Environment news

• Black farmers face setbacks over Trump budget cuts: ‘We are in survival mode’

  20-03-2025 19:00 via theguardian.com
  A consortium of Black farmers in the north-east take financial hits as harsh USDA cuts threaten their operationsFor the last several weeks, Jocelyn Germany has been asking herself “is it safe for us to exist” as Black farmers?, since US Department of Agriculture cuts have put her work in jeopardy.Germany is the farmer advocate of Farm School NYC (FSNYC), an urban agriculture education center focused on food sovereignty and social, economic and racial justice. Around 85% of Farm Schoo
  
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• Defra asks England’s biggest landowners to come up with plans to restore nature

  20-03-2025 17:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: Representatives of king, National Trust and others called on to work together to protect environmentSteve Reed called in some of England’s biggest landowners for a meeting on Thursday, asking them to come up with meaningful plans to restore nature on their estates.Representatives for King Charles and Prince William were among those at the meeting, asked by the environment secretary to draft new land management plans to help meet the country’s legal Environment Act targets.
  
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• AI-driven weather prediction breakthrough reported

  20-03-2025 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Researchers say Aardvark Weather uses thousands of times less computing power and is much faster than current systemsA single researcher with a desktop computer will be able to deliver accurate weather forecasts using a new AI weather prediction approach that is tens of times faster and uses thousands of times less computing power than conventional systems.Weather forecasts are currently generated through a complex set of stages, each taking several hours to run on bespoke supercomputers, requir
  
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• Greenpeace verdict is ‘weaponization of legal system’, advocacy groups say

  20-03-2025 16:41 via theguardian.com
  
  Campaigners condemn North Dakota jury’s ruling as Greenpeace must pay Energy Transfer at least $660mNever miss global breaking news. Download our free app to keep up with key stories in real time.The verdict against the environmental group Greenpeace finding it liable for huge damages to a pipeline company over protests has been described by advocacy groups as a “weaponization of the legal system” and an “assault” on free speech and protest rights.A North Dakota jur
  
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• Canada’s Marineland to rehome its whales and dolphins as it seeks a buyer

  20-03-2025 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Conservationists voice concern that the Ontario theme park will struggle to find suitable homes for its animalsCanada’s embattled Marineland theme park is to raise money to “expeditiously” remove animals from its grounds, including the world’s largest captive beluga population, as it looks for a buyer. But a lack of available sanctuaries in the country suggests finding a home for stranded whales, dolphins and pinnipeds will be a daunting task.In February, the park won app
  
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• Watchdog investigating whether Defra breaking laws on cleaning up English rivers

  20-03-2025 13:12 via theguardian.com
  Office for Environmental Protection says targets for water quality likely to be missed, and clarifying rules may helpThe Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) watchdog has launched an investigation into the UK government over potential failures to clean up England’s rivers under EU-derived laws.The OEP published a report last year saying that plans to clean up waterways were too generic and did not address specific issues at individual sites. It said plans were being put in place despi
  
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• ‘Don’t call it zombie deer disease’: scientists warn of ‘global crisis’ as infections spread across the US

  20-03-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  A contagious, fatal illness in deer, elk and moose has taken hold in the US and is now reaching other countries. While it has not infected humans yet, the risk is growingIn a scattershot pattern that now extends from coast to coast, continental US states have been announcing new hotspots of chronic wasting disease (CWD).The contagious and always-fatal neurodegenerative disorder infects the cervid family that includes deer, elk, moose and, in higher latitudes, reindeer. There is no vaccine or tre
  
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• How bottled water companies are draining our drinking water – video

  20-03-2025 10:46 via theguardian.com
  
  As droughts become more prevalent, corporate control over our drinking water is threatening the health of water sources and the access people have to them. Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores how foreign multinational companies are extracting billions of litres of water from natural aquifers to sell back to the same communities from which it came – for huge profits‘It’s not drought - it’s looting’: the Spanish villages where people are forced to buy back their own drink
  
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• ‘I trust my eyes, not the forecast’: Alexandria is sinking. Why don’t local fishers believe it?

