img

news

Environment | The Guardian

Latest Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Experts are trying everything from drums to whale calls to lure kʷiisaḥiʔis – or Brave Little Hunter – out of the Canadian lagoon she has been trapped in since the stranding death of her mother

As a two-year-old orca calf circled a lagoon off the west coast of Canada on Monday, she heard a comforting sound resonating through the unfamiliar place in which she found herself: the clicks and chirps of her great-aunt.

But the calf, named kʷiisaḥiʔis (pronounced kwee-sahay-is, which roughly translates as Brave Little Hunter) by local First Nations people, could not locate another whale in the shallow waters. The calls, broadcast from speakers placed underwater, were part of a complex and desperate operation still under way to try to save the stranded calf.

Continue reading...
Author: Leyland Cecco on Vancouver Island
Posted: March 28, 2024, 12:19 pm

A group of hospitals in Germany serve up a menu rich in plants and light in animals – and say they have had few complaints

Patrick Burrichter did not think about saving lives or protecting the planet when he trained as a chef in a hotel kitchen. But 25 years later he has focused his culinary skills on doing exactly that.

From an industrial park on the outskirts of Berlin, Burrichter and his team cook for a dozen hospitals that offer patients a “planetary health” diet – one that is rich in plants and light in animals. Compared with the typical diet in Germany, known for its bratwurst sausage and doner kebab, the 13,000 meals they rustle up each day are better for the health of people and the planet.

Continue reading...
Author: Ajit Niranjan
Posted: March 28, 2024, 9:54 am

Decision raises concerns about financial future of UK’s biggest water firm and increases prospect of nationalisation

Investors at Thames Water have pulled the plug on £500m of emergency funding, raising concerns about the financial future of the country’s largest water company and increasing the prospect of nationalisation.

The beleaguered utilities company announced this morning that its shareholders had refused to provide the first tranche of £750m funding set to secure its short-term cashflow, after the company had failed to meet certain conditions.

Continue reading...
Author: Jack Simpson, Sandra Laville and Helena Horton
Posted: March 28, 2024, 9:45 am

Experts say the hybrids risk ‘polluting’ the genetic stock, but scientists disagree on how to deal with them. In Piedmont, Italy, the sight of a blond wolfdog signals the risk of another new litter

  • Photographs by Alberto Olivero

From the moment the rangers first saw him on their trail cameras, the problem was apparent. The wolf, spotted deep in the woods of Italy’s Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park, was not grey like his companion, but an unusual blond. His colouring indicated this was not a wolf at all, but a hybrid wolfdog – the first to be seen so far into Piedmont’s alpine region. And where one hybrid is found, more are sure to follow.

“We thought he would go away,” says Elisa Ramassa, a park ranger in Gran Bosco who has tracked the local wolves for 25 years. “Unfortunately, he found a female who loves blonds.”

Elisa Ramassa and fellow ranger Massimo Rosso search for wolf tracks in Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park

Continue reading...
Author: John Last
Posted: March 28, 2024, 6:00 am

Subsidence linked to extraction of groundwater and natural gas, and weight of buildings pressing into soft ground

A number of cities on the US east coast are sinking, increasing the risk of flooding from rising sea levels.

Between 2007 and 2020 the ground under New York, Baltimore and Norfolk in Virginia sank between 1mm and 2mm a year, other places sank at double or triple that rate, and Charleston, South Carolina, sank fastest, at 4mm a year, in a city less than 3 metres above sea level.

Continue reading...
Author: Jeremy Plester
Posted: March 28, 2024, 6:00 am

World’s fossil-fuel producers on track to nearly quadruple output from newly approved projects by decade’s end, report finds

The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals, a new report has found.

There can be no new oil and gas infrastructure if the planet is to avoid careering past 1.5C (2.7F) of global heating, above pre-industrial times, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has previously stated. Breaching this warming threshold, agreed to by governments in the Paris climate agreement, will see ever worsening effects such as heatwaves, floods, drought and more, scientists have warned.

Continue reading...
Author: Oliver Milman
Posted: March 28, 2024, 6:00 am

Welsh Marches, Shropshire: After all the rain, cold winds and more rain, suddenly an explosion of flowers from this Mount Fuji cherry tree

The way to the spring equinox was precarious. We began to wonder if spring would come and go, and it would still be winter. Daffodils looked pissed off. Bleachy damson and blackthorn blossom stained early. Rain, cold winds, rain, floods, more rain. Then suddenly this – boom – an explosion of flowers into a moment of balance.

