Environment news

• Bites on gladiator bones prove combat with lion

  23-04-2025 20:01 via bbc.com
  Experts say the discovery provides the first physical evidence of gladiatorial combat with animals.
  
  Read more

• Xi contrasts China’s clean energy promises with Trump turmoil

  23-04-2025 18:51 via theguardian.com
  
  Virtual meeting of leaders also hears UN’s António Guterres proclaim ‘no group or government’ can stop green revolutionChina will continue to push forward on the climate crisis, Xi Jinping has said while appearing to criticise the “protectionism” of Donald Trump’s tariff policies.The Chinese president was attending a closed-door virtual meeting with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da S
  
  Read more

• ‘We don’t call them woolly maggots’: how wildlife campaigners put sheep at heart of rewilding plans

  23-04-2025 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Wildlife Trusts are in shock after acquiring 4,000 sheep in Rothbury estate deal as part of land restoration projectWoolly maggots, nature-destroyers – sheep are criticised by many conservationists for denuding Britain’s uplands of rare plants and trees.So The Wildlife Trusts were shocked when they were compelled to buy 4,000 sheep as part of the biggest land restoration project in England. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• I loathe pigeons. You wouldn’t believe what they do to my downpipe | Adrian Chiles

  23-04-2025 16:22 via theguardian.com
  
  These noisy, filthy, feral creatures make my life a misery. Is there really no way to get rid of them?Pigeons. Appalling things. I looked them up on the bird charity RSPB’s website and snorted when I came across the Where to See section. The answer is, just so you know, everywhere. Perhaps not so much outside towns and cities but in urban areas you’re never far from the sight and sound of the bloody things. If, unaccountably, you’re not familiar with this species, do feel free
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• A dwarf crocodile carried home by a hunter: Thomas Nicolon’s best photograph

  23-04-2025 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘As a species, these crocs are easy to find and easy to catch. Brice Itoua is the most skilled hunter in his village. But they kill the crocs to eat – not to sell’The Congo dwarf crocodile is a lovely species. They’re very shy and, unfortunately, very easy to find and catch. Mostly hunted for their bushmeat, these crocs only grow up to a few feet in length and during the dry season, they often spend the daytime hiding in burrows and dens at the water’s edge. Hunters
  
  Read more

• A silent majority of the world’s people wants stronger climate action. It’s time to wake up | Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope

  23-04-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  About 89% of the public want their governments to do more to tackle the climate crisis – but don’t know they’re the majorityThe Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89% Project – and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read moreA superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world
  
  Read more

• ‘Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines

  23-04-2025 10:35 via theguardian.com
  
  Wines produced after 2010 showed steep rise in contamination of trifluoroacetic acid, analysis findsLevels of a little-known forever chemical known as TFA in European wines have risen “alarmingly” in recent decades, according to analysis, prompting fears that contamination will breach a planetary boundary.Researchers from Pesticide Action Network Europe tested 49 bottles of commercial wine to see how TFA contamination in food and drink had progressed. They found levels of trifluoroac
  
  Read more

• Election 2025: will the Albo party win it? The polls are never wrong! | First Dog on the Moon

  23-04-2025 08:47 via theguardian.com
  Take that Antony GreemSign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are publishedGet all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Tracing the worst coral bleaching event in recorded history – video

  23-04-2025 08:25 via theguardian.com
  In early 2023, the planet's worst coral bleaching event began. More than two years later, 80% of the planet's reefs have been affected by successive marine heatwaves hitting ecosystems from the Great Barrier Reef to the Mesoamerican Reef Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Sanctioned Russian and Belarusian wood smuggled into UK, study suggests

  23-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  ‘Chemical fingerprint’ shows 46% of wood samples certified as sustainable did not come from labelled country of originNearly half of birch wood certified by leading sustainability schemes is misidentified and does not come from the labelled country of origin, according to new testing. The analysis raises fears that large quantities of sanctioned wood from Russia and Belarus are still illegally entering Britain.New research by World Forest ID, a consortium of research organisations th
  
