Environment news

• The big and unfriendly giant hogweed

  16-07-2017 22:30 via theguardian.com
  
  A Victorian garden sensation has become a sensational invasive nuisance. Contact with its toxic sap causes burns and blisters that can take months to healIt’s a monster towering up to 20ft tall, leaves spreading out like giant hands and flowers arranged in clusters the size of dinner plates. This is the giant hogweed, and the tabloids have been running alarming headlines recently, claiming an explosion in numbers of “Britain’s most dangerous plant” is creating havoc as it
  
  Read more

• Back from the near-dead – the charismatic butcher bird

  16-07-2017 22:30 via theguardian.com
  
  A rare sighting of a red-backed shrike, notorious for its habit of impaling its victims in a grisly larderThe first sign of autumn appeared the moment we arrived. A spotted redshank, resplendent in its dusky breeding plumage, stopping off on my Somerset coastal patch as it headed south from its Arctic nesting grounds. But the start of July is far too early for any songbird migrants. So along with my companion Daniel, whom I met on our very first day at grammar school, almost half a century ago,
  
  Read more

• Fracking: report warns of risks associated with shale gas extraction

  16-07-2017 20:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Report suggests surface water and groundwater should not be used in some instances and warns against fracking during wet seasonResidents, environmentalists and pastoralists have welcomed a “balanced” report on fracking in the Northern Territory, which identified a number of risks associated with the industry and a loss of community trust.The NT government enacted a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the NT when it took office in August, establishing an inquiry to examine if it cou
  
  Read more

• Globalisation and the flight of capital | Letters

  16-07-2017 18:36 via theguardian.com
  
  David Chambers wonders whether pension funds that invest primarily outside the UK are part of the problem. Plus Chris Hughes says economic growth is needed only to service debtNikil Saval writes that “Globalisation could take place in services, capital and ideas … but what it meant most often was making it cheaper to trade across borders” (The great globalisation backlash, 15 July). We hear no more from him about cross-border movements of capital. When I studied economics in t
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• 'This has been my life for past six years': on the anti-fracking frontline

  16-07-2017 18:05 via theguardian.com
  
  Inside the Lancashire protest camp aiming to disrupt new Cuadrilla wells with direct action tacticsIt is a battle that has gone on for years, pitting tireless local residents and environmentalists against a major gas exploration company hoping to get rich – and solve a future energy crisis – by fracking under the Fylde coast. Last October the government overruled Lancashire county council and gave Cuadrilla the green light to begin drilling, but anti-fracking activists have refused t
  
  Read more

• 'Groundbreaking': Cornwall geothermal project seeks funds

  16-07-2017 16:38 via theguardian.com
  
  The UK’s first geothermal plant could come online as soon as 2020 – research suggests the technology could one day generate a fifth of the nation’s powerA pioneering project to produce power from hot rocks several kilometres under the ground in Cornwall will begin drilling early next year, if a multimillion-pound fundraising drive succeeds. Abundance, a crowdfunding platform overseen by the main City regulator, will this week launch a bond to raise £5m for the UK’s
  
  Read more

• Plastic found in remote South Pacific

  16-07-2017 13:27 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A mariner says there is a "raft" of plastic debris spanning 965,000 square miles in part of the South Pacific.
  
  Read more

• 'More valuable than gold': Yellowstone businesses prepare to fight mining

  16-07-2017 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Around Yellowstone national park, mining companies anticipate the end of the Obama-era moratorium, but local businesses are fighting back
  Help support the Guardian’s coverage of the government’s public land sell-offBruce Gordon’s Cessna Centurion floats off the runway south of Livingston, Montana, quickly escaping the confines of Paradise Valley, walled on both sides by the Absaroka and Gallatin mountain ranges. Snaking through the alfalfa fields, cottonwood thickets and ranche
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Climate change is ‘great opportunity’ says Richard Branson – video

  16-07-2017 12:53 via theguardian.com
  
  The Founder and chair of the Virgin Group speaks during a panel discussion in New York on Friday and says the threat of climate change actually offers ‘one of the great opportunities for this world’. Branson urges the business sector to step forward and ‘fill certain gaps that some governments are leaving behind’ in tackling the problemTrump regrets ‘bizarre mistake’ of Paris climate pullout, Branson claimsContinue reading...
  
  Read more

• The eco guide to animal welfare

  16-07-2017 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Britain is an international leader in animal welfare and now, fortunately, the message is beginning to spread – importantly to ChinaAnimal welfare is one of the UK’s most successful exports. When the late Peter Roberts, a Hampshire dairy farmer, founded the charity Compassion in World Farming (ciwf.org.uk) 50 years ago, he rightly feared that industrialised farming would wreak havoc on animals and the planet. Even he couldn’t have envisaged today’s numbers: 70 billion ani
  
  Read more

• Ancient underwater forest found in US

  16-07-2017 02:44 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists have dated the trees to a previous ice age 60,000 years ago, when sea levels were far lower.
  
  Read more

• A mission to the Pacific plastic patch

  16-07-2017 02:08 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A "raft" of plastic debris spanning more than 965,000 square miles is floating in the South Pacific.
  
  Read more

• Think you know what fish is in your sushi? Think again

  16-07-2017 01:04 via theguardian.com
  
  Exotic tropical species being mis-sold to British customers who can’t tell their mackerel from their herring, research showsSushi bars and shops are regularly mis-selling exotic species of fish to unwitting British customers, according to new research.In cases cited in the report, customers thought they were buying a fish from the Atlantic when it was really a tropical variety, while many fish were sold under a generic name that revealed little about where they came from. Some of the speci
  
  Read more

• Brexit threatens Britain’s place at the nuclear top table | Ian Chapman

  16-07-2017 01:04 via theguardian.com
  
  The UK is currently a world leader in fusion research; leaving Euratom would be calamitousIn the south of France, the largest scientific experiment mankind has ever embarked upon is rising out of the ground. This facility, the Iter project, will demonstrate nuclear fusion power on a commercial scale, involving the European Union, US, Japan, South Korea, China, Russia and India. Fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars, and bringing it to Earth has long been a staple of science fic
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!