Environment news

• New Water Commission must create an environmental enforcer that is feared

  22-10-2024 23:00
  The division of responsibilities between Ofwat, the Environment Agency and Drinking Water Inspectorate hasn’t workedNew regulator may ban English water companies from making a profitAn independent commission into the English and Welsh water sector would have been an excellent idea about 20 years ago. It is hard to pinpoint precisely when the industry went seriously off the rails but Ofwat’s infamous price review of 2004 is one starting point. That is when the undoubted gains from hig
  
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• New commission may ban English water companies from making a profit

  22-10-2024 23:00
  
  Defra body, created to overhaul system amid public fury, may force firms to be run for public good rather than shareholder returnsNew water regulator must create environmental enforcer that is feared | Nils PratleyWater companies in England could be banned from making a profit under plans for a complete overhaul of the system.The idea is one of the options being considered by a new commission set up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) amid public fury over the way f
  
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• More hen harriers killed in UK during 2023 than in any other year, RSPB says

  22-10-2024 21:00
  
  Report also finds at least 1,344 individual birds of prey were persecuted in the UK between 2009 and 2023More hen harriers were killed in 2023 than in any other year on record, a report has found.The RSPB’s Birdcrime report also found that at least 1,344 individual birds of prey were persecuted in the UK between 2009 and 2023, and that 75% of people convicted of offences related to the persecution of birds of prey in that period were connected to the gamebird shooting industry. Continue re
  
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• North Carolina farms face depleted, toxic soil after historic Helene flooding

  22-10-2024 17:00
  
  In the mountainous area near Asheville, affected growers must now replenish water-logged and often tainted landHurricane Helene took much from western North Carolina where I live, farm and raise my family. The stories are harrowing: houses obliterated by landslides, whole families washed away, corpses revealed as the waters receded.Suddenly, there’s deep climate trauma here, in a place where we mistakenly thought hurricanes happened to Floridians and coastal communities, not us. Helene sto
  
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• Through the roof: how a Brisbane shed is turning old solar panels into silver and copper

  22-10-2024 16:00
  Australia’s solar waste problem – identified as a priority by the federal government in 2016 – is becoming larger and more urgentGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastIn a 50m shed south of Brisbane, solar panels are being turned into silver and copper.Photovoltaic panels no longer capable of producing electricity are having their aluminium and wires removed before being ground up and refined into plastic, glass, silicon, silver and copper. So far, nothing
  
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• Weather reporters are crucial to educating the public on the climate crisis | Katrina vanden Heuvel

  22-10-2024 15:00
  
  As Americans reel from deadly hurricanes, meteorologists can communicate the human costs of global heatingSome have called Hurricanes Helene and Milton an October surprise. Yet such disasters are now dispiritingly predictable. In their wake, pundits have asked whether and how the storms – which happened to hit some key swing states – could impact a presidential election shaping up to be decided by razor-thin margins.There’s practical concerns, such as whether some affected vote
  
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• Miliband faces crunch decision on speed of greenhouse gas cuts

  22-10-2024 15:00
  
  Energy secretary prepares new pledge for big UK carbon cuts in next decade amid potential cabinet divisionEd Miliband is facing his first key test on Labour’s ambitions for global climate leadership, with a crucial decision looming on how far and how fast to cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.The energy secretary is preparing a new international pledge for the UK to cut carbon sharply in the next decade, but could face opposition within the cabinet. Continue reading...
  
