Environment news

• Endangered eastern black rhino born in Iowa zoo – video

  20-10-2016 02:52 via theguardian.com
  
  An endangered eastern black rhino has been born at Blank Park zoo in Des Moines, Iowa. The combined captive and wild population of black rhinos is less than 1,000, making the birth very significant. The calf was standing and walking within an hour of its birth and attempted to feed within two hours, both signs of a healthy baby rhino Continue reading...
  
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• Britain’s cars and SUVs are growing bigger – but there is a way to stop this deadly ‘carspreading’ | Christian Wolmar

  12-07-2026 17:30 via theguardian.com
  Larger vehicles crowd our roads and are far more dangerous to pedestrians. Let’s curb them before they do even more damageWe need an Ozempic for cars. They are growing at a phenomenal rate, wreaking havoc on the roads, squeezing out smaller vehicles in car parks and endangering pedestrians.Like ever-hungry teenagers, cars in Europe are growing, on average, a centimetre wider every year, according to new research reported by the Guardian. And fewer than half of new cars in the UK can fit in
  
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• Britain’s biggest community solar farm forced to shut over grid overload fears

  12-07-2026 16:00 via theguardian.com
  Timing of Devon switchoff ‘could not be worse’, says board, as members face an estimated £2m in lost revenue Britain’s biggest community solar project has been forced to shut for the duration of its first summer by the government’s energy system operator to avoid overloading the local grid with renewable energy.The north Devon solar farm was ordered to shut weeks before record high temperatures across Europe led to power supply warnings, due to concerns that the lar
  
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• ‘We plant belonging’: how nature charities and asylum seekers work together in UK countryside

  12-07-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Environmental and refugee groups have joined forces to benefit lives and wildlife in Wales and elsewhereShielding his eyes from the blinding midday sun, Abdullah, a Sudanese asylum seeker, gazes out at the expanse of green in Tŷ Mawr country park in north Wales.“This place is so beautiful,” he says. “It feels a very long way from the Home Office.” Continue reading...
  
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• Readers reply: Why put solar panels on green space when we could put them over car parks?

  12-07-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsThis week’s question: Why is there no rugby culture in Germany?I would like to know why we build solar farms over green space, when we could just put them over massive car parks as a popular current internet meme suggests. Chris, MiddlesbroughSend new questions to [email protected]. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Huge wave’ of carbon storage projects causes alarm in small-town USA as oil firms eye billions in subsidies

  12-07-2026 14:00 via theguardian.com
  Dozens of projects are in development across US despite concerns over environmental and health risksThe plan to bury carbon under remote Indiana farmland is supposed to be a slam dunk for the climate, according to its supporters – all generously funded by US tax dollars.But as far as Melissa Harrison and some other residents of Clymers, Indiana, are concerned, it just might be the end of their town. “This is our place,” she says. Generations of her family are buried in the ceme
  
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• ‘Super’ El Niño could cause global food price shock lasting into 2028, analysts say

  12-07-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Weather cycle threatens harvests worldwide, adding to inflation already fuelled by the Iran warEconomists are warning that a “super” El Niño weather cycle this year could cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028.As the Iran war pushes up world food prices to the highest level in three years, economists said supply chains faced “two shocks at once” stoked by extreme weather linked to global heating. Continue reading...
  
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• The South African trailblazers seeking to change how wildlife documentaries are made

  12-07-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  National Geographic explorers create dive lab after finding too few black film-makers telling African wildlife storiesWhen Pragna Parsotam-Kok and Noel Kok made a wildlife series for South African TV in 2015, they were struck by how challenging it was to access animals to film and how few other African wildlife documentary makers there were.Their response was to set up the not-for-profit Nature Environment and Wildlife Conservation Trust (NEWF) and to host a conference for African wildlife film-
  
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• In my years of spearfishing, I’ve never encountered more sharks than now. But I know where I stand in the underwater pecking order | Clarke Gayford

  11-07-2026 22:00 via theguardian.com
  Below the surface is one of the only places I can switch my brain off. Coming face to face with a shark comes with the territory – and we all have to adapt to this new normalThe first time I came face to face with a great white shark I felt something shift inside me. One look into those eyes darker than a planet-sucking black hole really does humble you.But it wasn’t the eyes. Continue reading...
  
