Environment news

• Streams Can Be Sensors

  29-12-2017 17:41 via feedproxy.google.com
  Scientists at Michigan State University have shown that streams can be key health indicators of a region’s landscape, but the way they’re being monitored can be improved.New research featured in Ecology Letters showcases how streams can be used as sensors to diagnose a watershed’s sensitivity or resiliency to changes in land use practices, including the long-term use of fertilizers. Using streams as sensors ­– specifically, near the headwaters – can allow scient
  
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• Bill Gates charity trust’s holdings in fossil fuel firms rise despite divestment claims

  19-01-2026 15:00
  Trust had $254m invested in companies such as Chevron, BP and Shell in 2024, a nine-year record, analysis showsThe Gates Foundation Trust holds hundreds of millions of dollars in fossil fuel extractors despite Bill Gates’ claims of divestment made in 2019.End-of-year filings reveal that in 2024 the trust invested $254m in companies that extract fossil fuels such as Chevron, BP and Shell. This was a nine-year record and up 21% from 2016, Guardian analysis found. Adjusting for inflation, it
  
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• Weather tracker: tropical storm brings torrential rain to Philippines

  19-01-2026 12:42
  Warnings in place for storm surges and flooding, with landslides and volcanic mudflows possible on LuzonThe Philippines is experiencing its first tropical storm of the year. Ada, also known as Nokaen, slowly developed into a tropical storm on Friday, travelling northwards along the east coast over the weekend and bringing torrential rain of up to 200mm a day and maximum wind gusts of up to 65mph near the storm’s centre.The system is expected to remain a tropical storm until Tuesday as it t
  
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• Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide

  19-01-2026 11:00
  Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollutionScientists have warned of a potential “regime shift” in the oceans, as the rapid growth of huge mats of seaweed appears to be driven by global heating and excessive enrichment of waters from farming runoff and other pollutants.Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring af
  
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• ‘We thought they would ignore us’: how humans are changing the way raptors behave

  19-01-2026 10:00
  Experts call for tighter regulation as GPS tracking reveals how people’s behaviour affects the lives of some of the world’s largest birdsMany people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet’s largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too.Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researche
  
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• Country diary: This is true water music – and the more you listen, the more you hear | Derek Niemann

  19-01-2026 06:30
  Frome, Somerset: Get tuned in to the river’s sounds and you’re treated to a symphony of noise, from susurrating hisses to great belchesAfter three decades living alongside mute waterways in East Anglia, with their soundless glide over clay, I am learning a liquid language here, and all its boulder dialects, as our winter‑filled local stream gushes down its limestone gorge.My fellow country diarist and wild swimmer Amy-Jane Beer shares my passion for river music.
  
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• 15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant

  19-01-2026 02:46
  A return to nuclear power is at the heart of Japan’s energy policy but, in the wake of the 2011 disaster, residents’ fears about tsunamis, earthquakes and evacuation plans remain The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors
  
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• It’s been a busy month for Anthony Albanese on the environment | Jess Harwood

  19-01-2026 01:28
  Talk about climate whiplash Continue reading...
  
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• The Guardian view on microplastics research: questioning results is good for science, but has political consequences | Editorial

  18-01-2026 18:58
  Errors in measuring microplastic pollution can be corrected. Public trust in science also needs to be shored up It is true that science is self-correcting. Over the long term this means that we can generally trust its results – but up close, correction can be a messy process. The Guardian reported last week that 20 recent studies measuring the amount of micro- and nanoplastics in the human body have been criticised in the scientific literature for methodological issues, calling their resul
  
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• Why am I a vegan? I do it for my mental health | Emma Beddington

  18-01-2026 15:00
  Vegan restaurants are closing, RFK Jr is sounding the drum for carnivores, and the protein cult is bigger than ever. But eschewing animal products helps me ward off a sense of impotence – and despairLet’s get this out of the way, because I’m itching to tell you (again): I’m vegan, and this is our time, Veganuary! Imagine me doing a weak, vitamin B12-depleted dance. Unlike gym-goers, vegans are thrilled when newbies sign up each January, for planetary and animal welfare re
  
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• Australia’s koala paradox: why is the beloved marsupial endangered in parts but overabundant in others?

  18-01-2026 15:00
  There are so many koalas in some places that food is the issue – while elsewhere populations are threatened by habitat loss. And there are no easy fixesSign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereOn French Island in Victoria’s Western Port Bay, koalas are dropping from trees. Eucalypts have been eaten bare by the marsupials, with local reports of some found starving and dead. Multiple koalas – usually solitary animals – can
  
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• Why are onions turning up on Brighton beach?

