Environment news

• Tiny 'meat-loving' marine creatures 'eat' teenager's legs at Melbourne beach

  07-08-2017 03:14
  Experts left stunned by possible sea lice bites after Sam Kanizay emerged from the beach at Brighton with severe bleeding A Melbourne teenager says his legs were covered in blood after they were eaten by tiny marine creatures at a Victorian beach. When Sam Kanizay, 16, felt sore after football on Saturday, he decided to soak his legs at Dendy Street beach in Brighton.Continue reading...
  
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• Europe heatwave live: UK temperatures forecast to reach 38C; French PM to hold crisis meeting after heat deaths

  23-06-2026 09:21
  Temperatures could smash June record in England and Wales set in 1976; red alerts in France after 19 heat deathsTwo children found dead in car in France as heatwave hits EuropeHere are the UK temperature milestones that could be passed during the current heatwave, according to data published by the UK’s Met Office. Continue reading...
  
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• Ed Miliband to say UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth

  23-06-2026 09:00
  Energy secretary expected to argue that UK clean economy is booming as private sector pledges over £100bn of investmentEd Miliband is to say that the UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth, as speculation surrounds the energy secretary’s role under a new prime minister.He will make the speech as data shows more than £100bn in green investment has been pledged by private sector companies in this parliament. Continue reading...
  
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• Levitating penguins and predatory ants: Australian Geographic nature photographer of the year 2026 shortlist – in pictures

  23-06-2026 07:43
  A hundred incredible images have been shortlisted by the South Australian Museum as part of this year’s Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition. In its 23rd year, the competition attracted 2,129 entries from 501 photographers in 17 countries. Entries were accepted covering content from across the ANZANG bioregion – Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea Continue reading...
  
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• Remembering summer 1976: how the historic heatwave has become our new normal

  23-06-2026 07:01
  Half a century on, Britain braces for temperatures up to 40C as global heating brings yet more extreme weatherThe summer of 1976 is seared on to national memory as one of record heat. Harvests failed, farmers despaired, Britain imported an extra million tonnes of grain, food prices rose by 12%, taps ran dry, and each day, 250 people died from heat-related deaths.The heatwave, which began 50 years ago on Tuesday, brought 15 consecutive days where the peak temperature was above 32C. Half a century
  
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• Country diary: Birds of a feather in a noisy argument | Mary Montague

  23-06-2026 06:30
  Queen’s University, Belfast: The corvids in the branches above me spring a surprise – there’s a black crow among themThe rain hurries me to shelter at the woods’ edge, but I’m scarcely under the branches of a mature sycamore when the canopy starts to thrash. Abrasive voices erupt from the foliage as a rabble of crows dispute. One leaps into a gap between the leaves, crouching, its ash-grey body low over a branch and fanning its black tail. The throat inflates to bra
  
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• Piglet, it’s a purple, psychedelic shapeshifter! The wild new creature prowling Winnie-the-Pooh’s wood

  23-06-2026 06:00
  Is it an alien? A dinosaur? Is it going to kill us all? Our writer hits Ashdown Forest for the Big One Hundred celebrations – and finds its magic enchanting new generationsThe rolling idyll of heath and forest, spinney and stream that gave us the Heffalump, the Woozle and, most famously of all, Winnie-the-Pooh, has a new fantastical resident. Creeping through the bracken, making strange cooing and purring noises, is a shapeshifting creature with a huge tubular nose and eyes inspired by add
  
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• A thousand years old and 20 storeys high: tracking down Taiwan’s tallest trees

  23-06-2026 06:00
  The country’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threatThe higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spr
  
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• Whyalla wipeout fears: cuttlefish usually gather in their thousands, but few have appeared since a massive algal bloom

  22-06-2026 17:10
  Divers have observed just a ‘couple of dozen’ of the cephalopods along the heritage-listed Cuttlefish Coast in South Australia, causing locals and marine scientists to worryFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastMid-June is usually the peak time for giant Australian cuttlefish to gather near Whyalla, in South Australia’s Spencer Gulf.Nearly every year, they come in their thousands – and sometimes hu
  