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• Fastest spider in the world? This huge, hairy-legged Australian arachnid may be the quickest on the planet

  11-07-2026 17:02 via theguardian.com
  A brown huntsman is the quickest of more than 250 species analysed by scientists in the UK and GermanyIf arachnophobes were not frightened enough by the horrific ability of Australia’s huntsman spiders to drag dead mice up the sides of fridges, they now have another reason.They might be the fastest spiders on the planet. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘A slap in the face’: small farmers say Trump is turning his back on them

  11-07-2026 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The president wooed farmers in his campaign, but now the USDA is yanking funding, citing ‘DEI’ and wasteful spendingIt’s just an eighth of an acre, but for Lawrencia Rogers, the plot where she grows broccolini, lettuce and beans on land once tilled by poorhouse residents in eastern Iowa is the closest she has come to living her dream.Iowa is one of the most agriculturally productive states in the country, but getting into farming is not easy, particularly for people like Rogers
  
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• ‘Every time the rain falls, the fear comes back’: life in Lagos under the constant threat of floods

  11-07-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  As Nigeria braces for another season of devastating rains, people affected describe the mental toll of repeatedly rebuilding their livesMurky water first tore down a perimeter fence, then bubbled into the yard before spilling into every room. Within minutes, electronics, kitchen appliances, furniture, documents and academic certificates lay submerged.With the water rising rapidly, Daniel Ebiesua evacuated his home in the Shogunle area of Lagos, with his wife, their two-week-old baby, four-year-o
  
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• Datacentres drive up big tech’s carbon emissions to a third of those of France

  11-07-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  Microsoft, Amazon and Google say they still aim to achieve net zero output despite construction boomMicrosoft, Amazon and Google’s collective carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year, driven largely by datacentre construction.In the financial year ending March 2026, the three tech companies emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), or about a third of those of France. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Like a sauna’: London tube travellers swelter in temperatures higher than legal limit for cattle

  11-07-2026 10:45 via theguardian.com
  
  The tube cannot easily be adapted to cope with heatwaves, making conditions almost unbearableAs the escalator descends below ground at King’s Cross St Pancras station in London, the shift from what was already a hot station entrance to the furnace-like subterranean depths is perceptible.On the tube it’s worse: a man leans back in his seat, eyes closed, sweltering; people hold electric fans an inch away from their faces. London commuters are known for their stoicism and the heat appea
  
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• A swarm of stink bugs and a river of rats: why India’s flowering bamboo causes a crisis for humans

  11-07-2026 10:00 via theguardian.com
  Every few decades mass blooming in Mizoram’s forests causes a rodent boom – and devastation to crops. The cycle is well-known, so why aren’t farmers and authorities better prepared?In the hills of Mizoram state in north-east India, the first thing that farmers notice are the swarms of stink bugs, known locally as thangnang. It can mean only one thing: the rats are coming. And with them, famine.As dawn breaks in Mamit district, Maunsanga, a 62-year-old farmer, walks across his p
  
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• The 13 biggest myths about heatwaves – and how to bust them

  11-07-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  With some still unable to accept humanity’s role in climate chaos, we tackle common misconceptions and deceptionsSome people – and media organisations – still have difficulty connecting the heatwaves currently gripping much of the world and human-caused climate chaos. Others are in outright denial. So how to address their evasions, distractions and lies?The Guardian has trawled through climate sceptics’ claims and put their doubts to one of the UK’s top climate scie
  
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• Days of salted codfish and cabbage leaves are over: how climate crisis is shaping Tour de France’s future

  11-07-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Heatwaves have long been part of the Tour but temperatures now are pushing the riders to limit of human enduranceThe Tour de France and the heat of the midday sun are old bedfellows, going back long before an era when the biggest catastrophe of the Tour’s opening week was a major fault in the Visma team bus’s air conditioning. Flip back 50 years to my favourite Tour read, the late Geoffrey Nicholson’s The Great Bike Race, and we find the doyen of cycling writers discussing a To
  
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• ‘Children were calling for their mummies’: UK pupils struggle in 40C-plus classrooms

  11-07-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Teachers call for schools to be urgently adapted for hot weather amid reports of nausea, fainting and heatstrokeThe extreme heat that has hit the UK twice in the past few weeks has left teachers struggling to cope as temperatures in some classrooms climb above 40C, with pupils and staff suffering from heatstroke, nausea and headaches.Teachers say they have been desperately trying to keep children safe, with some covering younger pupils in wet paper towels as they lie on the floor, while older st
  
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• Country diary: Harvest time has arrived – and it’s three weeks earlier than 20 years ago | Colin Chappell

  11-07-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Brigg, Lincolnshire: It’ll take six weeks to cut it all, starting with barley and likely ending with beans. Thank goodness the combine has air-conditioningThe crops have managed to survive winter flooding (almost) and two heatwaves, but another hot spell of weather is on the way as we embark on the enormous task of harvesting our crops.Winter barley for seed is usually first, followed by oilseed rape (OSR), then probably wheat. Beans are nearly always last to be cut, often in September, bu
  
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• Death trap: what to do about the everyday items catching and killing Australian wildlife

