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Pioneering environmentalist Charles Waterton enclosed his parkland and lake near Wakefield in the 1820s
Over four years in the 1820s, Charles Waterton built a 9ft-high, 3-mile-long wall around the parkland and lake of Walton Hall. The fox- and poacher-proof boundary enclosed what could be the world’s first nature reserve, completed in Yorkshire 200 years ago.
Waterton, an eccentric, controversial and pioneering environmentalist, built nest boxes, special banks for sand martins and innovative bird hides, and offered local people sixpence for every hedgehog they brought into his reserve.
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Party held out prospect of act while in opposition but plan did not make it into election manifesto
Ministers should bring forward a new clean air act that would ban wood burning, clear diesel vehicles from the roads and force councils to cut pollution, a group of more than 60 charities have urged before the king’s speech on Wednesday.
Labour held out the prospect of a clean air act while in opposition in 2023, but this was dropped from the final election manifesto, and the government has made no move to reinstate it.
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Court cases in Kenya point to a growing market for ants as exotic pets in Asia and Europe that has implications for conservation and biosecurity
In the biblical text Book of Proverbs, King Solomon describes the harvester ant as a model of wisdom and industriousness: “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!”
Almost 3,000 years later, the thriving international parallel market for a distinct species of the ant native to east Africa has been thrust into the global spotlight after a series of convictions in Kenya for ant smuggling.
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Matter Industries founder Adam Root has developed a filter to trap microfibres at home and on an industrial scale. But is it just a drop in the ocean?
The dinky device slots seamlessly into the modest space above my washing machine. A pipe snakes down from it, drawing in wastewater from my clothes washes. At the end of each wash cycle, the machine makes a polite whirring noise: that’s the sound of the groundbreaking bit of technology working, according to its inventor, Adam Root. That invention is a microplastics filter.
“The most common thing we hear [from customers] is: ‘I cannot believe how much material is coming out of the washing machine,’” says Root. “Somebody sent me [photos of] dinner-platefuls.”
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Families turn to dirty fuels such as firewood, bringing fears over air pollution and fragility of energy transition
In the ramshackle lanes of a south Delhi slum, Afshana Khatoon crouched wearily on her haunches and began lighting a small pile of firewood.
She had only just returned from six hours spent trudging through the urban forests and dry parks of India’s capital looking for kindling to turn into a makeshift stove. As the unforgiving summer heat soared above 40C, she had walked for miles, piling the sticks and fallen branches into a bundle on her head while sweat ran down her face.
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The naturalist is venerated as a cuddly Paddington Bear, but he’s more than that. Don’t let the superficial backslaps obscure the political critique he makes
The excesses the capitalist system has brought us have got to be curbed somehow. Ordinary people worldwide are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy. Our economic system has been based on the profit principle: you have to come out at the end of the year having made a profit, and the bigger profit you have made, the better it is. In the short term that works, but it ends with disaster.
At this point, I should make a confession. The above sentiments are not mine at all. In fact, they were pilfered, purloined, shoplifted from a far more erudite radical thinker than myself. So, quiz time: which incendiary leftwing firebrand spoke these words? Zack Polanski? Antonio Gramsci? Ash Sarkar? At the very least, you would probably assume that, in the current climate, anyone daring to utter these dangerous fringe sentiments would be cast to the margins of our cultural life, only occasionally being let out for the purposes of getting shouted at on the Jeremy Vine show.
Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist
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Preseli Hills, Pembrokeshire: Bouldering on volcanic rock is hard on the hands, and I have no established path to work with, but it’ll be worth it
I’ve been eyeing up this jagged rock edge all week. From my home away from home, I can see it from the windows, looming darkly on the brow of the hill. The storms of the last few days have passed, lingeringonly as a fierce wind that should dry the rock nicely.
I’ve never been to Carn Ffoi before, but I’ve always wanted to explore those broken tors that dot the hills of Carningli Common. Below them, the sandy Trefdraeth bay opens its arms to the Irish sea and its changing tempers, and the gorse, still singed from last year’s fires, gives way to scrub and close-cropped grass. The view of the endless, rugged coast will be special.
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First we heard its call, then a large, plump bird materialised beneath a bush, walking purposefully towards us
Few things beat breakfast in the bush. We were in the Mallee forest near Lake Gilles, about five hours north-west of Adelaide, and more or less halfway across Australia.
But although I am famous for enjoying my food, I love birds even more. And so when my guide Steve Potter detected a repetitive whistling call in the distance, our coffee and cornflakes had to wait.
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The Kenyan player has been recognised for his advocacy and grassroots work to tackle sport’s carbon footprint
“Most well-known people who talk about climate change are in North America and Europe,” says Kenyan rugby sevens star Kevin Wekesa, “but for us this is a very relevant conversation. It is not only about future tournaments or big international pledges. In Kenya, we see the effects in rising heat, cracked pitches and changing weather in communities where young athletes are growing up.”
A year before competing in his first Olympic Games at Paris 2024, Wekesa responded to Kenya’s relegation from the top tier of international sevens by offering free rugby coaching in schools across Kenya. After travelling to a school in Kirinyaga on the slopes of Mount Kenya, a wet and verdant region, Wekesa found an unplayable dry field and was forced to cancel the session. One of the students told Wekesa that conditions had been similar for two months, while another suggested the unfamiliar weather was because of climate change.
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After a series of deaths on the beaches of Brittany, one bereaved family set out to prove the foul-smelling bloom was to blame
When her phone rang at around 5pm on 8 September 2016, Rosy Auffray was still at work. It was one of her daughters, distressed, calling to tell her that their father, Jean-René, had not come back from his daily run. Only the family dog had returned, alone and exhausted. Rosy rushed back home.
When she arrived, Rosy noticed that the dog was behaving bizarrely: she refused to walk, then collapsed under a bush. Her fur stank of rotten eggs, of overflowing sewers. Rosy knew where that smell came from: the mudflats roughly three miles from the family home in Brittany, where seaweed had been accumulating and putrefying. The soggy, decomposing seaweed stretched for miles along the shore, sometimesas much asfive feet thick, killing other plants and suffocating fish and small birds.
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