Harvesting in Bulga state forest, inland from Port Macquarie, is just 400km from global nature-positive summit the government is hosting
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Forest campaigners have accused the federal government of hypocrisy for hosting a global nature-positive summit in Sydney while logging resumed in public forest 400km away in mid-north New South Wales.
The NSW Forestry Corporation has started its harvesting operations in Bulga state forest, inland from Port Macquarie. The area is a stronghold for threatened species including endangered koalas and the endangered greater glider – Australia’s largest gliding possum.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/08/2024 - 02:48
10/08/2024 - 02:37
Exclusive: Environment groups urge government to stick to its promises and refuse pesticide application
UK ministers are considering allowing the use of a bee-killing pesticide next year despite promising during the election to ban it.
Neonicotinoids are banned in the EU because they are toxic to bees, but have been authorised for use every year in the UK since 2021.
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10/08/2024 - 02:22
Ofwat says firms must lower bills next year after poor performance on issues such as sewage spills and leaks
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Water companies in England and Wales will have to return nearly £158m to customers through lower bills next year after falling further behind on key targets including sewage spills and leaks.
The regulator, Ofwat, announced the penalties as part of its annual review of companies’ performance. The report showed that companies reduced sewage spills by just 2% between 2020 and 2024, way behind a target of 30% for the 2020-25 period.
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10/08/2024 - 00:01
Items such as cables and old tech could contain £266m worth of metal vital for decarbonisation drive, study finds
Scientists have called for people to go “urban mining” after a study revealed that old cables, phone chargers and other unused electrical goods thrown away or stored in cupboards or drawers could stave off a looming shortage of copper.
The research found that in the UK there are approximately 823m unused or broken tech items hiding in “drawers of doom” containing as much as 38,449 tonnes of copper – including 627m cables – enough to provide 30% of the copper needed for the UK’s planned transition to a decarbonised electricity grid by 2030.
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10/08/2024 - 00:00
Wasps released on Nightingale Island have protected Wilkins’ bunting by halting spread of mould-causing insects
A tiny parasitic wasp has given a lifeline to one of the world’s rarest bird species by killing off an invasive insect that was threatening its survival.
The Wilkins’ bunting lives on Nightingale Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha group; the world’s most remote inhabited archipelago. It eats the fruit of the Phylica arborea, the island’s only native tree.
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10/07/2024 - 23:01
Demand for beef, soy, palm oil and nickel hindering efforts to halt demolition by 2030, global report finds
The destruction of global forests increased in 2023, and is higher than when 140 countries promised three years ago to halt deforestation by the end of the decade, an analysis shows.
The rising demolition of the forests puts ambitions to halt the climate crisis and stem the huge worldwide losses of wildlife even further from reach, the researchers warn.
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10/07/2024 - 23:00
Food Standards Agency says applications for cultivated steak, chicken and foie gras have already been submitted
Cell-cultivated meat could be on sale in the UK within a few years, the food regulator has said, with applications for lab-grown steak, beef, chicken and foie gras already submitted, while another 15 applications are expected in the next two years.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) was awarded £1.6m of government funding on Tuesday to develop an efficient safety assessment process for the novel foods. It said the UK was an attractive market as it had a high number of vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians, a higher openness to new foods than many other European countries and a large financial sector to back startup companies.
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10/07/2024 - 21:00
Marsupial caught on camera at Casula in city’s south-west, where urban development threatens wildlife
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A curious koala has been captured wandering perilously close to a Sydney train line before the native animal was corralled to safety into nearby bushland.
The marsupial was caught on video crawling beneath a fence on to a platform at Casula train station, in the city’s south-west, shortly after 4am on Friday.
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10/07/2024 - 18:01
Energy system operator expects winter power supplies to outstrip demand by almost 9% this year
The risk of winter blackouts in Great Britain has tumbled to its lowest in four years even after the shutdown of the UK’s last coal plant, thanks to investments in low-carbon electricity sources.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) expects Britain’s winter power supplies to outstrip demand by almost 9% this year in its base case scenario, the greatest margin since the winter of 2019 to 2020.
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10/07/2024 - 16:55
News comes after Iron Gate dam was removed to let river near California-Oregon border return to natural flow
For the first time in more than a century, salmon are swimming freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries, just days after the largest dam removal project in US history was completed.
Researchers determined that Chinook salmon began migrating on 3 October into previously inaccessible habitat above the site of the former Iron Gate dam, one of four towering dams near the California-Oregon border that were demolished as part of a national movement to let rivers return to their natural flow and to restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.
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