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As the first climate summit in the Amazon approaches, a gulf is opening between what the area’s farming lobby wants, and what the world needs
Yellowstone in Montana may have the most romanticised cowboy culture in the world thanks to the TV drama series of the same name starring Kevin Costner. But the true home of the 21st-century cowboy is about 7,500 miles south, in what used to be the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, where the reality of raising cattle and producing beef is better characterised by depression, market pressure and vexed efforts to prevent the destruction of the land and its people.
The toll was apparent along the rutted PA 279 road in Pará state. Signs of human and environmental stress were not hard to find during the last dry season. Record drought had dried up irrigation ponds and burned pasture grass down to the roots, leaving emaciated cattle behind the fences. Exposed red soil was whipped up into dust devils as SUVs and cattle trucks sped past on their way between Xinguara and São Félix do Xingu, which is home to both the biggest herd on the planet and the fastest erasure of forest in the Amazon.
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Salmon is often marketed as the sustainable, healthy and eco-friendly protein choice. But what you may not realise is that most of the salmon you buy is farmed, especially if you live in the UK, because Scottish salmon producers are no longer required to tell you.
Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out why it is important for consumers to know where their salmon comes from, and examines the gap between the marketing of farmed salmon and the reality for our health, the environmental and animal welfare
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From the rock sea-spurrey, which appears to grow out of solid rock, to the slender centaury that lives on a landslip, these plants exist where they do for good reason
I first encountered coastal wildflowers when I was 11. I was visiting my grandmother’s friend in Devon and a lady said: “Here, dear,” and dug up a clump of Warren crocuses – a rare plant that, at the time, was only thought to grow in the seaside resort of Dawlish Warren. She gave them to me to grow in my garden at home. But of course they didn’t grow away from the sea.
That was when I realised there was something special about coastal wildflowers. They fascinate me because, as well as being beautiful flowers, they often grow in tough locations. Take the rock sea-spurrey: a delicate little plant that appears to grow out of solid rock, such as a crevice in a cliff base. It can put up with being splashed with sea spray and baked by the summer sun. And yet it seems to thrive in that difficult, harsh environment.
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Up and down the country, volunteers are coming together to plant more of these nature-rich reserves
The 30-metre ridge runs across the moor near Yar Tor on Dartmoor, one of several faint lines that crisscross the land like aeroplane contrails. Although the open moorland looks wild, we are standing on some of the UK’s oldest farmland. These ridges, called reaves, are the ghosts of farming’s most wildlife-rich legacy: hedges.
“These reaves sadly have no function today other than to delight us. Or some of us,” says ecologist Rob Wolton. But Dartmoor’s reaves are the skeletons upon which more recent hedges were built: hundreds of thousands of miles of them. After Ireland, the UK is believed to be the most hedge-dense country in the world, and Wolton says the majority of them are more than 280 years old. Recent laser scanning shows England has enough hedges to wrap around the world almost 10 times. They are, by far, the country’s biggest nature reserve, which is why community groups, farmers and charities are rallying together to plant hedges of the future that will offer the same support to wildlife as the ancient hedges of the past.
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Unsettled weather, rain and winds have in some years stopped birds returning from winter in Africa in their tracks
Despite TS Eliot’s famous reworking of the opening lines to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, April is not usually the cruellest month, weather-wise. For birders, it sees the welcome return of the majority of long-distance migrants from their winter quarters in sub-Saharan Africa – including warblers, flycatchers and chats, along with those masters of the air: swallows, martins and swifts.
Both we and the birds hope for clear skies and soft southerly winds, allowing these global voyagers to safely cross the Channel to Britain.
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Exclusive: Ancient oaks ‘as precious as stately homes’ could receive stronger legal safeguards under new proposals
Ancient and culturally important trees in England could be given legal protections under plans set out in a UK government-commissioned report.
Sentencing guidelines would be changed so those who destroy important trees would face tougher criminal penalties. Additionally, a database of such trees would be drawn up and they could be given automatic protections, with the current system of tree preservation orders strengthened to accommodate this.
In 2020, the 300-year-old Hunningham Oak near Leamington was felled to make way for infrastructure projects.
In 2021, the Happy Man tree in Hackney, which the previous year had won the Woodland Trust’s tree of the year contest, was felled to make way for housing development.
In 2022, a 600-year-old oak was felled in Bretton, Peterborough, which reportedly caused structural damage to nearby property.
In 2023, 16 ancient lime trees on The Walks in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, were felled to make way for a dual carriageway.
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Campaigners say authorities should be doing more to clean up waters around city of nearly 5 million people
On a clear summer’s day in Cape Town, the Milnerton Lagoon was serene, reflecting the bright blue sky and Table Mountain. But there was an unmistakable stench, and up close, the water was murky.
A few hundred metres away, adults and children played in the water as it flowed into Table Bay. On the boardwalk, a sign read: “Polluted water: for health reasons, swimming and recreational activities are at your own risk.”
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Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods
One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.
Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisiscalled climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view.
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Illegally diverted rivers, seawater and poorly managed building projects have polluted the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. But the Unesco site has a vital role to play in fighting climate change
From the porch of her family home in Nueva Venecia, Magdalena, Yeidis Rodríguez Suárez watches the sunset. The view takes in the still waters of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta wetlands. Pelicans dip their beaks into the lagoon, ripples breaking the glassy surface. Distant mangroves turn from green to deep purple in the dying light.
The 428,000-hectare (1,600 sq mile) expanse of lagoons, mangroves and marshes in Colombia has been a Unesco biosphere reserve since 2000. Yet, for Rodríguez, 27, the natural abundance is little more than an illusion.
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Cattle moved between ranches, allowing meat from farms linked to deforestation to end up on supermarket shelves
Brazil is the biggest exporter of beef in the world, and more than 40% of its vast 240m-cattle herd is raised in the Amazon region. As a result, swathes of the nature-rich rainforest are being cleared and burned to create pasture.
This is pushing Amazon destruction close to a point of no return, prompting environmentalists and consumer groups to demand deforestation-free meat products. Governments, meat suppliers and retailers have promised to clean up their act, but one of the biggest hurdles is a complex and obscure supply chain that can hide the origins of meat products.
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