Environment news

• Octopuses 'walking out of the sea' on the Welsh coast

  28-10-2017 18:10 via bbc.co.uk
  Scores of the sea creatures are witnessed crawling out of the water at a beach in Ceredigion.
  
  Read more

• Growth strategies: illustrated houseplants – in pictures

  28-10-2017 18:00
  While at university, self-taught gardener Emma Sibley often swapped houseplants and cuttings with friends. Now, her desire to combine nature with city life has led to Urban Botanics (Aurum Press £18), a book illustrated by Dutch artist Maaike Koster, guiding readers through 70 indoor plant varieties, their origins and upkeep. “Having plants in your home helps to purify the air. Living in a city, this is a welcome benefit,” says Sibley, who also runs the shop London Terrariums.
  
  Read more

• Caimans helped out of a sticky situation in Brazil

  28-10-2017 12:27 via bbc.co.uk
  Animals have got stuck in mud after searching for relief from Brazil's prolonged drought.
  
  Read more

• How to help garden wildlife survive winter

  28-10-2017 12:00
  Winter is often a tough time for birds and animals, but there are lots of things gardeners can do – and not do – to help them outThe pretty autumnal changes outside your window – the fiery colouring of leaves, the gentle decline of herbaceous plants – are all about survival. With the mean months ahead of them, garden plants are shedding everything soft and vulnerable, withdrawing their energies below the earth to a bundle of roots, or dropping soft leaves so that only tou
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Nestlé, Hershey and Mars 'breaking promises over palm oil use'

  28-10-2017 11:10
  This year’s Halloween confectionery will contain palm oil grown on land that should lawfully be habitat to orangutans, rhinos and clouded leopards, despite commitment to clean up supply chainsNestlé, Mars and Hershey have been accused of breaking pledges to stop using “conflict palm oil” from deforested Indonesian jungles, just days before the annual Halloween confectionery frenzy.The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) says consumers have been “deceived” by prom
  
  Read more

• Organic or starve: can Cuba's new farming model provide food security?

  28-10-2017 11:00
  Once it grew only sugar and was heavy handed with fertilizers and pesticides, now Cuba is in the grip of a small-scale organic farming revolutionIn the town of Hershey, 40 miles east of Havana, you can see the past and the future of Cuban farming, side by side.The abandoned hulk of the Camilo Cienfuegos sugar plant, shut along with 70 other cane refineries in 2002, towers over the town. But in the lush hills and grasslands around Hershey, fields of cassava, corn, beans, and vegetables are a sign
  
  Read more

• Stephen Hawking gives talk on black holes at Oxford University

  28-10-2017 10:43 via bbc.co.uk
  World-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking thrilled fans with a talk on black holes.
  
  Read more

• Hurricane Sandy, five years later: 'No one was ready for what happened after'

  28-10-2017 07:00
  Survivors of the 2012 storm remain haunted. As hurricanes continue to batter the US, many say plans to mitigate climate change have not gone far enough: ‘People need to open their eyes’
  Hurricane Sandy still assails the thoughts of Annie Willis, haunting her with its onrushing black water and the harrowing sound of shattering windows. The storm mauled a cherished home that Willis and her family are still unable to return to, five years since it ravaged New York City.“I’d
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Country diary: on the Severn Way with a heron and buzzard for company

  28-10-2017 06:30
  Caersws, Powys Afon Hafren meanders to the flood plain, a broad, stately, river in comfortable middle ageLong before the Romans built their two forts at Caersws, the ridge to the west of the town was dominated by the ramparts of Cefn Carnedd. In the low afternoon sunshine the defensive banks that still rise above the hillside woodland were picked out by deep shadows. The iron-age fortress stands above a kempt farmed landscape drained by the afon Hafren (river Severn) as it meanders across the va
  
  Read more

• Professor Stephen Hawking's PhD viewed two million times

  28-10-2017 03:34 via bbc.co.uk
  Cambridge University say the online repository has "never seen numbers like this before".
  
  Read more

• US winter has shrunk by more than one month in 100 years

  28-10-2017 02:56
  Scientists find that climate change has helped push first frosts later across the countryThe length of the US winter is shortening, with the first frost of the year arriving more than one later than it did 100 years ago, according to more than a century of measurements from weather stations nationwide. The trend of ever later first freezes appears to have started around 1980, according to data from 700 weather stations across the US going back to 1895 and compiled by Ken Kunkel, a meteorologist
  
  Read more

• 'Way off the planet': regional businesses use renewables to slash costs

  28-10-2017 01:00
  From solar to running generators, some have quit the energy grid and several others are showing interest in ‘defecting’In the heart of Queensland’s mining belt, a businessman who has grown his enterprise mostly off the back of the coal industry sees the energy sector going only one way. “I think renewable energy is where the market’s going – what we class as the energy revolution,” says Jason Sharam.Continue reading...
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!