  11-07-2026 02:00 via theguardian.com
  Thousands of native animals get caught in back yard fruit nets, fences and fishing line every year. Here’s what you can do to helpChange by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprintGot a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at [email protected] of native animals get snared in fruit tree netting, fencing and fishing gear every year in Australia – events that fr
  
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• Fast-spreading wildfire kills at least 12 in southern Spain

  10-07-2026 19:06 via theguardian.com
  Twenty-three people missing and four Britons thought to be among those who died trying to flee Almería blaze‘I had an incredible escape’: British woman tells of close encounter with wildfireAt least 12 people have been killed and 23 are unaccounted for after one of Spain’s deadliest wildfires broke out in the south-eastern province of Almería as the country endures its second heatwave of the summer.The regional government of Andalucía said the victims, four
  
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• ‘I had an incredible escape’: British woman tells of close encounter with Spanish wildfire

  10-07-2026 16:25 via theguardian.com
  Jeanne Henny, 74, put her friend, a wheelchair and two dogs into the car and drove away, only to meet fire surging on to the roadThe speed, scale and ferocity of the wildfire in and around the Bédar municipality of Almería took everyone by surprise.Jeanne Henny, an English woman who has had a house in the tiny hamlet of Los Pinos for 33 years, initially took Thursday afternoon’s yellow skies as proof that a calima wind from the Sahara was showering desert dust on the area. Th
  
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• Pacific gray whales facing ‘catastrophic’ die-off as climate crisis hits food supply

  10-07-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  Trump administration urged to relist a species in ‘very, very serious trouble’under Endangered Species ActClimate change is driving a gray whale “catastrophic mortality event” in the Pacific Ocean as melting sea ice depletes food sources and the animals starve, environmental groups warn.Meanwhile, a range of other issues, like ship strikes, oil spills, microplastic pollution, algal blooms and Russian harvesting are also probably contributing to the die-off that has nearly
  
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• We know how to mourn other humans – but what about ecological grief?

  10-07-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  In Iceland, people commemorated its first glacier formally declared lost to climate change. Western culture needs more of these ritualsI remember interviewing a North Atlantic right whale expert years ago. He was a practical, science-minded man. But as we discussed a female whale that had lost her calf, he became visibly emotional. She had lost the previous one, too, struck by a ship. He seemed almost embarrassed by the depth of his feeling.I wasn’t surprised. I found his grief honorable.
  
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• Shovels for feet and blotting paper skin: the ‘little fat froggy’ facing a fight for survival

  10-07-2026 11:00 via theguardian.com
  The desert rain frog, native to a narrow coastal strip of south-west Africa, has been classified as vulnerable on the IUCN red list, as its habitat is threatened by miningThe desert rain frog is one of the most unusual amphibians on the planet. With a rotund body and stumpy legs that dig rather than jump, it has evolved to survive not in wetlands or rainforests, but in the unforgiving dunes of the southern African desert.This week the species was declared to be threatened with extinction by the
  
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• Swift nest reportedly thrown in skip during house renovations in South Tyneside

  10-07-2026 10:00 via theguardian.com
  Conservationists fear more nests may have been destroyed during work on Jarrow houses by council-appointed contractorSwift chicks are feared to have been thrown into a skip during house renovations in South Tyneside, despite rules that should stop the destruction of nests.The Northern Swifts Group (NSG) was alerted to the destruction of at least one nest on Tuesday, in a street in Jarrow where houses were being renovated by South Tyneside council. Continue reading...
  
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• Week in wildlife: a froggy lunch, a surf-loving penguin and an ambitious treehopper

  10-07-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• We say thanks to all our selfless spineless pals | First Dog on the Moon

  10-07-2026 08:28 via theguardian.com
  While I have no influence on the Guardian committee, I know who this year’s winner of the Invertebrate of the Year competition should beNominate your Invertebrate of the Year now! You have until midnight on Monday 13 July to submit your responseSign 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...
  
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• ‘I just want to know if it has caused my cancer’: life in the shadow of Lancashire Pfas factory

  10-07-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  People in Thornton-Cleveleys want answers on the impact of widespread contamination around the chemical plant“Everything I wanted was finally coming to fruition. A house, a change of job and getting married,” says Liz Hurst, looking out to sea on a hot evening in Blackpool.“But then all of a sudden, everything was put on hold.” Fifteen years ago, Hurst was diagnosed with kidney cancer aged 32. Continue reading...
  
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• Pollutionwatch: How harmful ozone builds up near ground in heatwaves

  10-07-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Concentrations of gas were continuously raised in Europe during June hot spell, with potentially deadly effectsWidespread air pollution was a feature of June’s record-breaking heat across western Europe and is likely to increase again as the UK experiences its third heatwave of the summer.UK weather warnings for extreme heat from 22 June were followed by a rare high air pollution alert from the London mayor. Continue reading...
  
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