-
Government announces tougher measures to tackle unlicensed sites as ‘prolific waste criminal’ is ordered to pay £1.4m
A new 33-strong drone unit is being deployed to investigate the scourge of illegal waste dumping across England, the government has announced.
The improvements to the investigation of illegal waste dumping – which costs the UK economy £1bn a year – come as the ringleader of a major waste crime gang was ordered to pay £1.4m after being convicted at Birmingham crown court.
Continue reading...
-
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
Continue reading...
-
Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health
As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.
“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.
Continue reading...
-
Government plans legislation giving landowners and tenants rights to cull deer to protect crops and property
It will be much easier to shoot deer in England under government plans that aim to curb the damage the animals are doing to the country’s woodlands.
Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, plans to bring forward new legislation to give landowners and tenants legal rights to shoot deer to protect crops and property.
Continue reading...
-
Langstone, Hampshire: It’s the time of year when dog foxes shadow receptive females – who only have the briefest of windows to mate
Walking the coastal path, I stopped to scan the flooded horse paddock for the kingfisher reported there in recent days. Three grey herons loitered along the fence line, hunchbacked and watchful. Where shallow pools had formed, teals dabbled and drifted in loose rafts, while a dozen little egrets fed on the margins, using their yellow feet to stir up the mud and flush out small invertebrates before snapping them up with their rapier-like bills.
The hoped-for flash of iridescent blue failed to materialise, but a russet streak caught my eye on the far edge of the field – a female fox, lean and alert. As I watched, I realised she was being followed by another – a thickset, wolfish dog fox with a grizzled coat. The vixen slowed, turned, dropped her forelegs to the ground and raised her rump, holding the pose briefly before springing away.
Continue reading...
-
Many farmers in the Andes rely on growing blooms for export, but high water usage and risky pesticides threaten Indigenous communities
The fertile high valley near La Chimba trembles with sounds. The rhythms of brass bands and cumbia music clash like weather fronts, each playing its own beats in the Andean rain. A rainbow spans the slopes and white plastic greenhouses, protecting the region’s treasure: roses bred for beauty, shipped abroad, blooming far from home.
Amid the drizzle, Patricia Catucuamba and her husband, Milton Navas, share a jug of chicha, a maize brew vital to their harvest celebrations. Since 2000, they have worked as dairy farmers, but sustaining a milk business requires expanses of land beyond the reach of most smallholders.
Continue reading...
-
Winter storm dumps more than 40cm of snow on the capital, while in France, Storm Pedro follows hot of heels of Storm Nils
While the days are growing longer and meteorological spring is just a couple of weeks away, Romania remains firmly in the grip of winter.
A powerful storm brought blizzards and heavy snowfall across much of the south-east of the country, with the capital, Bucharest, receiving 40cm of snow – far exceeding the February average of 11cm.
Continue reading...
-
In this week’s newsletter: The south-east of the country is suffering through the worst heatwave since 2019’s ‘black summer’, while the government continues to back fossil fuel projects
• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
Australians are no strangers to blistering weather – being a “sunburnt country” of “droughts and flooding rains” is baked into our national identity. But since the 2019-20 bushfires, which burned through an area almost the size of the UK, and killed or displaced 3 billion animals, the arrival of warmer weather each year is accompanied by dread. This summer has brought punishing extremes of heat and fire that are brutal even by Australian standards.
More, after this week’s most important reads.
‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations
The death of Heather Preen: how an eight-year-old lost her life amid sewage crisis
Trump lashes out at California governor’s green energy deal with UK
‘Landmark’ greenwashing case against Australian gas giant Santos dismissed by federal court
‘What’s more important, the electricity or food?’: extreme heat is driving up power bills in central Australia
What the Albanese government did on the environment amid the Liberals’ turmoil: threatened species, a new coal project and carbon leakage
Continue reading...
-
Wood is primary heating in 2% of homes but contributes to producing 21% of country’s wintertime particle pollution
Air pollution from home wood burning is estimated to lead to 8,600 premature deaths in the US each year, according to research.
Just 2% of US homes use wood for primary heating. Another 8% burn wood for pleasure, aesthetics or supplementary heating, but combined they produce 21% of the country’s wintertime particle pollution.
Continue reading...
-
Faaborgs rail against oppressive industrial agricultural system with unexpected evolution into indie artisan food firm
As a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, Tanner Faaborg is all too aware that agricultural traditions are hard to shake. So when he set in motion plans to change his family’s farm from a livestock operation housing more than 8,000 pigs each year to one that grows lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms, he knew some of his peers might laugh at him. He just did not necessarily expect his brother to be chief among them.
“My older brother has worked with pigs his entire adult life, managing about 70,000 of them across five counties,” Faaborg says. “But we got to a point where he went from laughing at me to saying: well, I guess maybe I’ll quit my job and help you out.”
Continue reading...
