Environment news

• The Guardian view on protecting the Amazon: forest defenders must have support | Editorial

  20-05-2025 19:53 via theguardian.com
  Dom Phillips’ posthumously published book is an urgent reminder of why this unique landscape matters so muchIt doesn’t start for six months, but the build-up to the UN’s annual climate conference is already well under way in Brazil. Hosting the tens of thousands of delegates who make the trip is a big undertaking for any city. But the decision to host Cop30 in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon river, has multiplied the complications.After three consecutive Cops in autocr
  
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• ‘There’s a lot we can’t undo’: how an author’s visit to ancestral home prompted a wave of eco anxiety

  20-05-2025 14:04 via theguardian.com
  
  Alice Mah’s book explores cultural and ecological loss through the lens of a trip to south ChinaWhen Alice Mah, a university professor, visited her family’s ancestral village for the first time in 2018, she knew it would not be a grand homecoming. Her father’s lack of interest in ever making the trip to south China had suggested that much. But what she did not know was that it would unleash waves of eco anxiety that would follow her back to the UK.As documented in her new book
  
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• Extinction Rebellion may have gone quiet, but climate protest will come roaring back | Oliver Haynes

  20-05-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The pandemic and harsh laws suffocated climate movements as we knew them. Get ready for a new kind of actionOn 21 April 2019, I was on Waterloo Bridge in London with my younger siblings. Around us were planters full of flowers where there were once cars, and people singing. This was the spring iteration of Extinction Rebellion, when four bridges in London were held by protesters. My siblings, then 14, had been going out on school strike inspired by Greta Thunberg, and wanted to see her speak.We
  
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• ‘I’m in love with the birds and the river’: how ecotourism helped a small Colombian town recover from war

  20-05-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Since the 2016 peace treaty, Mesetas has embraced its natural assets and visitors have flocked to enjoy the region’s unique biodiversity. But the threat of violence is never far awayPhotographs by Antonio CascioTen years ago, violent conflict made it impossible for tourists to enjoy the natural riches of Mesetas. The town was one of the centres of the armed conflict that ravaged Colombia for decades, claiming nearly half a million lives.But since the historic peace treaty in 2016, with eff
  
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• Country diary: A fly is never just a fly | Mark Cocker

  20-05-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Buxton, Derbyshire: St Mark’s flies are out in force, food for the swifts and starling chicks, and everything else besidesExamine any part of the horizon from our garden and you find the air freckled with slow-dreaming swarms of black dots. I’d hazard a guess that all of them are Bibio marci, a fly named because it’s said to emerge on the feast of Saint Mark – 25 April.All spider webs inspected thus far have contained their remains, but a larger revelation came
  
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• Bogs and dogs: Chelsea flower show puts practical gardens in spotlight

  20-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Loo that makes compost with human waste and drought- and dog-friendly creations among highlights at 2025 eventFrisbees, solar panels and a toilet are among the rather unorthodox stars of the Chelsea flower show, as horticulturalists attempt to show how gardens can be practical as well as beautiful.The event, now in its 112th year, usually tends toward showcasing peonies and roses over human waste. But the Garden of the Future, designed by Matthew Butler and Josh Parker, features a lavatory that
  
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• A deadly mission: how Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira tried to warn the world about the Amazon’s destruction

  20-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Guardian journalist and the Brazilian activist were killed while investigating the destruction of the Amazon. In this extract from the book Phillips was writing at the time of his death, he reflects on his encounters with the rainforest and its people – and why it is so vital to save this precious placePhillips and Pereira disappeared on a research expedition into thefar western Amazon. Pereira had received death threats due to his work helping Indigenous people protect the rainforest
  
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• Video suggests capuchin monkeys ‘kidnap’ baby howler monkeys, scientists say

  20-05-2025 03:25 via theguardian.com
  
  It remains unclear why the monkeys, filmed on a Panamanian island, were taking the babies from another species Scientists have spotted surprising evidence of what they describe as monkey kidnappings while reviewing video footage from a small Panamanian island. Capuchin monkeys were seen carrying at least 11 howler babies between 2022 and 2023.“This was very much a shocking finding,” said Zoë Goldsborough, a behavioural ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in
  
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• 'Monkey kidnappings': footage shows capuchin monkeys carrying baby howler monkeys – video

  20-05-2025 03:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Scientists have spotted surprising evidence of what they describe as monkey kidnappings while reviewing video footage from a small Panamanian island. Capuchin monkeys were seen carrying at least 11 howler babies between 2022 and 2023. The footage showed the capuchins walking and pounding their stone tools with baby howlers on their backs. But cameras did not capture the moments of abduction, which scientists said likely happened up in the trees, where howlers spend most of their timeContinue rea
  
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• Bees face new threats from wars, street lights and microplastics, scientists warn

  20-05-2025 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  University of Reading report says conflicts including war in Ukraine among 12 most pressing threats to pollinatorWar zones, microplastics and street lights are among the emerging threats to the bee population, according to scientists.Bee experts have drawn up a list of the 12 most pressing threats to the pollinator over the next decade, published in a report, Emerging Threats and Opportunities for Conservation of Global Pollinators, by the University of Reading. Continue reading...
  
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