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New data reveals an extra 5,000 tonnes of waste is sent to landfill or incineration from November to March
Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicalsinto drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.
They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.
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More lobbyists for the controversial technology were present this year, despite debate about its viability
At least 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been granted access to the UN climate summit, known as Cop29, the Guardian can reveal.
That is five more CCS lobbyists than were present at last year’s climate talks, despite the overall number of participants shrinking significantly from about 85,000 to about 70,000.
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The grim negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, have shown the need for reform of the UN annual global climate talks
‘Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9C of warming by 2100.” It is a bleak assessment of our planet’s future and could have been made by just about any environmental organisation on Earth.
In fact, they are the views of an international group of climate experts that highlight, in sharp detail, the manifest failings of the UN’s annual Cop climate summits, whose 29th iteration is now being staged in Baku, Azerbaijan. These talks, they said last week, are no longer fit for purpose and need an urgent overhaul.
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Conservation group warns species threatened by exploding populations of grey squirrels who carry lethal virus
Red squirrels will soon disappear from England unless the government funds a vaccine against squirrelpox, one of the biggest groups set up to protect the species has warned.
Conservationists say the English population of non-native grey squirrels has exploded this year, triggered by warmer winters which enable mating pairs to feed and breed all year round, and estimate that 70% are carrying squirrelpox, a virus which is lethal only to red squirrels.
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Far-right president may announce country’s departure from agreement after meeting Donald Trump
There is growing concern that Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, is set to announce his country’s departure from the Paris climate accord.
Earlier this week, negotiators from Milei’s government were ordered to leave the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, after just three days. Now, the Guardian understands that Milei is considering announcing a formal withdrawal from the agreement, and that a decision could be made after a formal meeting with Donald Trump.
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Otterspool, Merseyside: This is land built on waste-tips and spoil, but wildlife is thriving. Perhaps one day the otters will return, too
A chill autumn day and the turnstones were there. I knew they would be; they always are at Otterspool. With their tweed plumage, bright red legs and rattling, confiding chatter, they delight me every time. With their clockwork skittering and scattering, they are best seen at high tide, when they take refuge on the steep sandstone steps from the promenade down to the River Mersey. There is a pecking order, with each one choosing a different step. I want to know how step status is agreed.
Otterspool, in south Liverpool, was once just that – the Otter’s Pool. The otters, the pool and the apostrophe are long gone (we live in hope that the former will return), but today the area attracts much life, both human and non-human. Emerging from an place of 1950s municipal waste tips and spoil from the construction of the first Mersey tunnel, Otterspool is now a green place resurgent.
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Brown bears, introduced into Trentino province 20 years ago, have begun to clash with the local human population
Franca Gherardini used to cherish the sublime views from her home in Caldes, a village surrounded by forests on the slopes of the Brenta Dolomites in northern Italy’s Trentino province.
But now she tries to shut out the scene as much as possible, rolling down the window canopy in the morning to avoid looking towards the area where her son, Andrea Papi, 26, was killed by a bear.
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Wildlife experts in US west have found small aircraft are ideal for protecting humans and livestock from predators
The first time that Terry Vandenbos watched a bear run from a drone, on a spring day two years ago, he was chasing the animal himself. After he saw the grizzly cross a road near his property, the Montana rancher hopped on his all-terrain vehicle, planning to scare it away from his cattle if needed.
But the bear began sprinting away when he was still far from it, looking over its shoulder as it ran, and Vandenbos looked up too; overhead, a small drone was following the bear, its four propellers emitting a high-pitched whine as it sent the animal towards a nearby lake.
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Campaigners blame United Utilities for blighting famous lake with raw effluent
• United Utilities refuses to hand over data on sewage discharges into Windermere
A short stroll from Beatrix Potter’s former farmhouse in the Lake District are the waters of Cunsey Beck, nestling in the breathtaking landscape that inspired the tales of childhood favourites Jeremy Fisher and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
Campaigners say the once clear waters are regularly blighted by raw sewage from a nearby works. New figures obtained by the Observerreveal the Near Sawrey plant is alleged to have illegally discharged untreated sewage on 56 days from 2021 to 2023.
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Her last book sold 2m copies. Now the Native American ecologist is taking on capitalism. She talks about how the ‘gift economy’ could heal divisions across the US
When the ecologist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer is in a city for work and starts to feel disconnected from the natural world, she likes to do a breathing exercise. She inhales and thinks about how she is breathing in the breath of plants. And then she exhales, and she thinks about how her breath, in turn, gives plants life. “That is a super fundamental way to recognise our reciprocity in the living world; that we are not separate,” she tells me, speaking on a video call from her farm near Syracuse, in upstate New York.
Once you begin to recognise yourself as symbiotically connected to plants, it might shift your views on politics, too. One of the great “delusions” of market capitalism, Kimmerer continues, is its notion of self-interest. Because how should you define the self? “If my self is the economic me, supposed to maximise my return on investment, that’s a very different notion than if my self is permeable, if it includes the trees whose oxygen I am breathing, and those birds, and the soil,” she says.