Emerging from the dark half, I thought it might be the Mount Fuji cherry, Prunus serrulata ‘Shirotae’. Battered by decades of standing outside a Shrewsbury nightclub, surrounded by walls and traffic in the corner of a shopping centre due to be demolished, and entangled with gossamer packaging material, this cherry had endured its suffering, and suddenly flowered like a Japanese painting. A Zen moment at the equinox.

Continue reading...
Author: Paul Evans
Posted: March 28, 2024, 5:30 am

The World Nature Photography award winners have been announced from a pool of entries from all corners of the globe – including a baby elephant in Kenya and an owl-like plant in Thailand. The top award and cash prize of $1,000 went to Tracey Lund from the UK for her image of two gannets under the water off the coast of the Shetland Islands. Lund and her fellow winners were drawn from thousands of images

Continue reading...
Author: Guardian Staff
Posted: March 28, 2024, 3:04 am

Environment minister Tanya Plibersek’s reforms are running so late there’s speculation the government will weaken them at the expense of the environment

After less than two years in power, the Albanese government is showing signs of getting comfortable. Consultation, transparency and coherent policy appear to be out. Cosiness with powerful stakeholders and policy on-the-run appear to be in.

Parliament is now debating amendments to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act, which, if passed, could carve out oil and gas approvals from Australia’s environmental law.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...
Author: Jack Pascoe
Posted: March 28, 2024, 12:42 am

Call for environmental emergency to be declared after data reveals 105% rise in raw sewage discharges over past 12 months

Water companies in England have faced a barrage of criticism as data revealed raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas last year in a 105% increase on the previous 12 months.

The scale of the discharges of untreated waste made 2023 the worst year for storm water pollution. Early data seen by the Guardian put the scale of discharges at more than 4m hours, but officials said the figures were an early estimate.

Continue reading...
Author: Sandra Laville, environment correspondent, Helena Horton and Alex Clark
Posted: March 27, 2024, 6:21 pm

Chase Hays and more than 50 neighbors are suing Blackhawk Mining after a silt retention pond burst and killed 43 people

Chase Hays knew it was time to evacuate when he saw his neighbor’s home float through his front yard. It was just after midnight on 28 July 2022, and Lost Creek, Kentucky, was experiencing a catastrophic rainstorm.

As Hays would later learn, the rains caused a silt retention pond to burst at a nearby mine, sending a torrent of rainwater and sediment down the mountain.

Continue reading...
Author: Kate Morgan
Posted: March 27, 2024, 5:46 pm

A woman rushed a pompom to a wildlife hospital, thinking it was an injured baby hedgehog. These cases of mistaken identity happen more often than you might think …

Name: Baby hedgehog.

Age: Unknown.

Continue reading...
Author: Guardian Staff
Posted: March 27, 2024, 3:33 pm

Rivers in north of England among most polluted, shows new data. Search your postcode to see how sewage spills into your local river

Rivers in the north of England are bearing the brunt of the sewage pollution crisis, analysis by the Guardian reveals, with the region’s waters experiencing the highest rates of waste discharge in the country.

Storm overflows around the Irwell valley, where the rivers Croal and Irwell run through to Manchester, discharged raw sewage 12,000 times in 2023 — the highest rate of all English rivers when accounting for length, at 95 spills per mile.

Continue reading...
Author: Alex Clark
Posted: March 27, 2024, 2:35 pm

Boats had been barred from landing since July 2022 owing to virus, which has ravaged populations of seabirds

The puffins started arriving two weeks ago – and now there are thousands of them fizzing around in a mad frenzy. They have joined kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and shags. Soon Arctic terns will arrive after their epic journey across the world from the Antarctic.

This week humans arrived after a two-year ban from the Farne Islands in Northumberland, one of the UK’s most important sanctuaries for breeding seabirds.

