Environment news

• ‘A future on our terms’: how community energy is lighting up Latin America

  08-05-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Small-scale schemes are replacing dirty diesel with clean electricity in remote areas – and ensuring a just transitionWhen the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, Roxana Borda Mamani had to leave Mexico, where she was studying for her degree in rural development and food security, and return to her remote village in the Peruvian Amazon.At the time, the Indigenous community in Alto Mishagua had neither an internet connection nor a reliable energy source. “How am I going to study?”
  
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• ‘We’re still living with the aftermath’: Floridians brace for fresh hurricane season

  08-05-2025 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  With less than a month before the start of the 2025 hurricane season, residents are still recovering from catastrophic damage from the past two yearsIdalia. Debby. Helene.Not visiting friends, not neighbors. All hurricanes that have not yet faded into memory for the residents of Taylor county in Florida where all three powerful storms hit in just two years. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘The fledglings couldn’t escape’: Dartmoor blaze raises questions about wildfire strategy

  08-05-2025 11:06 via theguardian.com
  Commoners say restrictive grazing may be raising risk of fires like one that scorched 500ha of moorlandThe spot where the wildfire broke out could hardly have been worse. Cut Hill is one of the remotest and highest peaks on Dartmoor, miles from any road, a place of tussocky, ankle-turning terrain.And the weeks of hot weather meant the molinia, the moorland grass, was as tinder dry as farmers can remember it at this time of year. Once it took hold, on Sunday, the fire raged. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Astonishing journeys’: online tool tracking migratory animals highlights challenge of protecting them

  08-05-2025 11:01 via theguardian.com
  
  The University of Queensland system is intended to give policymakers idea of how species traverse the oceans and what it will take to save themGet Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an emailOff the east coast of Florida, female loggerhead turtles swim more than 1,000km north, hugging the edge of the continental shelf to get to feeding grounds.Humpback whales move through Moreton Bay off the Brisbane coast in Australia, on their way to feed around the Ba
  
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• Could a new wave of urgent theatre hold the key to tackling climate change?

  08-05-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From a New Forest giant inspiring an asthmatic teen to a herd of animal puppets walking to the Arctic Circle, theatre far and wide is taking action – but with energy and optimism, rather than doom-laden talesClimate stories are typically defined by despair. The future we are told of is such a tragic, barren dystopia, it’s hard to look at head-on. But a flood of theatre-makers are writing their way past fear into something more useful, inspiring action through love, mus
  
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• Country diary: In praise of the ‘low-value’ sycamore tree | Phil Gates

  08-05-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Weardale, North Pennines: This one is showing its worth, teeming with aphids, ready to kickstart a vast and far-reaching food webSunbeams flicker through the translucent young foliage of the sycamore canopy overhead. A shadow darts among them: a blackcap, pecking aphids from the underside of the leaves.The insects hatched from overwintering eggs in early April, congregating on loosening bud scales, waiting for tender new leaves to unfurl. Now there are legions of them, aligned along leaf veins,
  
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• Scorpions ‘taking over’ Brazilian cities with reported stings rising 250%

  08-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Fast and unplanned growth of cities providing ideal conditions for the creatures to thrive, say researchersScorpions are “taking over” Brazilian cities, researchers have warned in a paper that said rapid urbanisation and climate breakdown were driving an increase in the number of people being stung.More than 1.1m stings were reported between 2014 and 2023, according to data from the Brazilian notifiable diseases information system. There was a 250% increase in reports of stings from
  
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• Scorpions ‘taking over’ Brazilian cities with reported stings rising 155%

  08-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Fast and unplanned growth of cities providing ideal conditions for the creatures to thrive, say researchersScorpions are “taking over” Brazilian cities, researchers have warned in a paper that said rapid urbanisation and climate breakdown were driving an increase in the number of people being stung.More than 1.1m stings were reported between 2014 and 2023, according to data from the Brazilian notifiable diseases information system. There was a 155% increase in reports of stings from
  
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• Rare New Zealand snail filmed laying egg via its neck for first time

  08-05-2025 04:53 via theguardian.com
  
  Mount Augustus snail, among largest in world, can live for decades and eats slugs and earthwormsGet Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an emailA large rare carnivorous New Zealand snail has been filmed laying an egg from its neck for the first time, in a delightfully icky stroke of luck.The department of conservation, which has been managing a captive population of Powelliphanta augusta, or the Mount Augustus snail, for almost two decades, was undertaki
  
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• Soviet-era spacecraft likely to crash back to Earth

  08-05-2025 01:02 via bbc.com
  The spacecraft was meant to go to Venus but has been stuck in orbit for more than 50 years.
  
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