Environment news

• Woolly rhino from Ice Age unearthed in Russian Arctic

  30-12-2020 23:31 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Found with most of its organs intact, the rhino is thought to have lived more than 20,000 years ago.
  
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• New Year Honours 2021: 'Green' economist recognised

  30-12-2020 23:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Prof Dieter Helm is among the environmentalists and scientists who have been recognised.
  
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• 'We don't sleep when it's raining': the mental health impact of flooding

  30-12-2020 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Research show flood victims in UK nine times more likely to experience long-term mental health issuesWhen Julie Blackburn was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2016 she was told to avoid her triggers, scenarios which cause upsetting flashbacks. “But when your trigger is rain, there is no getting over it,” she said. “My husband and I don’t sleep when it’s raining, we take it in turns to stand at the window watching the rain – it’s just livi
  
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• 'A critical time': how Covid-19 piled the pressure on conservation efforts

  30-12-2020 10:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Ecotourism revenues plummeted around the world as some areas saw poaching and land grabs increase in 2020Conservation in crisis: ecotourism collapse threatens communities and wildlifeRead more in our series Biodiversity: what happened next?From the Nepalese Himalayas where tigers patrol the snowy peaks to the lush forest homes of mountain gorillas in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, national parks emptied as Covid-19 spread around the world in 2020. Billions of pounds of ecotourism reve
  
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• The best science long reads of 2020

  30-12-2020 10:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A selection of the best science and environment features published this year.
  
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• Moths to monkeys: 503 new species identified by UK scientists

  30-12-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Spectacular discovery of monkey in Myanmar among new species described this year by Natural History Museum scientistsScarab beetles from New Guinea, seaweed from the Falklands and a new species of monkey found on an extinct volcano in Myanmar are among 503 species newly identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum.The museum’s work in 2020 describing species previously unknown to science includes naming new lichens, wasps, barnacles, miniature tarantulas and a lungless worm salam
  
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• Iceland's innovations to reach net-zero – in pictures

  30-12-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Isolated and challenged by a harsh climate and battered by the financial crisis of 2008, Iceland has successfully moved away from fossil fuels and shifted to 100% electricity production from renewable sources. The island nation has developed high-tech greenhouses to grow organic vegetables and embraced sustainable fish farming, ecotourism, breakthrough processes for carbon capture and disposal, and efforts to restore the forests that were lost in earlier centuriesContinue reading...
  
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• Floods, storms and searing heat: 2020 in extreme weather

  30-12-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  While Covid has dominated the news, the world has also felt the effects of human-driven global heatingThis year has broken a series of unwelcome weather records. Last month was the warmest November in history. This followed the hottest January, May and September. All-time temperature peaks were registered from the Antarctic to the Arctic. Since the start of the year, Australia, Siberia and California have suffered record fires. The Atlantic has generated record storms. Ice in the Laptev Sea has
  
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• Specieswatch: monarch butterfly needs urgent protection

  30-12-2020 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Eastern populations have fallen by 80% but US government says it is unworthy of special attentionWatching an American indie band is not the most obvious way to commune with a wonder of the natural world but look up Saint Simon by the Shins on YouTube.The band plays in a forest in central Mexico, surrounded by towering chandeliers of butterflies, trees full of butterflies, clouds of butterflies. It is a stunning encounter with the monarch, one of the world’s most remarkable migratory insect
  
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• Country diary: a 'mountain' town much like Chamonix

  30-12-2020 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Keswick, Cumbria: The comparatively diminutive stature is more than made up for by the zeal with which its residents practise the religions of the outdoors The car hums along the dual carriageway, a warm, dark cocoon for two slumbering children after the stimulus of nursery. The sodium glow from the lights of Keswick slides into view and my eye is drawn to the encircling peaks. I trace the muscular outline of Skiddaw and find what I’m looking for, pinpricks of light dancing downward on a h
  
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• Cold comfort farming: German ice wine maker hails crucial big chill

  30-12-2020 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘You might get one chance in a decade,’ says Ralf Petgen, who has adapted his Mosel vineyard owing to global heatingOn a recent frosty night, Ralf Petgen made use of the light of a full moon to check every hour on the state of his riesling grapes. The weather forecast over the two previous days had given the winemaker hope that for the first time in years he would fulfil his dream of harvesting his grapes in a frozen state and turn them into Eiswein.“The temperature needs to be
  
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