Environment news

• Farming has always been gambling with dirt – but the odds are getting longer | Gabrielle Chan

  16-12-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  Rainfall patterns are changing, crops are ripening earlier, and the normal rhythms of farming have fallen off – exactly as climate scientists warnedSign up for the Rural Network email newsletterSmell is the most evocative sense. I lit a mozzie coil this week and a flood of childhood memories came back. The great long, dry days of summer stretched before us as the five of us slept side-by-side in a canvas tent like a can of sardines. Playing cards in a classic Australian caravan park. Runni
  
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• A sea anemone: I have pronounced their name incorrectly most of my life | Helen Sullivan

  16-12-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  It is probably wrong to touch, even gently, a sea anemone. But even now, I find it difficult to resistIn her book Theatres of Glass, Rebecca Stott writes about the Victorian craze for home aquariums – which swept London in the 1850s, with people taking animals from the seaside and making miniature rock pools at home in large glass enclosures or pie dishes. The craze did not last long; people didn’t have a way to oxygenate the water and most of what they collected died.But among the p
  
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• Can Colombia’s ‘crazy’ cattle ranchers make beef an eco-friendly choice?

  16-12-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  By rejecting traditional grazing and maintaining trees and wildlife habitats alongside pasture, farmers are turning their land carbon positive. But will it be enough?On a humid dawn in Colombia’s livestock capital, Michael Robbin rides across one of his farm’s pastures, where tall green stalks brush his horse’s belly. When he bought the land outside Montería in 2020 he divided it into 125 smaller fields. His neighbours called him crazy at first.“That’s not ho
  
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• How to declutter your home before Christmas

  16-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Tips on where to start your cleanup, how to get the kids involved, and where best for your unwanted items to end upIt might not be the first place that springs to mind, but as Vicky Silverthorn, a professional declutterer, points out, it’s the place where you’re most likely to need a bit of space during the next few weeks. Continue reading...
  
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• More than a million vapes a day in UK thrown away, says research

  16-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From June 2025 it will be illegal to sell single-use vapes to combat environmental damageThirteen vapes are thrown away every second in the UK – more than a million a day – leading to an “environmental nightmare”, according to research.There has also been a rise in “big puff” vapes which are bigger and can hold up to 6,000 puffs per vape, with single use vapes averaging 600. Three million of these larger vapes are being bought every week according to the resea
  
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• Country diary 1974: A porcine mystery on the Bass Rock

  16-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  20 December 1974: There are no pigs on the island but near some waddling gull chicks I picked up a dried out tailBASS ROCK: A visit to the Bass Rock is always a delightful experience. Unless the weather conditions are favourable it is not always possible to make a landing on this precipitous islet for it rises sheer out of the North Sea like some giant basalt needle. It is only practical to land on its west side and even this can be difficult when there is anything much of a sea-swell. We made a
  
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• Country diary: Something complicated in the tangled grass | Ed Douglas

  16-12-2024 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Blacka Moor, South Yorkshire: With its antler-like structure and aniseed whiff, this exquisite fungus, called meadow coral, is luxuriating in all its strangenessLate November’s weather provided a barnstorming performance. Temperatures plunged but were then wrenched into a steep climb. Gales flipped everything over before the nosedive into frost began again. Into December and a morning of half-hearted drizzle and still but warmer air seemed exceptional. Low cloud settled on the purplish cro
  
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• ‘Like a giant bird box’: the volunteers building huge snowdrifts for Finland’s pregnant seals

  16-12-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As warmer winters melt the snow drifts that endangered Saimaa ringed seals use to raise their young, humans are giving them a helping handWords by Phoebe Weston. Photographs by Samuel BlochEight hours shovelling snow in -20C might not sound like the ideal day out, but a committed team of volunteers in Finland are working dawn to dusk building enormous snow drifts for one of the world’s most endangered seals.The Saimaa ringed seal was once widespread across Finland but is now confined to La
  
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• The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan takes a sharp turn away from a cheaper, cleaner future | Simon Holmes à Court

  16-12-2024 03:12 via theguardian.com
  After 22 failed energy policies, the Coalition is being guided by a roadmap to higher bills and higher emissionsFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastOn the front cover of Frontier Economics’ costings of the Coalition’s nuclear policy is a stock photo entitled fork in road, implying that we’re at some kind of juncture where we must decide between a nuclear or renewables path.In 1969 John Gorton’s L
  
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• Bronze Age massacre victims likely cannibalised

  16-12-2024 01:02 via bbc.com
  
  At least 37 people appear to have been butchered and likely eaten in a Bronze Age massacre in Somerset.
  
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