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• UK export of millions of endangered eels to Russia attacked as ‘bonkers’

  22-10-2024 14:00
  
  Critics say eels could be smuggled eastwards towards Asia but exporter says they are for ‘restocking’ projectMillions of critically endangered eels have been exported from the Severn estuary to Russia this year and conservationists fear export quotas will be increased next year.A tonne of glass eels, the young elvers that swim into European estuaries from the Sargasso Sea each spring, was flown to Kaliningrad this year, double the amount exported to the Russian port the previous year
  
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• A Colombian warlord became the Amazon rainforest’s most unlikely protector. Now he is cutting it down

  22-10-2024 13:00
  
  Deforestation fell by a third when the guerrilla leader Ivan Mordisco violently enforced a logging ban, but now he has changed tack and is threatening Cop16 biodiversity talksIn the Amazon states of southern Colombia, uniform patches of cattle pasture suddenly give way to trees so numerous and densely packed that the blots of emerald, lime green and white overlap as vines, leaves and tree trunks merge into one.According to official figures, this place is an international success story: the front
  
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• How a plastic cave made in Spain keeps Amazonian culture alive 5,000 miles away

  22-10-2024 11:00
  
  When ancient carvings were vandalised, the Wauja feared their knowledge was lost. But 3D imaging has created a replica at the heart of Brazil’s first Xingu people’s museumIt is not yet dawn in Ulupuwene, an Indigenous village in the Brazilian Amazon, but the Wauja people have already risen to prepare for the festive day ahead. The sound of clarinet-like instruments floats across the village, on the banks of the Batovi River, as women sweep the earthen floor between the thatched oca,
  
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• Country diary: Hello to the incoming geese, farewell to a deer friend | Sean Wood

  22-10-2024 06:30
  
  Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway: Autumn activity is in full swing – particular overhead, as the migrants arrive from colder climes, bringing in a beautiful rarity tooIt’s like gatecrashing a Bruegel every morning at Fairy Hill at the moment, and even with sunrise at 7.30am there is autumnal activity in the fields, rooks on the treetops, brown hares by the stone wall, the farmer on his quad and my nearest neighbour chopping wood. Sadly, the fine-looking but hapless young Aberdeen
  
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• More than 1m farmed salmon die at supplier to leading UK retailers

  22-10-2024 06:00
  Mowi Scotland, which supplies Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s, blames a rise in sea temperatures for the deaths, while campaigners say expanding farms will make things worse More than a million dead fish, the biggest mass die-off of farmed salmon in Scotland in a decade, have been recorded at a farm belonging to the UK’s largest supplier.The deaths at two adjacent Mowi Scotland sites in Loch Seaforth on the Outer Hebrides – licensed as one farm by the Scottish government – ro
  
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• Consumers embrace Ireland’s first bottle deposit return scheme

  22-10-2024 06:00
  
  Since February, 630m empty cans and bottles have been deposited at reverse vending machinesAfter initial consumer confusion and irritation, Ireland’s first ever bottle deposit return scheme has finally been embraced by the public, with 111m containers returned in August – up from 2m in February when the scheme launched – new data shows.Re-turn, which was mandated by the Irish government, to implement the scheme as part of a bid to meet EU 90% recycling targets, said that in the
  
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• What do new draft guidelines for ‘forever chemicals’ mean for Australia’s drinking water?

  22-10-2024 03:09
  Efforts to reduce levels of PFAS chemicals in our drinking water are important – but most water supplies are already below the new limitsThe Australian National Health and Medical Research Council has today released draft guidelines for acceptable levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in drinking water. PFAS chemicals are also known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down easily and can persist in the environment, including drinking water supplie
  
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• Mega meteorite tore up seabed and boiled Earth's oceans

  22-10-2024 01:02 via bbc.com
  
  It was 200 times bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs nearly three billion years later.
  
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• More than 1,000 homes linked to £20bn green energy grid expected to be built in Highlands

  22-10-2024 01:01
  
  Subsidiary of electricity firm SSE signs ‘unique and novel’ employment and social housing deal with local councilsMore than 1,000 new homes are expected to be built across northern Scotland linked to a £20bn investment in grid infrastructure needed to meet the UK’s green energy targets.SSEN Transmission, a subsidiary of the electricity firm SSE, has signed a deal with local councils and housing associations in the Highlands to fund at least 1,000 new properties as well as
  
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