  Read more

• Sanctioned Russian and Belarusian wood being smuggled into UK, study suggests

  23-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  ‘Chemical fingerprint’ shows 46% of wood samples certified as sustainable did not come from labelled country of originNearly half of birch wood certified by leading sustainability schemes is misidentified and does not come from the labelled country of origin, according to new testing. The analysis raises fears that large quantities of sanctioned wood from Russia and Belarus are still illegally entering Britain.New research by World Forest ID, a consortium of research organisations th
  
  Read more

• Sanctioned Russia and Belarusian wood being smuggled into UK, study suggests

  23-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘Chemical fingerprint’ shows 46% of wood samples certified as sustainable did not come from labelled country of originNearly half of birch wood certified by leading sustainability schemes is misidentified and does not come from the labelled country of origin, according to new testing. The analysis raises fears that large quantities of sanctioned wood from Russia and Belarus are still illegally entering Britain.New research by World Forest ID, a consortium of research organisations th
  
  Read more

• Nigel Farage thinks net zero is the new Brexit. Starmer can prove him wrong | Rafael Behr

  23-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Labour must deliver the green transition voters want, leaving Reform and the Tories on the side of economic decline and dictatorsWhich former British prime minister described the climate emergency as “a clock ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and turbines and furnaces and engines … quilting the Earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2”?The florid style gives it away. You’d guess Boris Johnson even if you’d forgotten that t
  
  Read more

• Mediterranean megaflood carved out hills in Sicily, study reveals

  23-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Rock deposits provide first land-based evidence of Earth’s largest flood, when water surged through strait of Gibraltar The event that refilled the Mediterranean basin 5m years ago is thought to have been the largest flood in Earth’s history, with water surging through the present-day strait of Gibraltar 1,000 times faster than the Amazon River, filling the basin in just a couple of years. Now jumbled rock deposits on the top of hills in south-east Sicily provide the first land-based
  
  Read more

• Country diary: A slow worm slowly warms in the palm of my hand | Amy-Jane Beer

  23-04-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Welburn, North Yorkshire: She’s the first I’ve seen of the year, sleepy at first, then animating into a living sculptureAfter the disarming warmth of early April, a few cold nights serve as a reset, and when I go out to collect the milk there is still a chill in the shade and the celandines are tightly closed. The sun is falling full on one of the sheets of corrugated metal I lay out in spring as warming refugia for cold-blooded creatures.I peek beneath to see the first sleepy s
  
  Read more

• More than 80% of the world’s reefs hit by bleaching after worst global event on record

  23-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  An ashen pallor and an eerie stillness all that remains where there should fluttering fish and vibrant colours in the reefscape, one conservationist saysThe world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs, scientists have warned.Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started
  
  Read more

• ‘It’s almost like Vaseline’: artists including Antony Gormley swap paint for seaweed ink in art challenge

  23-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ocean-inspired artworks created using kelp-based pigment will be sold to raise funds for conservationLast year in early summer, Alex Glasgow could be seen hauling up a long string of orangey-black seaweed on to the barge of his water farm, located off the west coast of Scotland near Skye. Growing on the farm was what Glasgow described as “perhaps the quickest-growing biomass on the planet”: seaweed.The weed from Glasgow’s farm, KelpCrofters, is used in everything from soil fert
  
  Read more

• Miniature horses race in New Zealand’s big wilderness – in pictures

  23-04-2025 05:05 via theguardian.com
  Dozens of miniature horses and their human running mates have taken part in the Great Northern Gallop, an adventure race through dense forests and across rugged beaches in New Zealand’s Far North. Participants run or walk 100km over four days for the event, which raises money for the welfare of miniature horses Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Mystery of medieval cemetery near airport runway deepens

  23-04-2025 02:15 via bbc.com
  Skeletons and artefacts unearthed from the site near Cardiff Airport are baffling archaeologists.
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!