  18-01-2026 08:00
  Food produce and other waste has been littering Sussex coastline as capsized shipping containers wash ashoreCoral Evans was walking along the beach in Brighton on Tuesday evening when she came across an unfamiliar sight.“Hundreds of dust masks had washed up, along with single-use plastic gloves and cans of dried milk,” she said. “It was odd to see in winter – because nothing surprises us in summertime with the amount of people on the beach.” Continue reading...
  
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• Inventor says robo-vaccination machine could be used to combat bovine TB

  18-01-2026 08:00
  Tony Cholerton created Robovacc to inoculate a timid tiger at London zoo – but says it could administer jabs to badgersIt began with the tiger who wouldn’t come to tea. Cinta was so shy that she refused to feed when keepers at London zoo were around, and staff wondered how they would ever administer the young animal’s vaccinations without traumatising her.So Tony Cholerton, a zookeeper who had been a motorcycle engineer for many years, invented Robovacc – a machine to qui
  
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• Dublin Bay’s oyster graveyard rises from dead in effort to restore rich ecosystem

  18-01-2026 08:00
  Pioneering scheme hopes species that thrived for thousands of years in Irish waters can do so againThe dinghy slowed to a stop at a long line of black bobbing baskets and David Lawlor reached out to inspect the first one.Inside lay 60 oysters, all with their shells closed, shielding the life within. “They look great,” beamed Lawlor. So did their neighbours in the next basket and the ones after that, all down the line of 300 baskets, totalling 18,000 oysters. Continue reading...
  
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• The road to Trish’s Queensland farm was blown up for a coalmine – now flood waters have left her ‘stuck in a hole’

  17-01-2026 20:00
  The cattlewoman is stranded alone, rationing her supplies and worried about her health. Meanwhile the mine sits mothballedGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastCattlewoman Trish Goodwin should be celebrating.Last Friday, her parched property off the Capricorn Highway near the tiny town of Bluff in the central highlands of Queensland received “very good soaking rain” – nearly 200mm would fall in a few days. Continue reading...
  
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• The fate of the planet’s coastlines depends on how fast Antarctica’s ice sheets melt. We don’t know what’s coming

  17-01-2026 20:00
  Some regions of the continent have enough ice to push up sea levels by 15 metres if they all melt, but researchers don’t yet fully understand the consequencesOn one side of Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi’s view across the vast Totten ice shelf, the sun sat low on the Antarctic horizon. On the other, a full moon.The ice shelf is “flat and white”, says Galton-Fenzi. “If there’s cloud around, you lose the horizon.” Continue reading...
  
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• How Trump’s promise to slash energy bills in half has failed across the US

  17-01-2026 16:00
  Guardian analysis shows electricity bills were up 6.7% last year, and much higher in some states, and gas bills up 5.2%Donald Trump has comprehensively failed to meet a key election promise to slash Americans’ energy bills in half within the first year of his presidency, with power prices instead surging across the US.The average household electricity bill in the US was 6.7% more expensive in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Energy Inf
  
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• ‘I’m losing £1,800 a day’: the stark reality for Britain’s dairy farmers

  17-01-2026 15:00
  The cost of producing milk is higher than that being paid by milk processors, leaving farmers operating at a loss“Every morning that I roll out of bed at 4.40am, I know I’m losing £1,800 that day, just by getting up.” This is the stark daily reality for Paul Tompkins, as he and his fellow dairy farmers struggle in the face of plummeting milk prices.Tompkins, who is the third generation to run his family’s 234-hectare (600-acre) farm in the Vale of York, can produce
  
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• UK urged to ratify high seas treaty to avoid being shut out of Ocean Cop summit

  17-01-2026 07:00
  As international treaty comes into force, bill to make it law in Britain is moving at ‘glacial pace’ through parliamentThe UK risks being shut out of a historic oceans summit because parliament has failed to ratify the UN’s high seas treaty, environmental charities and campaigners have warned.The high seas treaty, formally known as the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, comes into force on Satu
  
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• Rare twins born in DRC raise cautious hope for endangered mountain gorillas

  17-01-2026 07:00
  Virunga park ranger says babies are well cared for by mother Mafuko but high infant mortality makes first weeks criticalIt was noon by the time Jacques Katutu first saw the newborn mountain gorillas. Cradled in the arms of their mother, Mafuko, the tiny twins clung to her body for warmth in the forest clearing in Virunga national park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring in Virunga, has seen dozens of newborns in his 15 years as a ranger. But, he
  
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• Country diary: There’s a hard, ancient pleasure to laying a hedge | Michael White

  17-01-2026 06:30
  Cranbrook, Kent: I have a stretch of leggy hawthorn that needs attention, so I head out into the cold with my axe and billhookWire netting is everywhere in the Kent Weald – barbed boundaries to ancient pastures where sheep and cattle still idly graze. But what did farmers do for the hundreds of years before stock fencing was invented?Hedges, so rooted in what we wistfully consider to be our natural landscape, are in fact human-made features, planted almost solely for the purpose
  
