-
Exclusive: 1,680 football pitches of protected natural land in England, Wales and Northern Ireland lost in five years
Nature and farmland equivalent in size to that of the New Forest – 604 sq km – was lost to concrete and bricks and mortar in the UK between 2018 and 2023, according to an investigation by the Guardian and European partners.
In the same period the loss of some of the most protected and special natural areas in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, known as national landscapes, reached 12 sq km; equivalent to 1,680 football pitches worth of natural land.
Continue reading...
-
Theresa May, Alok Sharma, business and church leaders say plan would harm UK and not even Margaret Thatcher would have countenanced it
The former prime minister Theresa May has condemned a promise made by Kemi Badenoch to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Tories win the next general election, calling the plans a “catastrophic mistake”.
She joined other leading Tories, business groups, scientists and the Church of England in attacking the Conservative leader’s announcement, which would remove the requirement for governments to set “carbon budgets” laying out how far greenhouse gas emissions will be cut every five years, up to 2050.
Continue reading...
-
Latest disposal by ‘punk’ beer company follows £37m loss and closure of 10 pubs
BrewDog has sold a Highlands rewilding estate it bought with great fanfare in 2020 after posting losses last year of £37m on its beer businesses.
The company paid £8.8m for Kinrara near Aviemore and pledged it would plant millions of trees on 50 sq km of land, initially telling customers the project would be partly funded by sales of its Lost Forest beer.
Continue reading...
-
Pioneering scientist whose breakthrough studies of chimpanzees changed how the animals were perceived and led to greater protection
During the final months of 1960, in what is now Gombe national park, Tanzania, Jane Goodall, then 26 years old, made two discoveries that established her name and reputation as a field scientist studying wild apes. First, she observed chimpanzees eating red meat. Before that moment, the scientific consensus, based on virtually no direct observation, was that chimpanzees were vegetarians.
Then she witnessed an even more unexpected behaviour: a chimpanzee male, crouched next to a high earthen tower built by termites, studiously modifying a long stalk of grass until it became a useful probe. The chimp then inserted the probe into a narrow tunnel that descended deep into the mound. As Goodall soon came to understand, members of the insect species’ soldier caste inside the mound instinctively lock their powerful mandibles on to any intruding object – and thus they became, once the probe was carefully drawn back out, victims of a crafty ape. The termites, potentially a significant source of nutrition, were tasty enough to serve as food for several species of monkey in that part of east Africa. Only chimpanzees, however, had developed the cultural tradition of “fishing” for them.
Continue reading...
-
A 30-year effort driven by long-term policies is finally paying off in Santiago in Chile – but the challenge is far from over
In Santiago, this winter was different. The mountains surrounding the city – the same ones that usually trap smog and turn it into a “pressure cooker” – were visible more days than usual.
For nearly 30 years Chile’s capital has been experimenting in how to reduce air pollution; in the last few years the work has at last begun paying dividends and 2025 was the third best year in terms of fewest hours of critical pollution episodes since the first atmospheric prevention and decontamination plan in 1997. Over the last decade, hours of exposure to high levels of pollution fell by 66%, which, according to the environment minister, Maisa Rojas, means the 7.5 million residents of the metropolitan region “are breathing cleaner air”.
Continue reading...
-
Photographer Jem Cresswell spent five years documenting the southern hemisphere’s humpback whales in the waters surrounding the Tonga Trench for his new book Giants, out now
Continue reading...
-
If successful, method could be used to support long-term conservation of species vulnerable to extinction
Researchers are to attempt to rear swallowtail butterflies from eggs frozen in liquid nitrogen in a test to see whether cryopreservation could support the long-term conservation of Britain’s largest native species.
In a groundbreaking project, researchers will freeze eggs of captive-bred European swallowtails in liquid nitrogen at -196C and attempt to rear butterflies from the unfrozen eggs, comparing their success with butterflies reared from eggs that have never been frozen.
Continue reading...
-
For 18 years, Cate Blanchett has railed against the hated garden gadget – and she’s not alone. From Hugh Grant to Danny DeVito, the backpack blower has united stars in unlikely, furious contempt
Consider the great Hollywood feud. Perhaps Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s mutual loathing comes to mind? Or Marlon Brando’s 40-year-old beef with Burt Reynolds? Maybe the more recent tensions between Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh? Well, let me tell you: these are absolutely nothing compared to Cate Blanchett and her indefatigable animus towards … the leaf blower. Seemingly every single leaf blower.
Truly, this is one of the greatest celebrity animosities of this century. The earliest extant Blanchett-rant on the subject is a W Magazine interview, way back in 2007, when she ambiguously characterised leaf blowers – a lot of fence-sitting here – as “everything that is wrong with the human race”.
Continue reading...
-
Experts are finding new and more humane ways to protect the last 74 southern resident killer whales
Nestled between the US state of Washington and Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands are a vibrant haven for North American wildlife. Here, all of the world’s remaining 74 southern resident sub-species of orcas find sanctuary, surfacing daily from the depths of the Salish Sea.
Out at sea watching the whales is Dr Deborah Giles, an orca scientist, with her colleague, Eba. Eba is a brown and white rescue dog with a remarkable nose. Found as a cold, wet, five-month-old puppy on the streets of Sacramento, she has been detecting whale scat – or faeces – since the age of four.
Continue reading...
-
Locals complain of a changed landscape, flooding, dust and disruption as rail project cuts through area of outstanding natural beauty
Margaret Bunce used to look from her cottage window over a swoop of fields of wheat and small copses. Now when she opens her curtains each morning, the rural valley between Great Missenden and Wendover is dominated by the concrete and earthworks of HS2.
Orange-clad men and their yellow diggers and dumpers are building cuttings and viaducts to take the high-speed railway on its path through a swath of the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), now known as a national landscape.
Continue reading...