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• Trapped by floods and fearing death in the heat: the Australians taking legal action over the climate crisis

  22-06-2026 17:00
  Ten people affected in different ways by extreme weather are taking a case against the federal government to the UNGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAs flood waters rose in Brisbane’s West End in February 2022, Brendon Donohue was trapped alone in his second-storey apartment for 10 days. The 33-year-old is legally blind and his movement is limited by Peters plus syndrome. He received evacuation alerts on his phone in the middle of the night. But with the lift, inte
  
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• Met Office issues rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday

  22-06-2026 14:58
  UK Health Security Agency also issues red heat alert for six English regions, indicating risk to life even for the healthyMet Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday in the face of extreme heat and humidity, while a red heat health alert has been issued in England indicating “a risk to life for even the healthy population”.The weather warning covers southern Wales as far west as Swansea, and an area of England that includes London and runs
  
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• ‘Emotional and horrific’: volunteers ‘live’ as Somerset animals to study wildlife risks

  22-06-2026 14:14
  People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering researchWhat does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscap
  
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• Starmer has a strong green record – but a rightwing backlash weakened his plans

  22-06-2026 13:19
  Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate actionKeir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.This is new in British politics, where a cross
  
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• Europe suffers under record heatwave as temperatures forecast to reach 44C

  22-06-2026 12:14
  Rail services, schools and sports events hit, with deaths of three elderly people in France partly blamed on intense heatWestern Europe is enduring a ferocious heatwave forecast to break temperature records, with half of France on red alert, rail services in Belgium disrupted and sports events in Spain and Germany cancelled or postponed.French authorities on Monday placed 49 of the country’s 96 mainland departments on a level 1 danger-to-life warning, urging 35 million people to exercise &
  
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• Woman finds rare pink grasshoppers in garden

  22-06-2026 07:14 via bbc.com
  
  Usually, they get eaten by birds due to their inability to camouflage, making them a rare sight.
  
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• Country diary: Somewhere in the vast forest is a miniature one | Amanda Thomson

  22-06-2026 06:30
  Abernethy forest, Cairngorms: One of my favourite species, the tiny twinflower, does better in Scots pinewoods than most places in the UK. Now I just have to find someThe soundtrack to my day is the calls of siskins, blackcaps, willow warblers, coal tits and tree pipits, the drumming of a great spotted woodpecker and an occasional cuckoo. But this morning my gaze is aimed downwards. I’m walking slowly, gingerly, looking for a colony of twinflowers that I know I’ve seen around here be
  
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• From mobile jungles to shadow art: how Dutch people try to beat the heat

  22-06-2026 06:00
  A national heatwave plan has been activated to help people stay cool during the Netherlands’ increasingly hot summersHouseholds in Amsterdam are being urged to hang their curtains outside their windows as health experts recommend simple hacks to moderate the heatwave rolling across the Netherlands, where homes were built for old-fashioned damp and coldish northern European weather.In a viral social media post last week, Eline Coolen, the heat coordinator at the city’s public health i
  
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• How India’s heatwaves are shutting schools – and pushing women out of the workforce

  22-06-2026 05:00
  Forced to stay home or switch jobs, working mothers are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis as classes go online for weeks or months at a timeOutside, the temperature has passed 41C (105.8F). Inside Sakshi Katyal’s city apartment, the air conditioner is blasting but it does little to relieve the stress of balancing housework and helping her five-year-old log in on a laptop to online classes. Her daughter’s school closed in May and Katyal is not clear when it will reopen. Probably
  
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• ‘We want a new Albania’: protests against Jared Kushner-backed resort turn anger on government

  22-06-2026 04:00
  Opposition to plans for ‘small paradise’ island of Sazan becomes wave of dissent against establishmentFor Ina Shkurti, like so many Albanians, the island of Sazan has played an outsized role. As a child she bathed in its “always calm and emerald green” waters, as a teenager it figured in her dreams and as an adult it was an indelible part of the memory and desire that drew her back, every summer, to Vlore, her home town across the sea.What Shkurti never imagined was that
  
