Environment news

• About 15% of world’s cropland polluted with toxic metals, say researchers

  17-04-2025 20:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Scientists sound the alarm over substances such as arsenic and lead contaminating soils and entering food systemsAbout one sixth of global cropland is contaminated by toxic heavy metals, researchers have estimated, with as many as 1.4 billion people living in high-risk areas worldwide.Approximately 14 to 17% of cropland globally – roughly 242m hectares – is contaminated by at least one toxic metal such as arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel or lead, at levels that exce
  
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• Rural communities could be destroyed if UK signs US trade deal, says former food tsar

  17-04-2025 19:38 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: Henry Dimbleby joins farmers in voicing fears of lower standards and a poor deal for British food producersBritain’s rural communities could be “destroyed”, the former government food tsar has said, if ministers sign a US trade deal that undercuts British farming standards.Ministers are working on a new trade deal with the US, after previous post-Brexit attempts stalled. Unpopular agreements signed at the time with Australia and New Zealand featured tariff-free acces
  
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• BP suffers investor rebellion at first AGM since climate strategy U-turn

  17-04-2025 16:15 via theguardian.com
  
  Nearly a quarter of shareholders vote against the chair, Helge Lund, as green protesters are blocked from enteringBP suffered an investor rebellion on Thursday after facing shareholders for the first time since abandoning its climate strategy at a meeting marred by protest.About a quarter of shareholders voted against the chair, Helge Lund, at the company’s annual meeting in Sunbury-on-Thames, on the edges of London, which attracted protest from several green campaign groups. Continue read
  
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• ‘All of his guns will do nothing for him’: lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday

  17-04-2025 16:00 via theguardian.com
  Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methodsOne afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcas
  
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• Kicking up a stink: row over sewage pollution blighting Cape Town’s beaches

  17-04-2025 14:08 via theguardian.com
  Campaigners say authorities should be doing more to clean up waters around city of nearly 5 million peopleOn a clear summer’s day in Cape Town, the Milnerton Lagoon was serene, reflecting the bright blue sky and Table Mountain. But there was an unmistakable stench, and up close, the water was murky.A few hundred metres away, adults and children played in the water as it flowed into Table Bay. On the boardwalk, a sign read: “Polluted water: for health reasons, swimming and recreationa
  
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• The life and death of a ‘laundered’ cow in the Amazon rainforest

  17-04-2025 13:00 via theguardian.com
  Cattle moved between ranches, allowing meat from farms linked to deforestation to end up on supermarket shelvesRevealed: world’s largest meat company may break Amazon deforestation pledges againBibles, bullets and beef: Amazon cowboy culture at odds with Brazil’s climate goalsBrazil is the biggest exporter of beef in the world, and more than 40% of its vast 240m-cattle herd is raised in the Amazon region. As a result, swathes of the nature-rich rainforest are being cleared and burned
  
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• ‘No fish, no money, no food’: Colombia’s stilt people fight to save their wetlands

  17-04-2025 13:00 via theguardian.com
  Illegally diverted rivers, seawater and poorly managed building projects have polluted the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. But the Unesco site has a vital role to play in fighting climate changeFrom the porch of her family home in Nueva Venecia, Magdalena, Yeidis Rodríguez Suárez watches the sunset. The view takes in the still waters of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta wetlands. Pelicans dip their beaks into the lagoon, ripples breaking the glassy surface. Distant man
  
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• Bibles, bullets and beef: Amazon cowboy culture at odds with Brazil’s climate goals

  17-04-2025 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As the first climate summit in the Amazon approaches, a gulf is opening between what the area’s farming lobby wants, and what the world needsRevealed: world’s largest meat company may break Amazon deforestation pledges againThe life and death of a ‘laundered’ cow in the Amazon rainforestYellowstone in Montana may have the most romanticised cowboy culture in the world thanks to the TV drama series of the same name starring Kevin Costner. But the true home of the 21st-centu
  
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• Scientists find 'strongest evidence yet' of life on distant planet

  17-04-2025 12:18 via bbc.com
  Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.
  
