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Environment secretary points to measures to stop lake being ‘choked by unacceptable levels’ of pollution
The government has said it will “clean up Windermere” after criticism over the volume of sewage being pumped into England’s largest lake.
The environment secretary, Steve Reed, pledged “only rainwater” would enter the famous body of water in the Lake District, putting an end to the situation where it Windermere was being “choked by unacceptable levels of sewage pollution”.
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Campaigners say funding halt is a ‘staggering blow’ to vulnerable nations and to efforts to keep heating below 1.5C
Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US overseas aid will almost decimate global climate finance from the developed world, data shows, with potentially devastating impacts on vulnerable nations.
The US was responsible last year for about $8 in every $100 that flowed from the rich world to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, according to data from the analyst organisation Carbon Brief.
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Llandrindod Wells, Powys: They’re such captivating birds to watch, and this pair is indulging their preference for flower buds on my cherry tree
“Hardly hedgerows, little lines of sportive wood run wild”. I was sitting at my dining table, relishing the growing warmth of early spring sunlight, idling over coffee and musing on how apt a description of the towering unkempt hedges around my garden Wordsworth’s lines from Tintern Abbey are, when the pair of bullfinches that inhabit there captivated my attention.
They are so conjugal – the dowdier hen always in close and discreet attendance on her more brightly coloured spouse. To my mind, few small British birds can match the exquisite colour balance of the male bullfinch – the bright pink glow of his breast, his sleek black cap, the beautiful grey of his wings. I love them, and can watch their activities for hours, especially in early spring when they are notably active, with branches bare of foliage and little else stirring.
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Dealing with PTSD, Merlin Hanbury-Tenison retreated to his family farm in Cornwall. There, working to revive a rare fragment of rainforest, he found a way to heal himself
A straight-backed, well-spoken former management consultant and ex-soldier in a wax jacket might not resemble much of a tree wizard, but the man leading me into a steep Cornish valley of gnarled, mossy oaks is called Merlin. He possesses hidden depths. And surfaces. Within minutes of meeting, as we head towards the Mother Tree – a venerable oak of special significance – Merlin Hanbury-Tenison reveals that he recently had a tattoo of the tree etched on his skin. I’m expecting him to roll up a sleeve to reveal a mini-tree outline, but he whips out his phone and shows me a picture: the 39-year-old’s entire back is covered with a spectacular full-colour painting of the oak. “It took 22 hours. I was quite sore,” he says, a little ruefully. “But I was in London afterwards, feeling quite overcome by the city and I had this moment: I’ve got the rainforest with me. Wherever I go, I feel like I’m carrying the forest and its story with me.”
Merlin is keen to tell the remarkable 5,000-year story of this fragment of Atlantic temperate rainforest – a rare habitat found in wet and mild westerly coastal regions and which is under more threat than tropical rainforests. In fact, he is now the custodian of this special, nature-rich landscape filled with ferns, mosses, lichens and fungi. He is slightly more reticent about his own remarkable life. Both stories are well worth telling.
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After fears £11m would be diverted to Treasury, money will be spent on restoring polluted areas where penalties issued
Millions of pounds of fines imposed on water firms will fund environmental schemes to protect the country’s waterways after fears the money would be diverted to the Treasury.
The water restoration fund was set up by the Conservative government to ensure that polluting water firms paid for the damage they caused. The fund received £11m in fines and penalties from April 2022 to October 2023.
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Tougher laws said to be inspiring clandestine attacks on the ‘property and machinery’ of the fossil fuel economy
It was raining and the sparkling lights of the City of London shone back from the cold, wet pavement as two young men made their way through streets deserted save for a few police and private security. In the sleeping heart of the global financial system, they felt eyes on them from the city’s network of surveillance cameras, but hoped their disguise of high-vis vests and hoods hiding their faces would conceal them.
Reaching Lime Street, they stopped by a maintenance hole and looked around to make sure no one was watching. One took off the cover, located a bundle of black cables and started hacking away. Hours later, an email was circulated to news desks: “Internet cut off to hundreds of insurers in climate-motivated sabotage.”
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Two Italian cacti smugglers have been fined for illegally trading plants from Chile – and for the cost of restoring the environment. Conservationists hope more cases will follow
Chile’s Atacama desert is one of the driest places on Earth, a surprisingly cool environment, sucked clean of moisture by the cold ocean to the west. This arid, golden landscape is home to many rare species of cacti, which attract professional and amateur botanists from around the world keen to make discoveries and experience the thrill of naming a new species.
But they are not the only ones prowling the sands: Atacama has become a hotspot for succulent smuggling.
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Damage to trees in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene was ‘extraordinary and humbling’ but urban areas face particular problems
The city of Asheville and its surrounding areas have been left vulnerable to floods, fires and extreme heat after Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees that provided shade and protection from storms.
Helene was catastrophic for the region’s trees – in part due to the heavy precursor rainstorm that pounded southern Appalachia for two days straight, drenching the soil before Helene hit, bringing yet more heavy rain and 60-100mph winds.
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Experience has taught many residents in flood-prone areas around Lismore and northern New South Wales the value of leaving early
Valerie Thompson is heading home to Brunswick Heads in an hour. The 52-year-old lives in a low-lying area just north of Byron Bay and was among those who got out early before Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The idea that the climate crisis may generate a cyclone that ploughs into south-east Queensland was already a “nightmare scenario” for the country’s insurance industry – the same companies that wanted to charge Thompson $30,000 a year to insure her home. If they were taking it seriously, why shouldn’t she?
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Pencil pines grow for more than a thousand years each, and only in Tasmania. As lightning fires become more common, humans must mobilise to protect them – or lose these ancients forever
Steve Leonard finds it hard when he goes bushwalking in Tasmania’s high country these days. “I look at a stand of pencil pine and I wonder: ‘how long will you be there?’”
The ecologist is just back from a rapid survey of the cost to ancient trees of the latest lightning-strike fires across the island’s drying landscapes. Among the losses he found near the overland track, an alpine walking trail through central Tasmania, were groves of pencil pine.
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I loose the horses, the wild, red horses
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses
And terror is on the land.
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