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• ‘The whole thing was just mind-blowing’: my trip into the abyss to see the Titanic

  16-01-2026 22:59
  From Sydney’s northern beaches to the bottom of the Atlantic – the story of a man who won a trip of a lifetime in a local supermarket competitionBandra, Mumbai, 1998.Andrew Rogers, a 34-year-old Sydney greenkeeper, was visiting family in India with his wife, Winnie, and one-year-old son, Terence. Inside, as aunties prepared breakfast – the kitchen a sanctuary from the humid, honking streets – the phone rang. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Garden of Eden’: the Spanish farm growing citrus you’ve never heard of

  16-01-2026 15:14
  Todolí foundation produces varieties from Buddha’s hands to sudachi and hopes to help citrus survive climate changeIt was on a trip with a friend to the east coast of Spain that the chef Matthew Slotover came across the “Garden of Eden”, an organic farm growing citrus varieties he had never heard of. The Todolí Citrus Foundation is a nonprofit venture and the largest private collection of citrus in the world with more than 500 varieties, and its owners think the r
  
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• Sustainability on the clock: how to make your workplace more eco-friendly

  16-01-2026 15:01
  From ride-to-work challenges to waste-conscious catering, making your office more environmentally minded doesn’t have to be a slogChange 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] marks the start of a new work year, and as Australians head back to the office, site or shop floor, it’s a good opportu
  
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• Fatberg the size of four buses likely birthed poo balls that closed Sydney beaches – and it can’t be cleared

  16-01-2026 15:01
  Exclusive: Secret report suggests fats, oils and grease accumulate in ‘inaccessible dead zone’ at Malabar plant, then dislodge when pumping pressure ‘rapidly increases’Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA giant fatberg, potentially the size of four Sydney buses, within Sydney Water’s Malabar deepwater ocean sewer has been identified as the likely source of the debris balls that washed up on Sydney beaches a year ago.Sydney Water isn’t s
  
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• As Adelaide rolls out the welcome mat to cycling world for Tour Down Under, I feel ashamed | Maeve Plouffe

  16-01-2026 15:01
  Australia’s WorldTour race on my local roads fills me with pride, but as the years go on it feels like hosting international friends in a house that is visibly on fireSweat rolls off my brow as my legs roll powerless beneath me. Eyes fixed on my glowing bike computer screen, watching as my heart rate climbs faster than the power that can be produced by my legs. 150, 160, 170bpm. How long has that been? I wipe the bead of sweat obscuring the timer. Only five minutes.I can barely squeeze in
  
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• ‘We’re in danger of extinction’: can Bolivia’s ‘water people’ survive a rising tide of salt and migration?

  16-01-2026 14:00
  The Uru Chipaya, one of South America’s most ancient civilisations, are battling drought, salinity and an exodus of their people as the climate crisis wreaks havoc on their landIn the small town of Chipaya, everything is dry. Only a few people walk along the sandy streets, and many houses look abandoned – some secured with a padlock. The wind is so strong that it forces you to close your eyes.Chipaya lies on Bolivia’s Altiplano, 35 miles from the Chilean border. The vast platea
  
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• Are our bodies full of microplastics or not? There’s a way to resolve this debate, and scientists must hurry | Debora MacKenzie

  16-01-2026 12:00
  This week’s furore is microplastics researchers’ ozone moment. If they fail, the powerful plastics lobby will step into the breachDebora MacKenzie is a science journalist and author of Stopping the Next Pandemic: How Covid-19 Can Help Us Save HumanityAre we being injured and killed by ubiquitous, teeny-tiny shards of toxic plastic? Or aren’t we? For many months, the Guardian has reported a series of worrying scientific resultsthat our bodies are full of jagged microplastic part
  
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• Extreme rainfall inundates South Africa and Mozambique

  16-01-2026 11:16
  Flood warning raised to highest level with roads washed away and rain forcing evacuation of Kruger national parkLarge areas of north-eastern South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique have been inundated for several days with exceptionally heavy rainfall. Some locations in South Africa recorded hundreds of millimetres of rain over the weekend, such as Graskop in Mpumalanga, where 113mm fell in 24 hours, and Phalaborwa, which recorded about 85mm of rainfall. Rain has continued to fall across the re
  
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• Water restored to most Kent and Sussex homes after six days’ disruption

  16-01-2026 11:10
  Up to 30,000 customers of South East Water had no supply or low pressure at height of incidentWater has been restored to most homes across Kent and Sussex after almost a week of disruption.South East Water (SEW) said the outage, which began on Saturday, was the result of Storm Goretti causing burst pipes and power cuts. Continue reading...
  
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