Environment news

• IoD attacks 'complex and costly' smart meter rollout

  26-09-2016 11:16
  
  The Institute of Directors has attacked the smart meter rollout for being too complex and costly, insisting the government "urgently review" the benefits of going ahead with the rollout which looks "very unlikely" to meet its 2020 target.
  
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• ‘If we see you again, we kill you’: how a Colombian wildlife hotspot turned into a death zone

  24-02-2026 14:00
  Armed groups and a state-owned refinery’s oil leaks have displaced Barrancabermeja’s fishing community and poisoned a paradise once full of manatees and jaguars
  Standing on her wooden canoe, a machete in her hand, Yuly Velásquez hacks away at reeds matted with blackened sludge. Close by, a burst oil pipe has released a slick of crude into the San Silvestre wetlands in Barrancabermeja, Colombia’s oil city, choking the water and its wildlife.“The destruction is immen
  
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• ‘It’s more exciting than Tesco’: can traditional fishing lure Cornwall’s young people?

  24-02-2026 11:00
  Taster days and training are offering teenagers an escape from a future of part-time, seasonal work – and giving a boost to a declining industryIt’s mid-morning on a rare calm day in Newlyn, Cornwall. Will Roberts is back at the quayside with a catch of mackerel to unload, having set off from the harbour before dawn. At 22, he is something of a rarity here, one of a handful of young fishers running his own small commercial boat from the port.“It’s a magical feeling when y
  
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• Winter Olympics must tackle environmental impact before the snow runs out | George Timms

  24-02-2026 09:00
  With the rhetoric not matching the reality, future Olympics hosts need to forge clearer sustainable standardsBy the end of the 21st century, only eight of the 21 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics are projected to be cold enough to reliably host the Games due to climate change. Challenges faced by Milano Cortina 2026 organisers such as producing artificial snow, establishing transport links between remote locations and building new infrastructure are likely to become more omnipresent at
  
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• ‘People yearn for stability’: the Thames Water sewage plant at frontline of its crisis

  24-02-2026 08:00
  Weighed down by underinvestment and uncertainty, staff at Maple Lodge just want to get on with the jobIt is a grey day in a wet week but one of Thames Water’s neglected plants is still coping. Wastewater is being pumped into the vast Maple Lodge sewage treatment centre in Rickmansworth, just off the M25, at a rate of about 3,000 litres a second, within capacity.The site manager points out the first-line screens that catch everything that will not pass through a 5mm filter. A “sheep&r
  
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• Reform mayor courted US oil and gas executive about fracking in UK

  24-02-2026 07:00
  Exclusive: Documents show Andrea Jenkyns asked how she could help firm after major gas find in LincolnshireLincolnshire’s Reform party mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has courted the head of an American oil and gas dynasty in the hope of bringing fracking to the county, the Guardian can reveal.Egdon Resources, a British subsidiary of the US fracker Heyco Energy, announced a major gas discovery in Lincolnshire’s Gainsborough Trough last year. Jenkyns, who became the first mayor of Greater
  
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• Country diary: The magic of knowing a meteorite fell here, of all places | Amy-Jane Beer

  24-02-2026 06:30
  Wold Newton, East Yorkshire: On a dreary day in a nondescript field, I visit the site where a 4.56 billion-year-old bit of space rock came to EarthOn a low rise, beyond a screen of trees, behind a small holiday park in the Yorkshire Wolds, a brick obelisk stands incongruously at the edge of an otherwise nondescript field. It bears a plaque inscribed as follows: “Here, on this spot, Decr. 13th, 1795 / fell from the Atmosphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE / In breadth 28 inches / In length 36
  
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• World Nature Photography awards 2026 – in pictures

  23-02-2026 23:49
  The World Nature Photography awards have announced the winners for 2026 and Australian Jono Allen has taken out the top prize Continue reading...
  
