Environment news

• 'Permanent' interstellar visitor found

  21-05-2018 14:11 via bbc.co.uk
  An asteroid from beyond our Solar System has been orbiting near Jupiter for billions of years, scientists say.
  
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• Rabbits are the biggest threat to Australia’s native species. Why are their numbers booming again?

  13-09-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  Scientists say good rainfall and growing resistance to viruses are to blame for increasing rabbit populations around the countryGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastJojo the rabbit-detecting dog is working eight days on, two days off, running up to 20 kilometres a day chasing rabbits in the south-west of Bon Bon Reserve in South Australia’s arid centre.“She’s being kept very busy,” says Dr Pat Taggart, an ecologist with Bush Heritage Australia, a con
  
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• Blankets of colour: Western Australia’s wildflower season bursts to life – in pictures

  13-09-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  On Wajarri Yamaji country in WA’s remote mid-west sits Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. This year, early winter rains have left the telescopes surrounded by a carpet of splendid native blooms Continue reading...
  
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• A joyful harvest: the young Welsh farmers growing food for Birmingham

  13-09-2026 16:00 via theguardian.com
  A charity in Powys provides the land while growers do the hard work, producing bumper crops for city childrenKilos and kilos of courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes and salad leaves are ripe and ready for picking on a small Welsh farm in the rural county of Powys.The haul being harvested by Tilly Gomersall is not just impressive after a difficult growing season hit by a record string of heatwaves and drought across all of Wales and most of England, but all the more remarkable given that 18 months ago
  
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• The bird that changed Ecuador: how a chance discovery of a rare species helped to save many more

  13-09-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  Thirty years after a US ornithologist first sighted a jocotoco antpitta, the foundation he set up to restore biodiversity is a model for conservation globallyI have to confess that I rarely enjoy birding in montane cloud forests. The birds that live in these mountainous, cool and humid habitats are masters of disguise, usually passing themselves off as a leaf or other form of foliage. But if I want to see antpittas – elusive, ground-dwelling birds that rarely show themselves – then I
  
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• ‘Spraying should be the last option’: how farmers are exploring alternatives to pesticides

  13-09-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  When pesticide proved no match for the insect, desperate Phyllis Nvuda tried a new way to save her infested orchardFor two decades, Phyllis Nduva, 72, has grown mangoes and citrus in Wote, a town in Kenya’s eastern Makueni County. In the beginning, she only had to worry about ordinary fruit flies. She handled them simply, buying chemical pesticides and spraying her trees whenever they appeared.But then, in 2014, the false codling moth turned up on her farm. The small brown creature had bee
  
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• Think of the parable of a frog in boiling water. That’s us dithering as the ‘unprecedented‘ weather becomes more extreme | Helen Pilcher

  13-09-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  The complacency is staggering: just another hot summer, a flooded street, a crop failure. We are accepting this extraordinary deterioration as normalRecently, I overheard a conversation in a cafe where someone described their toast as “awesome”. I felt myself bristle. Not because the toast wasn’t good – I didn’t taste it – but because I remember a time when “awesome” meant something that inspired awe: towering mountains, the vastness of the night s
  
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• Who are the 514 people accused of starting French wildfires and what motivates them?

  13-09-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Experts believe one-third of wildfires in France are set deliberately, with arson the biggest single cause of forest fires last yearOne is a boy of 15, who threw a burning cigarette into a wood near Bordeaux. Another is a 36-year-old man who set a paper bag of rubbish on fire in bushes near Perpignan. A third is a 50-year-old woman accused of lighting 17 fires south of La Rochelle.According to the French interior ministry, since the start of a summer in which a record 115,000 hectares of forest,
  
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• France confronts arson problem after devastating summer of wildfires

  13-09-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Experts believe one-third of wildfires in France are set deliberately, with arson the biggest single cause of forest fires last yearOne is a boy of 15, who threw a burning cigarette into a wood near Bordeaux. Another is a 36-year-old man who set a paper bag of rubbish on fire in bushes near Perpignan. A third is a 50-year-old woman accused of lighting 17 fires south of La Rochelle.According to the French interior ministry, since the start of a summer in which a record 115,000 hectares of forest,
  
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• Warm ski season a warning of bleak future for Australia’s snow tourism: ‘So this is our new normal’

  12-09-2026 22:00 via theguardian.com
  While holidaymakers have maintained ‘super positive attitudes’, average snow depths measured since 1954 have declined by nearly 20%If you freeze it, they will come. For now.On a weekday morning in early September, Perisher is beautiful. Too beautiful. The snow guns have just laid down a blanket of fresh powder when the lifts open at 8.30am, the front valley glistening as the sun rises over the Snowy Mountains.People ski on human-made snow at Perisher Blue Ski Resort. Continue reading
  
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• We know how to prevent black lung, so why are workers still dying?