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• Record-breaking heat expected across UK this week, says Met Office

  21-06-2026 17:04
  Health alerts are in place as very high humidity adds to danger of heat stress for the most vulnerableThe Met Office has expanded its extreme heat warning for the UK, predicting record-breaking highs of 38C (100.4F) this week.The Met Office forecasts that extremely high temperatures could last from Monday until Thursday, leading to health concerns for elderly and vulnerable people. The forecaster said there was “growing confidence” that this week may break the record for the hottest
  
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• El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries

  21-06-2026 15:00
  UN’s Word Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happensAdugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long s
  
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• More trees and nature spaces in council green plan

  21-06-2026 12:52 via bbc.com
  
  Bradford Council set out plans to increase tree canopy cover and create more nature reserves.
  
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• The tiny highway helping the capital's hedgehogs

  21-06-2026 09:10 via bbc.com
  
  A hedgehog highway is a network of small holes and gaps that allows hedgehogs to move freely.
  
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• How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs

  21-06-2026 06:00
  Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisionsThe winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe&rs
  
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• A spate of shark bites has Australian ocean lovers on edge. People want to know why they’re rising

  20-06-2026 22:00
  Warming ocean temperatures mean sharks are spending more time in high-population areas, yet shark net data shows no significant changes in numbersGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastRob Harcourt is heading back from a “beautiful surf” at Bondi on a warm and sunny winter’s morning in Sydney.But for him and many of his surfing mates, the compelling pull of the city’s world famous surf breaks has been neutered by tragedy, fear and uncertainty. Continue
  
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• Exhibition explores moths' ability to adapt

  20-06-2026 13:05 via bbc.com
  
  An exhibition examining how moths adapt to environmental changes has opened in Kestle Barton.
  
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• Skeleton of the world’s rarest marine mammal preserved by digital imaging

  20-06-2026 13:00
  
  The reconstruction of the vaquita, whose numbers barely reach double figures in the wild, is designed to help research and conservation effortsScientists have created a digital reconstruction of the world’s most endangered marine mammal, preserving its anatomy in three dimensions to aid research and conservation efforts as the species teeters on the brink of extinction.The project digitised the skeleton of a female vaquita, a small porpoise found only in Mexico’s northern Gulf of Cal
  
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• From coal to cabernet: the wine seller using a flooded mine to cut heating bills

  20-06-2026 11:00
  Lanchester Wines in north-east England uses heat from a disused coalmine to maintain wine temperatures and with 23,000 flooded mines in the UK, there’s huge potential for more businesses and homes to follow its leadShove them in a fridge, stash them in a cellar – this is how most people store their favourite bottles of wine. But if you have warehouses full of thousands of vintages, you have to think a little differently.For the last eight winters, Lanchester Wines has used heat from
  
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• ‘It’s Russian roulette’: alarm as Europe backs critical minerals mines in water-stressed regions

  20-06-2026 08:00
  Exclusive: European Commission planning to rewrite key law to allow water-intensive mines in regions suffering from droughtThe European Commission plans to rewrite the EU’s flagship water protection law to speed up the development of critical minerals mines, despite many being located in drying and water-stressed regions, analysis has found.Mining is a water-intensive industry, requiring large volumes of water for ore processing, dust suppression, waste management and mine dewatering. Whil
  
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• Country diary: For the beloved Ash Dome, death is not the end | Anita Roy

  20-06-2026 06:30
  Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd: This living sculpture, planted in the 1970s ‘for the 21st century’, is fading fast. But heartbreak is not the only responseTen years ago when I visited the Ash Dome, it was an elegant, twisting circle of beautiful trees. Ten years ago, ash dieback had not yet reached this corner of Wales. Returning now to this secret location, I steeled myself for heartbreak. And there it was.Today, the Ash Dome, a living sculpture by the renowned artist David Nash,
  
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