Environment news

• How Sea Shepherd lost battle against Japan’s whale hunters in Antarctic

  23-12-2017 22:00 via theguardian.com
  The Southern Ocean was a sanctuary – but now Japan’s boats have military hardware and conservationists can no longer track themA fleet of Japanese ships is currently hunting minke whales in the Southern Ocean. It is a politically incendiary practice: the waters around Antarctica were long ago declared a whale sanctuary, but the designation has not halted Japan’s whalers, who are continuing a tradition of catching whales “for scientific research” in the region.In the
  
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• Country diary: 'Demanding Ladies' blossom in a Victorian time warp

  23-12-2017 18:52 via theguardian.com
  Hawkhurst, Kent One of Britain’s largest collections of Victorian glasshouses is being restored thanks to the fond memories of a wartime evacueeJust outside Hawkhurst, in the Kentish Weald, there’s a walled garden so quintessentially Victorian that stepping inside feels like time-travelling. Rustic brickwork glows in the winter sun; in bright corners the skeletal arms of buddleia seem to beckon the ghosts of bees; and everywhere you look the light is reflected by shimmering glass.The
  
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• Bruce McCandless, who made first untethered space flight, dies at 80

  23-12-2017 18:05 via bbc.co.uk
  In February 1984, Bruce McCandless pushed off from the Space Shuttle and drifted alone into space.
  
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• Bruce McCandless's pioneering spacewalk 'quite comfortable'

  23-12-2017 16:50 via bbc.co.uk
  The first person to fly untethered in space, Nasa astronaut Bruce McCandless, has died.
  
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• Tesco pledges to end edible food waste by March 2018

  23-12-2017 15:43 via theguardian.com
  Supermarket announces plans to donate surplus stock to local charities, and urges other chains to follow suitTesco is to become the only UK retailer to no longer waste food fit for human consumption. The company’s chief executive, Dave Lewis, has urged other supermarket chains to follow Tesco’s lead and adopt the changes that it will implement by March 2018. Continue reading...
  
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• Mysterious lights over LA baffle onlookers

  23-12-2017 12:47 via bbc.co.uk
  The phenomenon was visible from parts of California and Arizona - the culprit: A SpaceX rocket.
  
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• Hidden camera captures rare pig thought extinct

  23-12-2017 10:57 via bbc.co.uk
  Scientists have filmed one of the world's rarest, and 'ugliest', pigs in a forest in Indonesia.
  
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• New lab-bred super corals could help avert global reef wipeout

  23-12-2017 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Pioneering research on cross-species coral hybrids, inoculations with protective bacteria and even genetic engineering could provide a lifeline for the ‘rainforests of the oceans’New super corals bred by scientists to resist global warming could be tested on the Great Barrier Reef within a year as part of a global research effort to accelerate evolution and save the “rainforests of the seas” from extinction.
  Researchers are getting promising early results from cross-breed
  
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• If only we could be like the animals, unaware of this year’s pains. But we would lose the joys | Ian Jack

  23-12-2017 06:59 via theguardian.com
  We are going to hell in a handcart. But turtles, tearooms and inspired editors can still lift our spiritsIn the year of his death I have tried and failed to follow the advice of my friend Alexander Chancellor, who decided that his poultry and his dog offered an exemplary approach to Brexit. At his house in Northamptonshire, he noticed that his Jack Russell and his hens and ducks lived “in blissful unawareness” of the referendum. While the result had left him depressed, they simply so
  
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• 'World's ugliest pig' caught on camera

  23-12-2017 01:24 via bbc.co.uk
  Conservationists capture the first footage in the wild of the endangered Javan warty pig
  
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• Queensland man to face court over death of 5.2-metre crocodile

  23-12-2017 00:48 via theguardian.com
  Saltwater crocodile shot dead in the Fitzroy River near Rockhampton in September thought to be one of biggest seen in state
  A man is expected to face court in central Queensland next month accused of shooting dead a 5.2-metre saltwater crocodile.The reptile was found floating in the Fitzroy River near Rockhampton on 21 September.Continue reading...
  
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