless and unforgiving. But this year, the crucial rainy season that precedes it – typically from May to December – has brought little rain to parched fields. The watering holes, streams and rivers that farmers rely on have not been replenished, and pastures – the vital source of animal feed during the dry months – have not regenerated themselves.
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Ouse Fen, Cambridgeshire: The great egret’s story is remarkable, as is the conversion of this low-grade agricultural land into one of the richest wetlands in Britain
In keeping with this region’s summer of torrid heat and drought, the field by the path was an expanse of burnt, dead thistles. What was totally unexpected were the 13 great egrets among it. Ironically, the birds may well be here as a consequence of the climate crisis, but their appearance in a parched brown expanse felt strange.
First, they are creatures of freshwater marsh and routinely hunt fish. Second, great egrets are the size of grey herons, but pure white, aside from lemon eyes and dagger-like beaks of pale autumnal orange. What was weirdest of all was the gestalt whole; the way they threaded through that horizon of brown, long necks extending and retracting like winding snakes, and all this gleaming intensity focused on catching voles. Then a bird would fly, the white rope of its neck rising, followed by a ragged cloak of wings, turning eventually to the stolid beat of heavy flight.
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Inspired by a gothic cathedral partly built using human bones, this gleaming monument to recycling boasts 62,000 bricks derived from construction waste – each made by the public during a two-day brick-making festival
Museums often try to reflect the world around them, but rarely are they made so literally of their surroundings as the new design museum in Ghent. Rising above the Belgian city’s medieval tiled rooftops like an angular white watchtower, the new building has vacuumed up the city’s condemned concrete frames, windows, car windscreens, sinks and old toilets, and transformed them, phoenix-like, into a gleaming monument to recycling.
“There’s nothing new about reuse,” says Andy Groarke, co-founder of Carmody Groarke, the London-based architects who designed the €20m (£17m) project with local firms Atama and Re-st. “We’ve just forgotten how to do it.”
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Exclusive: Chris Hinchliff urges environment watchdog to block rules that will allow almost 16,000 new homes in one of UK’s most protected areas
The environment watchdog is being urged to intervene in “cash to trash” planning rules that will allow almost 16,000 new homes in the Norfolk Broads despite the damage to one of the UK’s most environmentally protected areas.
Labour’s flagship planning reforms allow damage to protected habitats and species to be overlooked if developers pay into a central nature restoration fund, which is used for conservation actions at a later date. These environmental delivery plans (EDPs) have been called “cash to trash” by critics, who say they roll back decades of environmental law and are a “licence to kill nature”.
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These yachts are highly popular with the ‘super-bourgeoisie’ – and getting bigger. Can anything be done to stop them destroying our seas?
Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don’t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to step on to my first teak deck at the Monaco Yacht Show, I’ve got to take my trainers off, and I’m having a sock panic. Have they got holes? Do they even match? Do they smell?
To be honest, I’ve come dressed all wrong for Europe’s big annual superyacht trade exhibition. The code for men seems to be crisp and tucked in, blazers and chinos, navy and white, sculpted hair and designer sunnies. (I went colourful, loose, casual). For women, it’s something like Riviera elegance. Everyone – whether they’re Italian, French, English, German, American, exhibitors, buyers, brokers, charterers – seems to know each other. The international superyacht community seems to be a close-knit one, and I’m not part of it. Yet.
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Every sun-dappled object is an instrument as composer Dom Coyote and sound designers Elena Peña and Dave Price conjure trip-hop-inspired rhythms in the Mendips for a new stage adaptation
The woodland is stuck to our skin. Sound designers Elena Peña and Dave Price are hunched next to me, burying a microphone into mossy ground. Composer Dom Coyote is listening on headphones, crunching out a rhythm with his boot before shucking his shoes for a subtler sound. “It’s got to be socks off, Dom,” says Price. Coyote obliges, the balls of his feet soon covered in dead conifer needles. “Do you wish you’d had a pedicure now?” Peña asks.
It’s a short drive from Bristol to this patch on the Mendip Hills, where pine cones and rowan berries scatter at the entrance to the trees. We’re on the hunt for sounds to orchestrate a staging of Max Porter’s novel Lanny. The adaptation by Somerset-based Bea Roberts moves the spectral story of a lost boy and a mulch-guzzling creature from commuting-distance-to-London to commuting-distance-to-Bristol, with director Nancy Medina wanting the show’s sound to exist within the city’s historical music scene. “A kind of trip-hop world,” says Coyote, who is exploring this idea by replacing electronic beats with those of the natural world. “So we need to go and play the forest.” Every sun-dappled object becomes an instrument. Up on his feet, Price tests out a rhythm on a deep-timbred trunk. He points to the tree. “Any notes for the snare drum department?”
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So far not a single target of the plan has been met. As negotiators convene for Cop17, the pressure is on to find a way to honour the commitments made at previous summits
Passersby could smell the dead fish before they saw them. In August, more than 3,000 pike, roach, carp and rudd were found lifeless along the River Wensum in Norwich. Some gasped for air in their final moments, desperate for the oxygen that heatwave conditions had depleted in the water. Investigators believe that the die-off was triggered by heavy rainfall that flushed through high concentrations of pollution at a time when wildlife were already struggling.
The 45-mile (70km) chalk river is one of about 250 in the country. They are a geological accident almost unique to Britain – and one of Earth’s rarest habitats. They emerge from chalk aquifers and are home to species such as freshwater shrimp, otters and stoneflies, also providing drinking water for millions of people. But just 11 have formal protection, with many ravaged by sewage pollution and overextraction. The Norfolk river is one of the few that does have legal protection, but it is in poor ecological health.
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