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Bedgebury national pinetum has become a vital ark for rare evergreen trees, which are often unfairly maligned
With the exception of Christmas trees, conifers are not widely cherished. People tend to associate them with antisocially high suburban hedges or ugly, nature-bereft blocks of industrial forestry.
But at the world’s most important collection of rare evergreens, which is 100 years old this spring, these often unfairly maligned trees are celebrated and revealed in a much more beautiful light.
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Environmentalists call bid to skirt UN treaty ‘reckless’ amid fears that mining will cause irreversible loss of biodiversity
A Canadian deep-sea mining firm has revealed it has been negotiating with the Trump administration to bypass a UN treaty and potentially gain authorisation from the US to mine in international waters.
The revelation has stunned environmentalists, who condemned the move as “reckless” and a “slap in the face for multilateralism”.
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Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex: It’s peak breeding season, so the boom in muddy heaps is likely a sign of males, emerging in search of a mate
For the past month I’ve been studying molehills. The focus of my investigations has been Sand Field, a rough pasture that was once part of a vast medieval deer park just south of the village. It all started last November. It was a crisp morning after gales. I’d paused to feel the sun’s weak warmth and heard a rustle in the grass. Already fleeing, a mole was little more than a glimpsed cylinder of fur and rippling muscle. I felt a rush of excitement – it was just the second I’d ever seen.
I’d almost forgotten this encounter. Then, returning last month, I stumbled – literally – on a fresh molehill. Instead of waiting a decade to bump into another mole, I thought, perhaps I should make some effort to understand them.
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In Sweden, most residential heating and hot water comes from heating networks – helping to pool resources and innovation
District heating is sometimes talked about like some kind of unattainable utopia, but in the Swedish capital these low-carbon heating networks are not special.
In fact, district heat is so run-of-the-mill that many Stockholmers do not know that they have it, said Fredrik Persson, as he showed the Guardian around Stockholm Exergi’s pioneering power station in Norra Djurgårdsstaden, a former port and industrial area.
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British eel trader says move will destroy traditional elvering but campaigners welcome decision
Endangered eels caught in British estuaries will no longer be exported to Russia after the government banned the trade.
In a decision that Britain’s last remaining eel trader said would end centuries of traditional elvering, a request to dispatch millions of glass eels – young eels that develop into elvers – to a restocking project in Kaliningrad was refused by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
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Ministers urged to do more after United Utilities discharged raw sewage into Unesco site for 6,327 hours last year
Celebrated by William Wordsworth, Windermere has long epitomised the natural timeless beauty of the Lake District, with millions of tourists drawn to the shores that inspired the poet. But today England’s biggest lake is, some campaigners say, a shadow of its 19th century self: its waters blighted by algae and its wildlife threatened by pollution, in a symbol of all that is wrong with the privatised water industry.
This month the environment secretary, Steve Reed, vowed to break with the recent past, standing on its shores and promising that Labour would “clean up Windermere”. The lake is showing the impact of sewage pollution from United Utilities treatment plants and increased pressure from climate change-induced temperature rises.
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Some voice regret over Musk’s backing of Trump, but others say CEO’s views do not detract from the car’s appeal
Tesla showrooms across the world are expected to face anti-Elon Musk protests on Saturday, as Musk’s senior role in the Trump administration has contributed to a European consumer backlash by some Tesla owners and prospective buyers.
It follows a 44% drop in Tesla sales in Europe on average last month, according to the research platform Jato Dynamics. Tesla’s European market share fell to 9.6% last month, the lowest it has registered in February for five years.
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Tao Leigh Goffe argues climate breakdown is the mutant offspring of European scientific racism and colonialism
We all think we know what is causing the breakdown of the planet’s climate: burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide, change the chemistry of the air and trap more heat from the sun, leading to rising temperatures.
But Tao Leigh Goffe, an associate professor of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the City University of New York, wants us to visualise a far more specific cause: the shunting of a ship’s prow on to the sandbank of a paradise island in 1492.
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Items taken from a mountain of discarded garments in the Atacama desert were sold for the price of shipping in a fightback against the ‘racist and colonialist’ dumping of unwanted clothing
Every week, Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for items of discarded clothing in the sand. About half of the hundreds of garments he finds are in perfect condition. He collects what he can and adds them to the two-tonne pile of clothes he has stored at a friend’s house.
On 17 March, 300 of those items, including Nike and Adidas shorts, Calvin Klein jeans and a leather skirt, were listed for sale online for the first time. The price? Zero. Customers had only to pay shipping costs. The first batch sold out in five hours, bought by customers from countries including Brazil, China, France, the US and the UK.
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Classes on herbalism connect new generations eager to explore their roots with elders in the South Carolina community
With their eyes downcast in reflection, dozens of people dressed in white crossed a bridge to pay respect to their ancestors last October. They carried flowers, herbs and photos of their loved ones to lay at the foot of an altar on a tiny strip of land in the middle of a pond. For the last few years, this ritual at the start of the annual Gullah Geechee herbal gathering on Johns Island, South Carolina, has served as a link between the living and the dead. “It gives them a sacred space to connect with the land,” the gathering’s founder, Khetnu Nefer, said about the attendees, and to “connect with our communal ancestors”.
Held on Nefer’s family’s land, a stretch of 10 acres (four hectares) of flat grass surrounded by woods, the gathering educates attendees on the herbal traditions of the descendants of west Africans enslaved on the Sea Islands along the south-east US. Over the course of the three-day conference, Black and brown instructors – some of whom are Gullah Geechee – host around 20 workshops ranging from English-based creole lessons to foraging for herbs including chaney root, which is boiled into a tea to heal fatigue or arthritis. During an herbal remedy class, attendees learn which herbs can be used to treat chronic pain, including mullein, a flowering plant that is sometimes boiled into a tea to heal symptoms associated with asthma or bronchitis.
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