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• Weather tracker: Early taste of spring to sweep parts of Europe

  23-02-2026 11:33
  South-western France could hit 25C, while a powerful Nor’easter is forecast to bring blizzards to BostonEurope live – latest updatesAn early taste of spring is on the way for millions across northern and western Europe this week. Temperatures could climb close to a near record-breaking 20C (68F) in parts of Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, with south-western France approaching 25C on Wednesday.The warmth is being driven by a highly amplified synoptic pattern, featuri
  
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• Country diary: Wood pigeon courtship rituals are straight out of Bridgerton | Kate Blincoe

  23-02-2026 06:30
  Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: I can’t tell which birds are male and which are female and, it turns out, neither can they. There is a system, thoughThe flock of 50 or so pigeons lifts from the barn roof as one. The loud clapping of wings makes the horses jump, even though this happens several times a day. I scan the sky for a peregrine but can’t see signs of danger. They swirl once, then settle back on to the corrugated metal roof.These farmyard pigeons are a mix of feral and wood pigeo
  
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• How an annual ‘wedding flight’ of 1,000 virgin queens is ensuring the revival of Europe’s dark bee

  23-02-2026 06:00
  The Belgian ceremony attracts beekeepers from the Netherlands, France and Germany keen to boost dark bee numbers and stop the spread of the hybrid honeybeeEvery summer, 1,000 virgin queens descend on the Belgian town of Chimay. During the “wedding flight”, a male attaches to the female. His endophallus (penis equivalent) is torn off and he falls to the ground and dies. Mission accomplished.Beekeepers come and pick up their fertilised queens in small colourful hives, driving them back
  
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• How a Welsh village saved its forest … and its future

  22-02-2026 13:00
  In an edited extract from her latest book, Hazel Sheffield sets out a new blueprint for community stewardship It was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales. People are used to a spot of rain. No one realised how bad it would get.For two days, it hammered on the windows of the ho
  
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• Less snow, or more risk? What you need to know about avalanches and climate change

  22-02-2026 10:00
  Rising temperatures are forcing some ski resorts to close, while leaving others at greater risk of extreme weatherAvalanches kill about 100 people in Europe each year, with vast masses of ice, snow and rock regularly crashing down on hikers and skiers who have been caught unawares.The structure of the snow, angle of the slope and variation of the weather can dictate whether a gentle disturbance – like a gust of wind or the glide of a snowboard – can trigger a deadly shift in the moun
  
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• The Great Olympic lie: untold story of Winter Games’ huge environmental impact

  22-02-2026 09:00
  Rivers drained dry to create artificial snow, a forest cut down for the bobsleigh track – IOC’s claims to prioritise sustainability at Milano Cortina exposedOn the foothills of the mountains, by the banks of the river in Cortina, there was a forest. It was full of tall larch trees. Arborists said the oldest of them had been there for 150 years and dendrologists that it was unique because it was unusual to find a monocultural forest growing at such a low altitude in the southern 
  
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• ‘That’s a losing battle’: baboon incursions cause tense human-wildlife standoff in Cape Town

  22-02-2026 08:00
  Animal rights activists disagree with authorities on how best to handle boom in primate population near Table MountainAt the edge of Da Gama Park, where the Cape Town suburb meets the mountain, baboons jumped from the road to garden walls to roofs and back again. Children from South African navy families living in the area’s modest houses played in the street. Some were delighted; some wary; most were unfazed by the animals.A few miles away, overlooking a soaring peak and sweeping bay, Nic
  
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• Nasa astronauts' moon mission delayed due to rocket issue

  21-02-2026 22:05 via bbc.com
  The mission to the far side of the Moon and back will be postponed after problems with were spotted with its rocket, a Nasa official said.
  
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• Let a thousand stinky blossoms bloom: how Australia became the world’s corpse flower destination

  21-02-2026 20:00
  Australian collections of the endangered and notoriously unpredictable flowers have popped off in recent years, as ‘personas’ like Putricia, Stinkerella and Smellanie prove a hit with nosy spectatorsSign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereFrom little things glorious fetid things grow. Corpse flower blooms, once vanishingly rare, are becoming more commonplace in Australia.More than a dozen bloomed across the country in 2025, includi
  
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• How an Australian farmer is planning to get US consumers hooked on camel milk

  21-02-2026 20:00
  A staple in African and Arab communities for millennia, camel milk is now being marketed as a ‘superfood’Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastCaroline’s sultry and soulful eyes are hooded and heavy-lashed.“She’s straight out of central,” Paul Martin whispers, gazing at his star performer with admiration. Continue reading...
  
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• Giant tortoises return to Galápagos island after nearly 200 years

  21-02-2026 19:32 via bbc.com
  The native species was driven to extinction by sailors in the 1800s. Now, 158 juvenile giant tortoises have been reintroduced to the island.
  