  12-09-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  Silicosis sufferers are getting younger as Trump and the coal mining industry push back on protectionsSilicosis is one of the oldest workplace hazards and public health experts have known for decades how to prevent it. Yet a new wave of workers, from Appalachian coalminers to Latino countertop fabrication workers, are developing and dying from the disease as industry fights new protections and regulators fail to defend the rules that could protect them.John Robinson’s grandfather developed
  
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• Beyond the heatwave: what it really takes for climate warnings to cut through in the UK

  12-09-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As trust in institutions wavers, experts say local, collective action is more effective in driving changeWildfires, excess deaths, hosepipe bans, school closures: this summer many British people have experienced the often devastating effects of the climate crisis in ways they had not before. In that sense, policymakers and climate experts have a unique opportunity to engage with the public about what needs to happen to better prepare the country for the years ahead. But as trust in institutions
  
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• ‘We can see into the other room’: insurers face surge in subsidence claims

  12-09-2026 12:00 via theguardian.com
  Stressed UK homeowners tell of cracks opening up in the walls around them after two record-hot summers“We’ve got one wall with an absolutely huge diagonal crack, through which we can see through to the other room; you could easily put your fingers in it and chunks of plaster are falling off,” says Henry Biggs, 49, from Stroud in Gloucestershire.He and his partner started noticing cracks in their family home in June 2025, a few months after buying it, and filed an insurance clai
  
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• Steve Jones on the pros and cons of AI datacentres – cartoon

  12-09-2026 12:00 via theguardian.com
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• Naomi Klein: ‘Extreme wealth has a deranging effect. It turns you into a supremacist’

  12-09-2026 10:00 via theguardian.com
  She’s tackled neoliberalism and the digital world, now the writer and activist is taking on tech billionaires. She explains how the super-rich are capitalising on climate and financial chaos in pursuit of powerNaomi Klein’s new book starts on a mountaintop with two “faithful men gathering an audience to share their vision”. It’s a vision of a paradise city, gated at every entrance, no need for weapons there, everyone in it rich. One of the men has tears in his
  
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• Artist delights in beautiful ‘mess’ and dead trees of England’s rewilding sites

  12-09-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Rebecca Howard spent two years visiting projects and painting landscapes that feature in West Sussex exhibitionRewilding areas do not usually conform to traditional notions of beauty in England’s green and pleasant land. Detractors may bewail the beaver-felled trees, untidy scrub, deadwood, weeds, mud and “mess”.But a new exhibition highlights the aesthetic delights that can be discovered on rewilding sites where fungi grows on dying trees, water buffalo gather in new wetlands
  
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• Country diary: Straw bales, tweed and a vintage Massey Ferguson – this is how farmers get married | Andrea Meanwell

  12-09-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Ravenstonedale, Cumbria: The wedding day of my son and his now wife – both farmers – was full of both emotion and traditionIt felt as if autumn had arrived in the Howgills earlier this week, so it was a great relief that the wedding day dawned dry. I was up early checking the stock before helping the six groomsmen get their cufflinks and bow ties on in the farmhouse kitchen.Our middle son, Hector, was marrying Georgia from a farm in the nearby village of Ravenstonedale. The wedding w
  
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• Hide and chic: are clothes and apparel made from alternative leathers better for the environment?

  12-09-2026 02:00 via theguardian.com
  Vegan leathers are complicated by questions of commercial viability and sustainability. How do they compare to traditional leather?Change 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] sustainable fashion, breathless promises about vegan leather have arrived thick and fast for over a decade. Innovations promise mushroo
  
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• This wildflower paradise is only open six weeks a year. As soon as I entered, my mind started to calm

  11-09-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  There is something profoundly peaceful about witnessing the landscape as it used to be before western interventionOn a cloudy Spring morning, a group of 20 nature enthusiasts gather at the entrance to a nature park on the northern edge of Sydney. “Good to see nobody is wearing thongs,” our volunteer tour leader, Helen Logie, says to chuckles.We are among just under 5,000 people lucky enough to visit Muogamarra nature reserve during the six weeks a year it is open to the public, coinc
  
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• A bee’s-eye view: art installation beside the Thames celebrates crucial pollinators

  11-09-2026 14:32 via theguardian.com
  More than 100 lenses inside Luke Jerram’s Pollenarium let visitors see the outside world as insects wouldFrom the outside, it looks a little like something out of the Teletubbies.In fact, the new installation by the Bristol artist Luke Jerram represents a grain of pollen, and the inside is an insect’s eye. Continue reading...
  