Continue reading...
Author: Mark Brown North of England correspondent
Posted: March 27, 2024, 12:19 pm

IFRC and USAid staging conference to draw attention to risks and share best practice in disaster alerts and response

Two of the world’s biggest aid agencies will host an inaugural global summit on extreme heat on Thursday as directors warn that the climate crisis is dramatically increasing the probability of a mass-fatality heat disaster.

The conference will highlight some of the pioneering work being done, from tree-planting projects to the development of reflective roof coverings that reduce indoor temperatures.

Continue reading...
Author: Jonathan Watts
Posted: March 27, 2024, 11:37 am

They thought their redeveloped 19th-century building was safe – but after learning it still contained toxic levels of lead, they formed a tenants union

Katy Slininger was one of dozens of residents who moved into the Lofts at the Cargill Falls Mill in Putnam, Connecticut, shortly after it opened in late 2020, enticed by the historic charm of the building and affordability of an apartment in an area with significant affordable housing shortages.

The building is a redeveloped 19th-century mill that opened in 2020 after government subsidies contributed millions of dollars in grants and tax credits to its renovation and was hailed by local officials as a boon to the local economy.

Continue reading...
Author: Michael Sainato
Posted: March 27, 2024, 11:00 am

Some ‘ecologically sound’ brands contain as little as 2.7% of the eco-friendly paper alternative

In the bathrooms of the ecologically conscious, bamboo toilet paper is the new bottom line – a supposedly green alternative to the bog-standard pulp-based loo roll that requires the chopping down of 1m trees a year, just to be flushed down the pan.

But findings from consumer watchdog Which? will wipe away that smug feeling: samples of three out of the five of the UK’s top bamboo brands were actually made from other woods, some of them heavily implicated in deforestation.

Continue reading...
Author: Fiona Harvey Environment editor
Posted: March 27, 2024, 8:10 am

Eccentric Victorian owner of Waterton Park, near Wakefield, made pioneering decisions to protect wildlife

A Yorkshire parkland regarded as the world’s first nature reserve – which was created by an eccentric pioneering 19th-century environmentalist – has been given a Grade II listing.

Historic England said Waterton Park, near Wakefield, was the earliest known example of a landscape designed specifically to attract and protect native wildlife.

Continue reading...
Author: Mark Brown North of England correspondent
Posted: March 27, 2024, 6:00 am

Are growing rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, Alzheimer’s and motor neurone disease related to rising temperatures and other extreme environmental changes?

In late October 2012, a category 3 hurricane howled into New York City with a force that would etch its name into the annals of history. Superstorm Sandy transformed the city, inflicting more than $60bn in damage, killing dozens, and forcing 6,500 patients to be evacuated from hospitals and nursing homes. Yet in the case of one cognitive neuroscientist, the storm presented, darkly, an opportunity.

Yoko Nomura had found herself at the centre of a natural experiment. Prior to the hurricane’s unexpected visit, Nomura – who teaches in the psychology department at Queens College, CUNY, as well as in the psychiatry department of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai – had meticulously assembled a research cohort of hundreds of expectant New York mothers. Her investigation, the Stress in Pregnancy study, had aimed since 2009 to explore the potential imprint of prenatal stress on the unborn. Drawing on the evolving field of epigenetics, Nomura had sought to understand the ways in which environmental stressors could spur changes in gene expression, the likes of which were already known to influence the risk of specific childhood neurobehavioural outcomes such as autism, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Continue reading...
Author: Clayton Page Aldern
Posted: March 27, 2024, 5:00 am

In 1941, thousands of people died in Huaraz when the natural dam on a lake above the city gave way. Now, melting glaciers are raising the chances of it happening again

• Photographs by Harriet Barber

Lake Palcacocha is high in the Cordillera Blanca range of the Peruvian Andes, sitting above the city of Huaraz at an altitude of about 4,500 metres. When the lake broke through the extensive moraines, or natural dams, holding it in place on 13 December 1941, it sent nearly 10m cubic metres of water and debris into the narrow valley towards the city, 1,500 metres below.

The result was one of the most devastating glacial lake outburst floods – or “GLOFs” – ever recorded. The force of the water altered the area’s geography for ever, and killed at least 1,800 people, and possibly as many as 5,000.