Continue reading...A person in California has tested positive for the emerging strain, which can cause a more serious illness.
Fortifying bread and flour will help reduce neural tube defects, such as spina bifida.
The TV presenter has a colloid cyst, which is not cancerous but could cause problems if it grows.
Robert F Kennedy Jr has a history of spreading health information scientists say is false.
Patients awaiting some vascular operations in north Wales will need to travel to Stoke-on-Trent.
Pharmacists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to reduce opening hours and stop home deliveries.
Prostate Cancer Research acknowledges more accurate tests would be needed to justify screening all men.
Nik is worried assisted dying could lead to coercion - but Elise, who has cancer, wants the choice.
A proposed law would give terminally ill people the right to choose to end their life.
His comments came ahead of an assisted dying bill being introduced to Parliament.
EDITOR’S NOTE:Few places on Earth are as evocative — or as imperiled — as the vast grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa. In a new Conservation News series, “Saving the Savanna,” we look at how communities are working to protect these places — and the wildlife within.
MARA NORTH CONSERVANCY, Kenya — Under a fading sun, Kenya’s Maasai Mara came alive.
A land cruiser passed through a wide-open savanna, where a pride of lions stirred from a day-long slumber. Steps away, elephants treaded single-file through tall grass, while giraffes peered from a thicket of acacia trees. But just over a ridge was a sight most safari-goers might not expect — dozens of herders guiding cattle into an enclosure for the night. The herders were swathed in vibrant red blankets carrying long wooden staffs, their beaded jewelry jingling softly.
Maasai Mara is the northern reach of a massive, connected ecosystem beginning in neighboring Tanzania’s world-famous Serengeti. Unlike most parks, typically managed by local or national governments, these lands are protected under a wildlife conservancy — a unique type of protected area managed directly by the Indigenous People who own the land.
Conservancies allow the people that live near national parks or reserves to combine their properties into large, protected areas for wildlife. These landowners can then earn income by leasing that land for safaris, lodges and other tourism activities. Communities in Maasai Mara have created 24 conservancies, protecting a total of 180,000 hectares (450,000 acres) — effectively doubling the total area of habitat for wildlife in the region, beyond the boundaries of nearby Maasai Mara National Reserve.
“It's significant income for families that have few other economic opportunities — around US$ 350 a month on average for a family. In Kenya, that's the equivalent of a graduate salary coming out of university,” said Elijah Toirai, Conservation International’s community engagement lead in Africa.
Lions tussle in the tall grass of Mara North Conservancy.
But elsewhere in Africa, the conservancy model has remained far out of reach.
“Conservancies have the potential to lift pastoral communities out of poverty in many African landscapes. But starting a conservancy requires significant funding — money they simply don't have,” said Bjorn Stauch, senior vice president of Conservation International’s nature finance division.
Upfront costs can include mapping out land boundaries, removing fences that prevent the movement of wildlife, eradicating invasive species that crowd out native grasses, creating firebreaks to prevent runaway wildfires, as well building infrastructure like roads and drainage ditches that are essential for successful safaris. Once established, conservancies need to develop management plans that guide their specified land use for the future.
Conservation International wanted to find a way for local communities to start conservancies and strengthen existing ones. Over the next three years, the organization aims to invest millions of dollars in new and emerging conservancies across Southern and East Africa. The funds will be provided as loans, which the conservancies will repay through tourism leases. This financing will jumpstart new conservancies and reinforce those already in place. The approach builds on an initial model that has proven highly effective and popular with local communities.
“We’re always looking for creative new ways to pay for conservation efforts that last,” Stauch said. “This is really a durable financing mechanism that puts money directly in the pockets of those who live closest to nature — giving them a leg up. And it’s been proven to work in the direst circumstances imaginable.”
Elijah Toirai explains current conservancy boundaries and potential areas for expansion.
In 2020, the entire conservancy model almost collapsed overnight.
“No one thought that the world could stop in 24 hours,” said Kelvin Alie, senior vice president and acting Africa lead for Conservation International. “But then came the pandemic, and suddenly Kenya is shutting its doors on March 23, 2020. And in the Mara, this steady and very well-rounded model based on safari tourism came to a screeching halt.”
Tourism operators, who generate the income to pay landowners' leases, found themselves without revenue. Communities faced a difficult choice: replace the lost income by fencing off their lands for grazing, converting it to agriculture, or selling to developers — each of which would have had drastic consequences for the Maasai Mara’s people and wildlife.
A black-backed jackal hunts for prey.
“But then the nature finance team at Conservation International — these crazy guys — came up with a wild idea,” Alie said. “In just six months they put this entirely new funding model together: loaning money at an affordable rate to the conservancies so that they can continue to pay staff and wildlife rangers.”
Conservation International and the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association launched the African Conservancies Fund — a rescue package to offset lost revenues for approximately 3,000 people in the area who rely on tourism income. Between December 2020 and December 2022, the fund provided more than US$ 2 million in affordable loans to four conservancies managing 70,000 hectares (170,000 acres).