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• How the truth about supermarket salmon is being hidden – video

  17-04-2025 12:17 via theguardian.com
  
  Salmon is often marketed as the sustainable, healthy and eco-friendly protein choice. But what you may not realise is that most of the salmon you buy is farmed, especially if you live in the UK, because Scottish salmon producers are no longer required to tell you. Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out why it is important for consumers to know where their salmon comes from, and examines the gap between the marketing of farmed salmon and the reality for our health, the environmental and animal welfareS
  
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• I’m obsessed with coastal wildflowers: they look so delicate but thrive in tough conditions

  17-04-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From the rock sea-spurrey, which appears to grow out of solid rock, to the slender centaury that lives on a landslip, these plants exist where they do for good reasonI first encountered coastal wildflowers when I was 11. I was visiting my grandmother’s friend in Devon and a lady said: “Here, dear,” and dug up a clump of Warren crocuses – a rare plant that, at the time, was only thought to grow in the seaside resort of Dawlish Warren. She gave them to me to grow in my gard
  
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• Australia opposition leader clarifies he believes in climate change after debate

  17-04-2025 08:52 via bbc.com
  Peter Dutton is facing outrage after comments he made on climate change during an election debate.
  
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• Like the Ritz for wildlife: the joy of recreating England’s ancient hedges

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Up and down the country, volunteers are coming together to plant more of these nature-rich reservesThe 30-metre ridge runs across the moor near Yar Tor on Dartmoor, one of several faint lines that crisscross the land like aeroplane contrails. Although the open moorland looks wild, we are standing on some of the UK’s oldest farmland. These ridges, called reaves, are the ghosts of farming’s most wildlife-rich legacy: hedges.“These reaves sadly have no function today other than to
  
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• Like the Ritz for wildlife: the joy of recreating Britain’s ancient hedges

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Up and down the country, volunteers are coming together to plant more of these nature-rich reservesThe 30-metre ridge runs across the moor near Yar Tor on Dartmoor, one of several faint lines that crisscross the land like aeroplane contrails. Although the open moorland looks wild, we are standing on some of the UK’s oldest farmland. These ridges, called reaves, are the ghosts of farming’s most wildlife-rich legacy: hedges.“These reaves sadly have no function today other than to
  
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• April heralds return of migratory birds to UK – unless the weather turns cruel

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Unsettled weather, rain and winds have in some years stopped birds returning from winter in Africa in their tracksDespite TS Eliot’s famous reworking of the opening lines to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, April is not usually the cruellest month, weather-wise. For birders, it sees the welcome return of the majority of long-distance migrants from their winter quarters in sub-Saharan Africa – including warblers, flycatchers and chats, along with those masters of the air: swallows, m
  
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• Country diary: Going house to house looking for a dormouse | Alexandra Pearce-Broomhead

  17-04-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Bodmin, Cornwall: These red-listed mice are still sleeping off the last of winter. As we check for activity, we enter a world of velveteen moss rugs and squatting shrewsSpring’s threads are woven throughout the woodland: clutches of primroses, emerging bluebells and tightly wound fern fronds ready to unfurl. But at the bases of trees, hazel dormice will still be hibernating, curled up among damp mosses and leaves, soft bodies dozing the last of the cold weather away.I meet the licensed eco
  
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• Nothing to see here, Press Council says after News Corp tabloids’ front-page undisclosed advertorial gassing up fossil fuel | Weekly Beast

  17-04-2025 06:03 via theguardian.com
  No breach, self-regulatory Australian Press Council rules; plus BBC embarks on big bureau expansionWhen is an undisclosed advertorial, paid for by the fossil fuel industry and splashed across the front pages of all the Murdoch tabloids, not a breach of press standards?When the Australian Press Council rules there is nothing to see and finds no breach.Sign up to get Guardian Australia’s weekly media diary as a free newsletter Continue reading...
  
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• 'I'm not a scientist': Dutton responds to climate change question in ABC leaders' debate – video

  17-04-2025 02:33 via theguardian.com
  When asked if he accepts we are already seeing the impacts of climate change, the opposition leader responded 'there's an impact', but said the real question is what Australia can do about it. Pressed further, Dutton said 'I don't know' and 'I'm not a scientist' when asked if he was willing to say 'this is climate change happening right now'.Dutton looks shaky as he fights Albanese to a draw at best – and he’s fast running out of chances to get ahead Continue reading...
  
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• The truth about life on other planets - and what it means for humans

  17-04-2025 02:11 via bbc.com
  Could discoveries of alien life ever change the human psyche in how we view ourselves and each other?
  
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