Continue reading...
Author: Sam Meadows in Huaraz, Peru
Posted: March 26, 2024, 11:00 am

Inexpensive and easy to use, drones are proving invaluable for activists monitoring illegal fishing, hunting and deforestation – as well as keeping tabs on zoos and aquariums

Late last year, UrgentSeas received an anonymous tip from a former employee at the Miami Seaquarium about animal tanks away from public view. The advocacy group went to investigate.

In November, they posted a short clip of what they found by flying a drone over the property: an elderly manatee living alone in a decaying private pool. Within a month, the clip had been watched millions of times and the outcry had grown so intense that the US Fish and Wildlife Service moved the manatee, Romeo, and his mate, Juliet, to a sanctuary.

Continue reading...
Author: Laura Trethewey
Posted: March 26, 2024, 9:00 am

Asymptomatic cases may seem reassuring for the penguins, but scientists fear they could act as ‘Trojan horses’ for other species

Adélie penguins in Antarctica are testing positive for bird flu without showing outward signs of disease, according to researchers who travelled around 13 remote breeding sites on an ice-breaking cruise ship.

Since bird flu arrived in the region this year, there have been concerns about the virus reaching the Antarctic’s fragile penguin populations. In November last year, researchers warned in a pre-print research paper that if the virus caused mass mortality in these colonies, “it could signal one of the largest ecological disasters of modern times”.

Continue reading...
Author: Phoebe Weston
Posted: March 26, 2024, 7:00 am

Riding a bike is not a political act, yet cyclists have become the bete noire for the anti-woke, anti-green, anti-liberal crowd

Getting my bike nicked was like losing a pet. I didn’t want a new one; I wanted to go back in time and not lose my old one. But, in the end, an inanimate object is not infinitely grievable and I need wheels. This is how I fetched up with a Liv bike, my precious first born putting the seat up for me. I said how proud and heart-filled I was, watching him do a little job that I didn’t want to do myself for the first time, and he said: “I’ve been showing you how to use a remote control since I was six years old,” and I thought: OK, fair, but, more to the point, look at my lovely bike.

Freshly re-enamoured of the world of two wheels, I have plunged straight back into the cycling discourse, the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its forms. Take the ex-footballer Joey Barton, who is being sued by Jeremy Vine for calling the broadcaster a “bike nonce”. Meanwhile, the socials are full of people furiously agreeing that aggressive cyclists pose more danger to them than articulated lorries. The fervent attacks on low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and low-emission zones such as Ulez in London are really just a full-throttle loathing of people on bikes, aggrandised by acronyms and libertarian bat signals.

Continue reading...
Author: Zoe Williams
Posted: March 25, 2024, 5:08 pm

An overheated property market, education taxes and more expensive healthcare – successive governments have left a bitter legacy for millennials

When asking “Who screwed the millennials?” should we just apply Ockham’s razor and answer “John Howard”? His government certainly shoulders a lot of blame but so do those who have done nothing to help since he was voted out.

The earliest millennials will be 70 in 2050, meaning almost all will be working when the world is forecast to reach temperatures more than 2C above pre-industry averages unless we do something.

Continue reading...
Author: Greg Jericho
Posted: March 25, 2024, 2:00 pm

Turkey’s eighth national Antarctic science expedition is seeking answers to questions about the future of the world with 22 different projects on the continent. Anadolu Agency’s photojournalist Sebnem Coskun is documenting the expedition’s scientific research, climate change impacts and life in the region to share the findings with the world.
The expedition involves uncovering concealed data within the ice, gathered from years of research on crucial topics like sea ice and glacier dynamics.

Continue reading...
Author: Sebnem Coskun
Posted: March 25, 2024, 7:00 am

Internal lobbying has added safeguards to a power for the resources minister to water down consultation requirements

The Albanese government has kept a lid on dissent over changes to the approval process for offshore gas projects, but a late internal push has seen the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, regain a power to prevent consultation rules being watered down.