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• They drive toward tornadoes. We went with them to see how their work could save lives

  11-09-2026 14:00 via theguardian.com
  Tornadoes kill hundreds each decade in the US. These researchers are investigating why some storms produce twisters – despite the fatal risksOn a narrow road in southern Iowa, my phone shrieked.Tornado warning. Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building. Continue reading...
  
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• Curse of the Nile’s gold: how Sudan is losing its fertile fields and ability to produce food

  11-09-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  An artisanal mining boom driven by war and poverty is causing a public health emergency, as chemicals poison soil, water and societyIn Abu Hamad, on the banks of the Nile, verdant orchards, gardens and fields once produced a bounty of dates, citrus fruits, winter grains and cereals for the towns and cities of eastern Sudan, including Khartoum and Port Sudan.Today, the land looks drastically different. Trees have been cut down, agricultural areas cleared, and farms have been replaced by shops and
  
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• One in nine migratory birds threatened with extinction, global report says

  11-09-2026 12:00 via theguardian.com
  Findings on decline of species such as Arctic tern and turtle dove published alongside flyways pledge at Kenya summitOne in nine migratory birds are threatened with extinction and 45% of migratory species such as cuckoos, turtle doves and Arctic terns are in decline, according to a global report.The migratory slender-billed curlew was officially declared extinct last year, the first global bird extinction in mainland Eurasia and Africa in recent centuries. Worldwide, seven migratory bird species
  
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• ‘Fresh from the roof’: the supermarket growing salad a few metres above the tills

  11-09-2026 11:00 via theguardian.com
  Customers seeking greens at one Berlin outlet are dealing with some very local supply chains indeedWalking into the Felix Thomas REWE supermarket in Lankwitz, Berlin, customers are immediately presented with a choice of greens: romaine, rocket, iceberg. But last month, a new option joined the selection: Lankwitz loose-leaf lettuce. A combination of head lettuce, romaine lettuce, Lollo Rosso, and dark green easy leaf lettuce, its yellow packaging makes it stand out in a row of green. But it&rsquo
  
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• Week in wildlife: a sea turtle hatchling, baby orangutans and flying ibises

  11-09-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Homes for sale in a national park in England – in pictures

  11-09-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  From an energy-efficient bungalow in the South Downs to an historic chapel in Northumberland Continue reading...
  
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• Weatherwatch: soil moisture deficit – how dry are the UK’s thirsty soils?

  11-09-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  SMD is the moisture the soil must make up until it is at capacity, with very dry conditions over most of England and WalesWhen the ground is thoroughly wet, after excess rainwater has run off it is said to be at field capacity. Meteorologists describe drought in terms of soil moisture deficit (SMD) from field capacity. The SMD is a measure of how thirsty the soil is, expressed as how many millimetres of rain it would take to top it up to field capacity.In southern England, the SMD tends to hover
  
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• Iceland to submit bill that could ban whaling in its waters

  11-09-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  The country is one of just three that still permits commercial whaling, while its government has faced mounting pressure to ban the practiceIceland will submit a bill in February 2027 which could permanently ban whaling in its waters, a move that would leave Norway and Japan as the only two countries to permit commercial whaling.Whaling in Iceland has been put under intense scrutiny since a government-commissioned report was published in 2023 that found harpooned whales took two hours to die. Th
  
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• Country diary: The slow magic of growing a cricket bat from scratch | Michael White

  11-09-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Cranbrook, Kent: We are felling a crop of willow trees that have managed to survive their nemesis – the grey squirrel – and are destined for the batter’s gripAs the thwack of leather on willow fades from village greens with the waning of the cricket season, a new sound, perhaps less evocative of the country idyll, fills our little valley. Toppled willow trees rip through the canopies of their doomed neighbours, and drop with dull thuds to the angry screams of chainsaws.To
  
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• New hurricane season record as 'historic' El Niño leaves Atlantic eerily quiet

  11-09-2026 01:22 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The Atlantic hurricane season has reached its climatological peak, but a strong El Niño means no hurricanes have formed this year.
  
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