Environment news

• ‘Straight in harm’s way’: can Trump open up Alaska’s 19m-acre refuge for drilling?

  04-12-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Native leaders ready for a fight as Trump calls ANWR, one of the last truly wild places on Earth, the US’s ‘biggest oil farm’The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is one of the earth’s last intact ecosystems. Vast and little-known, this 19m-acre expanse along Alaska’s north slope is home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears, as well as musk oxen, wolves and wolverines. Millions of birds from around the world migrate to or through the region
  
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• How Mistletoe’s spread across UK could be down to the blackcap | Specieswatch

  04-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Scientists have various theories about resurgence of once scarce plant popular at Christmas in Victorian eraNow that deciduous trees have lost their leaves the colonies of mistletoe Viscum album that have been spreading across the country are more obvious. A species that was rare outside the south-east Midlands is now quite common in many areas where it is seen growing mostly on apple, lime, poplar and hawthorn trees.The Victorian demand for mistletoe was once so great that the British crop from
  
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• Country diary: Surprise snowfall brings winter crashing into autumn | Nicola Chester

  04-12-2024 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Inkpen, Berkshire: Snow this time of year never used to be unusual. It settles on the lanes and fields, revealing secrets old and newA recent early taste of winter makes for a strange mingling of colour. With the ground covered in autumn’s still-fresh leaf fall, and many leaves still on trees, the patchy powdering and layer of snow over such golden toffee shades seems incongruous.Kick through the piles of leaves banking the edges of the lanes and there is still a layer of straw underneath,
  
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