While the resources minister, Madeleine King, had labelled claims she was taking over environmental approvals a “conspiracy theory”, widespread opposition from the Greens, the crossbench, First Nations activists and environmental groups spurred an informal Labor pro-climate group into action.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...
Author: Paul Karp
Posted: March 24, 2024, 2:00 pm

A Bolivian conservation programme has identified at least 60 'Paddington' bears in areas where they had not been spotted before. The animal is the inspiration behind the beloved fictional character Paddington, who travels to London, is adopted by a family and eats lashings of marmalade. In 2017, Chester zoo’s Andean carnivore conservation programme installed trap cameras in Tarija forest areas, and in 2023 it spotted members of the thriving bear community playing and walking among the trees. According to Ximena Velez-Liendo, the programme's coordinator, the Andean bear is vulnerable to extinction. The expert said if threats to the species, such as the loss of habitat, retaliatory hunting and the effects of the climate crisis were not addressed by 2030, the region could lose almost 30% of the population

Continue reading...
Posted: March 22, 2024, 9:27 am

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Continue reading...
Author: Joanna Ruck
Posted: March 22, 2024, 8:00 am

The mass deaths were puzzling scientists around the world – there were no signs of viruses or parasites. Then we looked closely at their skin

It was while we were sitting and talking in a hotel bar at the first global congress of herpetology that the world’s amphibian experts realised there was a problem: frogs, toads, salamanders and newts were disappearing in their thousands around the world and nobody understood why.

Not a single talk at the 1989 congress at the University of Kent had discussed the strange disappearance of the world’s amphibians. But scientist after scientist had the same story: from Central America to Australia, they were vanishing.

Continue reading...
Author: Andrew Cunningham
Posted: March 21, 2024, 9:00 am

Stars of Avatar: The Way of Water photographed in baroque style by Christy Lee Rogers

Photographs of the actors Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver seemingly floating underwater in elaborate blue dresses, with eyes shut and arms outstretched, are to be sold to raise money for ocean conservation.

The images are the work of one of the world’s most celebrated underwater photographers, Christy Lee Rogers, who teamed up with the stars of the 2022 film Avatar: The Way of Water and its director, James Cameron, a longtime proponent of ocean conservation, who commissioned the photoshoot.

Continue reading...
Author: David Barnett
Posted: March 21, 2024, 8:00 am

Fossil of giant river dolphin found in Peru, whose closest living relation is in South Asia, gives clues to future extinction threats

Scientists have discovered the fossilised skull of a giant river dolphin, from a species thought to have fled the ocean and sought refuge in Peru’s Amazonian rivers 16m years ago. The extinct species would have measured up to 3.5 metres long, making it the largest river dolphin ever found.

The discovery of this new species, Pebanista yacuruna, highlights the looming risks to the world’s remaining river dolphins, all of which face similar extinction threats in the next 20 to 40 years, according to the lead author of new research published in Science Advances today. Aldo Benites-Palomino said it belonged to the Platanistoidea family of dolphins commonly found in oceans between 24m and 16m years ago.

Continue reading...
Author: Sophie Kevany
Posted: March 20, 2024, 6:00 pm

For the first time in 10 years, a baby pygmy hippo has been born at Attica Zoological Park. Zoo staff said they were thrilled to welcome the birth as a lack of male pygmy hippos in captivity made breeding efforts complicated. The rare male calf was born on 19 February and joins his parents, Lizzie and Jamal, as the only pygmy hippos at the zoo. Native to western Africa, pygmy hippos are listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Continue reading...
Posted: March 20, 2024, 3:27 pm

Analysis shows alarming prevalence of harmful fishing methods thought to ‘destroy whole ecosystems’

Industrial vessels suspected of using a harmful fishing method known as bottom trawling spent more than 33,000 hours in British marine protected areas last year, a new analysis of satellite data shows.

Ten of these vessels, primarily from the EU, were responsible for a quarter of this activity in offshore protected areas, according to Oceana UK, a conservation group.

Continue reading...
Author: Karen McVeigh
Posted: March 20, 2024, 7:00 am

WARNING: contains images some viewers may find distressing

Footage supplied to Guardian Australia shows koalas clinging to falling blue gums as logging occurs on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. The footage was taken across two days in November 2023 and January 2024. Logging has been stopped while an investigation takes place.

Continue reading...
Author: Guardian Staff
Posted: March 20, 2024, 2:24 am

The San José, sunk in 1708, has been at the center of a dispute over who has rights to the wreck, including $17bn in booty

Since the Colombian navy discovered the final resting place of the Spanish galleon San José in 2015, its location has remained a state secret, the wreck – and its precious cargo – left deep under the waters of the Caribbean.

