Environment news

• Rising temperatures may increase flood risk through river ‘whiplash’, study finds

  17-06-2026 15:24
  Sudden shifts from wet to dry weather, or vice versa, may foil typical drought- and flood-prevention measuresRising temperatures may trigger a dangerous increase in “hydroclimatic whiplash” in rivers that would make traditional approaches to flood and drought planning insufficient, a study has found.As temperatures rise owing to the worsening climate crisis, rivers will experience increasingly rapid transitions between heavy downpours and long dry spells – called hydroclimatic
  
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• US public still favours action on climate change despite Trump’s fossil fuel drive

  17-06-2026 14:00
  
  Two-thirds of Americans say they are worried about climate but level of media coverage does not reflect thisUS political and media discourse has drifted away from the climate crisis amid a frontal assault by Donald Trump upon policies to limit global heating and the president’s pugnacious demands to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas.Yet while elite attention on climate has waned, even among some previously vocal Democrats who have wound back on criticism of the fossil f
  
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• Why farmers see Colombia’s knife-edge election as a battle for the Amazon’s future

  17-06-2026 13:00
  Many small-scale landowners now include conservation measures alongside everyday farming. But progress is precarious, and the threat of guerrilla violence and poverty remain whichever candidate winsLike most people settling in the area, Pablo Peña was seeking to escape violence and make a living from a patch of land when he moved to Guaviare in central Colombia. More than 30 years on, he says his life is now about conflict and deforestation.Peña first visited Guaviare during his ma
  
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• The ocean has shielded us from the worst of climate change. Now it is running a fever | Karina Von Schuckmann

  17-06-2026 12:00
  Nearly every indicator of climate change is flashing red. But we still hold the tools available to bring the planet back into balanceThe ocean is running a fever. In 2025, the number of days of marine heatwaves – prolonged spells when the sea turns abnormally, dangerously warm – was more than triple what it was in the early 1990s.These are not abstract statistics. A severe and persistent marine heatwave bleaches coral reefs, strips away the kelp forests that shelter young fish, empti
  
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• Campaigner threatened with prosecution by Environment Agency after waterway cleanup

  17-06-2026 10:00
  Paul Powlesland told he acted illegally after organising volunteers to remove litter, weed and silt from River RodingA river campaigner who organised a cleanup of his local waterway is being threatened with prosecution by the Environment Agency for acting illegally.Paul Powlesland, a lawyer and environmental campaigner, organised a team of volunteers to tackle the removal of litter, weed and silt from a section of the River Roding, after repeatedly asking the agency to act. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘I don’t like being stuck in an office’: the young people helping plant a ring of trees around London

  17-06-2026 08:00
  London Tree Ring project aims to create corridors of plant and animal life around the city to strengthen its biodiversityHarry Ewing is heaping branches and foliage from the forest floor on to a dead hedge, reinforcing the protective circle around his newly planted trees in Hadley Wood, north London. He is in a glade created by a fallen oak that was previously overrun with thick bramble.“I feel very happy – the trees are growing already. It’s really nice seeing it when it start
  
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• Plantwatch: Russian dandelion offers solution to global rubber shortage

  17-06-2026 07:00
  Scientists are returning to a wartime solution that may be more sustainable than the traditional rubber treeThere is a global shortage of natural rubber and dandelions may be coming to the rescue. In the second world war there was such a severe shortage of rubber that the Allies used the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum koksaghyz, from Kazakhstan. Soviet scientists found the dandelion roots produced enough white milky latex to make natural rubber, but when the war ended producers returned to the tra
  
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• Country diary: Everybody loves to hate the stinging nettle – don’t they? | Derek Niemann

  17-06-2026 06:30
  Frome, Somerset: This much-maligned midsummer menace has few friends among humans, but look closely and you might find an orgy of eating and matingEyes smarting, throat tickling, nostrils dog-wet, I pick my way along a thready footpath up the combe, only half-prepared for the next irritation. Nettles, I am watching you. But not well enough it seems, for a sneaky one hidden under the skirts of encroaching grasses and umbellifers grazes the back of my bare calf. It induces that tingling somewhere
  
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• As an ocean swimmer, I try not to think of sharks, but we all know that this is their territory | Eleanor Limprecht

  17-06-2026 05:31
  It used to be easier to say that the chances of a shark attack were slim. Now I feel as though that pretence of safety has been shattered After nearly a year’s break, I started ocean swimming again this May, delighting in the clarity of the water and the quieter beaches of Sydney’s winter. I’d stopped because of an injury but then found that the longer I was out of the water the harder it was to get back in.It only took that first return swim, however, to remember the absolute
  
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