The loans enabled families in the Maasai Mara to continue receiving income from their lands to pay for health care, home repairs, school fees and more. And because tourism revenues — not government funding — support wildlife protection in conservancies, this replacement funding ensured wildlife patrols continued normally, with rangers working full time.
Born out of this emergency, we discovered a new way to do conservation.
Elijah Toirai
“The catastrophe of COVID-19 was total for us,” said Benard Leperes, a landowner with Mara North Conservancy and a conservation expert at Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association. “Without Conservation International and the fund, this landscape would have not been secured; the conservancies would have disintegrated as people were forced to sell their land to convert it to agriculture.”
But it was communities themselves that proved the model might be replicable after the pandemic ended.
“The conservancies had until 2023 before the first payment was due,” Toirai said. “But as soon as tourism resumed in mid-2021, the communities started paying back the loans. Today, the loans are being repaid way ahead of schedule.”
“Born out of this emergency, we discovered a new way to do conservation.”
The high plateaus overlooking the Maasai Mara are home to the very last giant pangolins in Kenya.
These mammals, armored with distinctive interlocking scales, are highly endangered because of illegal wildlife trade. In Kenya, threats from poaching, deforestation and electric fences meant to deter elephants from crops have caused the species to nearly disappear. Today, scientists believe there could be as few as 30 giant pangolins left in Kenya.
Conservancies could be crucial to bringing them back. Conservation International has identified opportunities to provide transformative funding for conservancies in this area — a sprawling grassland northwest of Maasai Mara that is the very last pangolin stronghold in the country. The fund will help communities better protect an existing 10,000-hectare (25,000-acre) conservancy and bring an additional 5,000 hectares under protection. It provides a safety net, ensuring a steady income for the communities as the work of expanding the conservancy begins. With a stable income, communities can start work to restore the savanna and remove electric fences that have killed pangolins. And as wildlife move back into the ecosystem, the grasslands will begin to recover.
In addition to expanding conservancies around Maasai Mara, Conservation International has identified other critical ecosystems where community conservancies can help lift people out poverty, while providing new habitats for wildlife. Conservation International has ambitious plans to restore a critical and highly degraded savanna between Amboseli and Tsavo National Parks in southern Kenya, as well as a swath of savanna outside Kruger National Park in South Africa.
A lone acacia tree in a sea of grass.
Many of the new and emerging community conservancies have been carefully chosen as key wildlife corridors that would be threatened by overgrazing livestock.
When the first Maasai Mara conservancies were established in 2009, cattle grazing was prohibited within their boundaries. When poorly managed, cattle can wear grasses down to their roots, triggering topsoil erosion and the loss of nutrients, microbes and biodiversity vital for soil health. It was also believed that tourists would be put off by the sight of livestock mingling with wildlife.
Cattle are closely monitored in the Maasai Mara to prevent overgrazing.
However, over the years, landowners objected, lamenting the loss of cultural ties to cattle and herding. “That was when we changed tactics,” said Raphael Kereto, the grazing manager for Mara North Conservancy.
Beginning in 2018, Mara North and other conservancies in the region started adopting livestock grazing practices to restore the savanna. Landowners agreed to periodically move livestock between different pastures, allowing grazed lands to recover and regrow, mimicking the traditional methods pastoralists have used on these lands for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
“Initially, there was a worry that maybe herbivores and other wildlife will run away from cattle,” said Kereto. “But we have seen the exact opposite — the wildlife all follow where cattle are grazing. This is because we have a lot of grass, and all the animals follow where there is a lot of grass. We even saw a cheetah with a cub that spent all her time rotating with wildlife.”
“It's amazing — when we move cattle, the cheetah comes with it.”
The loans issued by the fund — now called the African Conservancies Facility — will enhance rotational grazing systems, which are practiced differently in each conservancy, by incorporating best practices and lessons from the organization’s Herding for Health program in southern Africa.
An elephant herd stares down a pack of hyenas.
For landowners like Dickson Kaelo, who was among the pioneers to propose the conservancy model in Kenya, the return of cattle to the ecosystem has restored a natural order.
“I always wanted to understand how it was that there was so much more wildlife in the conservancies than in Maasai Mara National Reserve,” said Kaelo, who heads the Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association, based in Nairobi.
“I went to the communities and asked them this question. They told me savannas were created by elephants, fire and Maasai and cattle, and excluding any one of those is not good for the health of the system. So, I believe in the conservancies — I know that every single month, people go to the bank and they have some money, they haven't lost their culture because they still are cattle keepers, and the land is much healthier, with more grass, more wildlife, and the trees have not been cut.
“For me, it’s something really beautiful.”
Will McCarry is the content director at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates. Also, please consider supporting our critical work.
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Around the world, women beekeepers are helping to protect bees by sharing their knowledge and traditions. This International Women’s Day, we highlight the work of three beekeepers who live in very different geographies, but are united in their passion for the pollinators.
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