  20-03-2025 10:00 via theguardian.com
  The ancient Mediterranean city is at risk as sea levels rise. But most people in the vulnerable fishing village of El Max believe it will always weather the storms of timeOn a sunny January morning in El Max, west of Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, where a canal meets the Mediterranean Sea, Ahmed Gaz is untangling his fishing net on the beach after landing his catch at dawn.Like almost everyone in the neighbourhood, Gaz was born and raised by the water, destined to fish for a living: &ldq
  
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• Badenoch’s attack on net zero is ridiculous. But so were the right’s Brexit claims, and look where they left us | Zoe Williams

  20-03-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The run-up to 2016 shows ‘common sense’ isn’t enough. Even ignorant, reactionary arguments must be properly counteredKemi Badenoch’s speech on climate this week was not interesting of itself: she said net zero couldn’t be achieved by 2050 “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”. She has no expertise in climate science, no background in renewables or apparent familiarity with the advances made in their technology, no qualific
  
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• ‘A deliberate poisoning’: how a banned pesticide haunts the French Caribbean

  20-03-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Prostate cancer rates are among the world’s highest in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where chlordecone was widely used on plantations for more than 20 yearsTiburce Cléon was just a teenager when he began working in the vast banana plantations of Guadeloupe. For five decades, he toiled long hours in the fields under the Caribbean sun. Then, a few months after retiring in 2021, he was given a diagnosis that many of his colleagues had received before him: prostate cancer.Guadeloupe and Ma
  
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• Weatherwatch: climate shifts threaten birds’ return as spring arrives

  20-03-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As birds begin long journey north, climate-driven seasonal changes may leave late arrivals struggling to find food for youngThursday is the spring equinox, when day and night are more or less equal all over the world. For naturalists, it marks the official start of spring, though judging by the birdsong in my Somerset garden, the season began several weeks ago.As we eagerly await the return of swifts, swallows, warblers and flycatchers – all long-distance migrants from sub-Saharan Africa &
  
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• UK must spend £1.5bn a year on flood defences to protect public, experts warn

  20-03-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Researchers cite £2.4bn annual cost of flooding and say a third of England’s critical infrastructure is at riskSpending on flood defences will fall off a cliff edge next year, a report warns, calling on the chancellor to commit at least £1.5bn a year in the spending review to protect the economy and the public.Nearly 2 million people across the UK are exposed to flooding every year, which is equivalent to the combined populations of Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne
  
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• Country diary: Suddenly on crutches, I’m an indoor spectator of spring | Virginia Spiers

  20-03-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  St Dominic, Tamar Valley: Our woodland garden is starting to put on a show, with shocking pink camellias and purplish petals of magnolia, while I watch on from upstairsPrimroses poke through the woody debris left by recent hedge-flailing along the lanes, but the joy of this sunlit walk towards Calstock is suddenly cut short. On black ice, at the bottom of Bury Hill, we both crash, full length; I cannot rise, but Jack goes for help as I slump among brambles on the cold mud, soon to be coddled in
  
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• Take a blossom break at work, National Trust urges, as spring warms UK

  20-03-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Charity’s poll finds 80% feel more positive after spending breaks outside, but only 10% do soEmployees are being urged to step outside to take time to observe one of the wonders of the natural world: the fleeting but lovely spring blossom season.Research commissioned by the National Trust, which operates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, shows that while almost all those polled said they felt better if they took breaks in nature, only one in 10 did so. Continue reading...
  
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• Oil giant's leaked data reveals 'awful' pollution

  20-03-2025 02:13 via bbc.com
  
  Colombia’s Ecopetrol polluted hundreds of sites, including water sources and wetlands, the BBC finds.
  
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• Greenpeace ordered to pay more than $660m for defaming oil firm in protests

  20-03-2025 00:25 via bbc.com
  
  Greenpeace has warned it could be forced into bankruptcy because of the case brought by Energy Transfer.
  
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