Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The Wildlife Trusts are in shock after acquiring 4,000 sheep in Rothbury estate deal as part of land restoration project Woolly maggots, nature-destroyers – sheep are criticised by many conservationists for denuding Britain’s uplands of rare plants and trees. So The Wildlife Trusts were shocked when they were compelled to buy 4,000 sheep as part of the biggest land restoration project in England. Continue reading...

These noisy, filthy, feral creatures make my life a misery. Is there really no way to get rid of them? Pigeons. Appalling things. I looked them up on the bird charity RSPB’s website and snorted when I came across the Where to See section. The answer is, just so you know, everywhere. Perhaps not so much outside towns and cities but in urban areas you’re never far from the sight and sound of the bloody things. If, unaccountably, you’re not familiar with this species, do feel free to get in touch and come round to my place and observe them at your leisure. Truly they are the soundtrack of my life. For years they’ve been getting into a drainage channel on the roof. Morning, noon and night they scratch and coo and jump about. The racket is infernal. I lie in bed reflecting on the filth in that gulley just above my head. I know it’s filthy, because when there’s heavy rain their revolting detritus washes down and blocks the downpipe. I have to pull their unspeakable waste out of the pipe before something bursts and floods. There are no words to describe the tangle of excrement, nesting materials, eggs, feathers and bones. Oh Lord, the bones. I’d be less repulsed rummaging through the bin outside a chicken shop on a Sunday morning. Continue reading...

Stretch of major highway shut as 3,000 people moved to safety and homes left without power A fast-moving wildfire burning in New Jersey forced thousands of people to temporarily evacuate on Tuesday, closed a stretch of a main highway and reached a shuttered nuclear power plant. Flames from the Jones Road wildfire in Ocean county had reached buildings on the campus of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, according to the local Lakewood Scoop newspaper. Continue reading...

About 89% of the public want their governments to do more to tackle the climate crisis – but don’t know they’re the majority The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89% Project – and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read more A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action. As co-founders of a non-profit that studies news coverage of climate change, those findings surprised even us. And they are a sharp rebuttal to the Trump administration’s efforts to attack anyone who does care about the climate crisis. Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope are the co-founders of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now Continue reading...