Environment news

• ‘Chaos agent’ Trump revives California water wars as experts warn of turmoil

  23-01-2025 23:05 via theguardian.com
  
  President claims to be ‘putting people over fish’ but critics say order could derail years of carefully crafted water policyIt didn’t take long for Donald Trump to reignite the California water wars he waged in his first term.On his first day in office, Trump directed the secretary of commerce and the secretary of the interior to develop a new plan that will “route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who
  
  Read more

• ‘Setting us up for catastrophe’: alarm at Trump attack on federal disaster agency

  23-01-2025 21:06 via theguardian.com
  The president is now setting his sights on Fema, the agency responsible for helping Americans after major disastersDonald Trump has suggested paring back or even dismantling the federal response to major disasters, a move that would cut off aid that has largely helped support Republican-leaning states that voted for him in last year’s US presidential election.Trump said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had “not done their job for the last four years” and that
  
  Read more

• How the ‘forever tote’ became the It bag du jour – and a greenwashing ruse

  23-01-2025 17:10 via theguardian.com
  From museums to wine bars, businesses are enticing consumers to carry logos on their arm. Demand is high, but the life cycle shortThis year’s It bag isn’t made by any of the usual designers. And if this bag could talk, it wouldn’t say “calf leather” so much as “wash me at 40C”. What’s more, in an ideal world, you would never want to buy another again.The “forever tote” is big business. Usually made from calico, an unbleached cotton desi
  
  Read more

• How the ‘forever tote’ became the It bag du jour

  23-01-2025 17:10 via theguardian.com
  
  The original cotton totes have a ‘disarmingly short’ life cycle – so demand is high for a more environmentally friendly versionThis year’s It bag isn’t made by any of the usual designers. And if this bag could talk, it wouldn’t say “calf leather” so much as “wash me at 40C”. What’s more, in an ideal world, you would never want to buy another again.The “forever tote” is big business. Usually made from calico, an unbleac
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘People feel a sense of ownership’: the growth of community composting

  23-01-2025 16:54 via theguardian.com
  
  Instead of burning or transporting their garden waste, residents of an English village built their own composting siteIn the village of Thrupp, where houses are spread out over steep winding roads in the narrow Frome Valley, it’s difficult for lorries to get through to collect garden waste.It leaves some people with the choice of lengthy car trips to a nearby town to take their green waste to a facility, or burning their rubbish in small bonfires that have prompted many irate social media
  
  Read more

• No council lorries, no bonfires: how community composting took off in an English village

  23-01-2025 16:54 via theguardian.com
  
  Faced with burning or transporting their garden waste, Thrupp residents in Gloucestershire built their own composting siteIn the village of Thrupp, where houses are spread out over steep winding roads in the narrow Frome Valley, it’s difficult for lorries to get through to collect garden waste.It leaves some residents with the choice of lengthy car trips to a nearby town to take their green waste to a facility, or burning their rubbish in small bonfires that have prompted many irate social
  
  Read more

• Conspiracy-laden, fire-prone icons: what will happen to LA’s palm trees?

  23-01-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  Many palm species in the city are receptive to embers and hard to extinguish – and they likely helped spread the firesWhen the Los Angeles wildfires broke out on the morning of 7 January, some of the most dramatic images were of palm trees set ablaze along Sunset Boulevard. In the days that followed, burning palms became a symbol to illustrate what may be the costliest wildfires in history, which left at least 25 dead and destroyed thousands of structures.The trees are icons of the city. T
  
  Read more

• Environmental activist steps back from the fight ‘disappointed’ by Labour so far

  23-01-2025 14:45 via theguardian.com
  Mark Avery to stand down from role with Wild Justice but won’t completely give up campaigning, he insistsIf government ministers and civil servants are grey squirrels, they may think they can rest easy – the predatory pine marten in the Westminster jungle is leaving them in peace.A campaigner who has “created a landscape of fear” over the authorities’ failure to protect nature is stepping back from Wild Justice to spend more time with the wildlife – and grandc
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• I’m obsessed with icebreaking: I was trained not to hit anything – now I drive my ship into ice 24/7

  23-01-2025 11:00 via theguardian.com
  As the captain of a royal research ship, I break ice to get to British stations in the Antarctic. It’s great fun - but getting stuck is always a riskI have been working for the British Antarctic Survey since I was 19. I started icebreaking on my first trip to the Antarctic and got hooked. Now I am the captain of the royal research ship Sir David Attenborough and I find icebreaking addictive.It’s unique in a maritime career to have the ability, even as a junior officer, to do quite in
  
  Read more

• She looks like a ‘deformed penis’ and smells like a dead possum: Sydney goes wild for its blooming corpse flower

  23-01-2025 08:44 via theguardian.com
  
  Fans of the flower – known as Putricia – say they are ‘obsessed’ with the plant, although they have ‘never smelt that before’Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastIn Sydney, word is spreading: a rare endangered plant named after a deformed penis is beginning to unfurl.Outside Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden greenhouse on Thursday, a diverse crowd of hundreds has formed. Internationa
  
  Read more

• Country diary: Winter has come and gone in a week | Paul Evans

  23-01-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The Marches, Shropshire: As the ice thins and the paths begin to stick, the ravens and owls are getting busy with their breeding seasonUp on Cyrn y Bwch (Horns of the Buck), known as Old Racecourse Common, a plateau on the edge of the Oswestry Uplands, winter comes and goes in a week. There are still white punctuation marks fallen from the rich quiet of a snow spell that feels dreamlike now as the puddle ice thins to kitchen film and paths turn claggy.The thaw is a kind of recall as the past ret
  
  Read more

• ‘Awe-inspiring and harrowing’: how two orcas with a taste for liver decimated the great white shark capital of the world

  23-01-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A decade ago, up to 1,000 of the apex predators lived in one South African bay. Now they have gone, fleeing from killer whales. But the gap they have left creates problems for other speciesThe first carcass of a great white, a small female, washed up in South Africa on 9 February 2017. The 2.6-metre-long body had no hook or net marks, ruling out human involvement. Whatever had killed her had vanished. So too had all the other great white sharks in Gansbaai on the Western Cape, Dr Alison Towner n
  
  Read more

• Giant iceberg on crash course with island, putting penguins and seals in danger

  23-01-2025 01:01 via bbc.com
  
  More than twice the size of greater London, the expanse of ice is unpredictable and dangerous.
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!