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• US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land: ‘I’m not for sale’

  21-02-2026 15:00
  Families are navigating the tough choice between unimaginable riches and the identity that comes with landWhen two men knocked on Ida Huddleston’s door last May, they carried a contract worth more than $33m in exchange for the Kentucky farm that had fed her family for centuries.According to Huddleston, the men’s client, an unnamed “Fortune 100 company”, sought her 650 acres (260 hectares) in Mason county for an unspecified industrial development. Finding out any more woul
  
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• Under water, in denial: is Europe drowning out the climate crisis?

  21-02-2026 07:00
  Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influentialIn the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home.Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat
  
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• Country diary: Foraging for cockles feeling alive alive-o | Michael White

  21-02-2026 06:30
  Romney Marsh, Kent: It’s a family outing, raking the wet sand looking for plump shellfish. Out of everyone, though, I’m the most enthusiasticThe vast tidal flats are empty save for the hunched figures of three black-backed gulls considering a decomposed dogfish, and four humans (one rather small) trudging through the endless silt. A light mist obscures the coast with its string of motley houses and, on the breeze, there is only the distant soughing of shallow waves chasing foam over
  
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• Floreana giant tortoise reintroduced to Galápagos island after almost 200 years

  20-02-2026 22:00
  Subspecies driven to extinction by hungry whalers returns after ‘back breeding’ programme using partial descendantsGiant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years.The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thou
  
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• Weather tracker: heavy snow brings transport chaos to Romania

  20-02-2026 16:31
  Winter storm dumps more than 40cm of snow on the capital, while in France, Storm Pedro follows hot of heels of Storm NilsWhile the days are lengthening and meteorological spring is just a couple of weeks away, Romania has been firmly in the grip of winter.A storm brought blizzard conditions and heavy snowfall across much of the south-east of the country, with the capital, Bucharest, receiving 40cm of snow – far above the February average of 11cm. Continue reading...
  
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• Floaters: the coming-of-age novel inspired by the UK’s sewage crisis

  20-02-2026 12:56
  C M Taylor’s book, which will raise funds for charity, follows teenagers whose favourite swim spot is contaminatedA water company discharges sewage into a river with impunity and the government fails to stop them. The story may sound familiar, but this one is different: there’s a satisfying comeuppance all round.The ongoing saga of sewage being pumped into the Thames has inspired a new YA (young adult) novel, Floaters – and when its limited first edition is published later this
  
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• There are problems with a geoengineering techno-fix for the climate crisis | Mike Hume

  20-02-2026 12:00
  Geoengineering does little to defuse most of the risks that really matter for people – and it runs the risk of making some harms worsePlanetary-scale solar geoengineering interventions involve the deliberate injection of either natural or artificial particulates into the stratosphere – stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI – with a view to offset some of the global heating caused by greenhouse gases. If implemented, the technology would create a metaphorical thermostat for th
  
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• There are problems with a geoengineering techno-fix for the climate crisis | Mike Hulme

  20-02-2026 12:00
  Geoengineering does little to defuse most of the risks that really matter for people – and it runs the risk of making some harms worsePlanetary-scale solar geoengineering interventions involve the deliberate injection of either natural or artificial particulates into the stratosphere – stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI – with a view to offset some of the global heating caused by greenhouse gases. If implemented, the technology would create a metaphorical thermostat for th
  
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• The true cost of Ecuador’s perfect roses: how the global flower trade poisons workers

  20-02-2026 12:00
  Many farmers in the Andes rely on growing blooms for export, but high water usage and risky pesticides threaten Indigenous communitiesThe fertile high valley near La Chimba trembles with sounds. The rhythms of brass bands and cumbia music clash like weather fronts, each playing its own beats in the Andean rain. A rainbow spans the slopes and white plastic greenhouses, protecting the region’s treasure: roses bred for beauty, shipped abroad, blooming far from home.Amid the drizzle, Patricia
  
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• Fly-tipping dog caught on CCTV in Sicily – video

  20-02-2026 11:34
  A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump rubbish bags by the roadside in an attempt to outsmart anti-fly-tipping cameras, municipal police have said. The 'canine courier' was caught on newly installed surveillance footage, prompting officers to post the clip on the city’s official Facebook page with a pointed message: 'Inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility.' The owner has since been identified and fined.Illegal dumping is a chronic problem across Italy, particular
  
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• Week in wildlife: a peek-a-boo fish, dunkin’ frogs and a white crow

  20-02-2026 09:00
  This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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