Efforts to conserve the ship and recover its precious cargo have been caught up in a complicated string of international legal disputes, with Colombia, Spain, Bolivian Indigenous groups and a US salvage company laying claim to the wreck, and the gold, silver and emeralds onboard thought to be worth as much as $17bn.

Continue reading...
Author: Luke Taylor in Bogotá
Posted: March 18, 2024, 10:30 am

Greenpeace has called for the creation of a high seas protected zone under a new UN treaty to secure a much wider area around Ecuador’s Galapagos archipelago, whose unique fauna and flora inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

Continue reading...
Author: Ernesto Benavides/Agence France Presse
Posted: March 18, 2024, 7:10 am

Discovery was made after First Nations tipped off ecologists about groups of fish gathering in a fjord off British Columbia

Deep in the hostile waters off Canada’s west coast, in a narrow channel surrounded by fjords, lies a coral reef that scientists believe “shouldn’t exist”. The reef is the northernmost ever discovered in the Pacific Ocean and offers researchers a new glimpse into the resilience – and unpredictability – of the deep-sea ecosystems.

For generations, members of the Kitasoo Xai’xais and Heiltsuk First Nations, two communities off the Central Coast region of British Columbia, had noticed large groups of rockfish congregating in a fjord system.

Continue reading...
Author: Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Posted: March 15, 2024, 1:09 pm

The two species of pygmy squid the size of a fingernail live on Japanese coral reefs. Spotting them is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, say scientists

In Japan, stories have been told of forest-dwelling magical spirits called kodama since ancient times. Over the centuries, they’ve adopted many guises: sometimes they’re invisible, sometimes they look like trees. The Studio Ghibli animated movie Princess Mononoke portrayed kodama as rotund little humanoids with rotating bobble heads. Now, a genus of miniature squid has been named in honour of the kodama and their role as nature’s guardians.

“If you see them, it’s a sign that the ecosystem is healthy,” says Jeff Jolly from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, referring to Kodama jujutsu, the pygmy squid that he and a team of scientists and underwater photographers found on coral reefs in Japan and described in a 2023 paper.

Continue reading...
Author: Helen Scales
Posted: March 11, 2024, 8:00 am

Exclusive: ex-officials at the Food and Agriculture Organization say its leadership censored and undermined them when they highlighted how livestock methane is a major greenhouse gas

The night before publication, Henning Steinfeld was halfway across the world dealing with panicked politicians and an outbreak of avian flu. His report, and how it would be received, was frankly the last thing on his mind.

With a small group of officials, Steinfield, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s livestock policy branch, had been working for months on a report analysing the link between the six major species of livestock and climate change, which they all knew could be explosive. “I was very frustrated by the fact that the livestock-environment issue hadn’t resonated even though people accepted in private that it was a big issue – for climate change, and also water and biodiversity,” he said. “But no one was interested in getting into it because I think they were afraid of what it could mean.”

Continue reading...
Author: Arthur Neslen
Posted: October 20, 2023, 10:00 am

Exclusive: Pressure from agriculture lobbies led to role of cattle in rising global temperatures being underplayed by FAO, claim sources

Former officials in the UN’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimised for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating.

Team members at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tasked with estimating cattle’s contribution to soaring temperatures said that pressure from farm-friendly funding states was felt throughout the FAO’s Rome headquarters and coincided with attempts by FAO leadership to muzzle their work.

Continue reading...
Author: Arthur Neslen
Posted: October 20, 2023, 10:00 am

Cargill and ADM led push to weaken new protections for threatened ecosystems in South America, report says

Cargill and ADM, two of the world’s leading livestock feed companies, helped to scupper an attempt to end the trade in soya beans grown on deforested and threatened ecosystem lands in South America, a new report alleges.

Soya is one of the cheapest available types of edible protein, and is in huge demand for feed for animals around the world; as our consumption of meat and dairy has risen globally, the need for soya has soared too.

Continue reading...
Author: Sophie Kevany
Posted: October 6, 2023, 5:00 am

Outbreaks in the Lombardy ‘pork belt’ were extinguished, say experts, but wild boar could act as a reservoir

Huge pig culls took place last week in Italy in an attempt to contain the country’s largest outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) virus since the 1960s, which threatened the entire pig-farming sector.

ASF is deadly to pigs and poses a serious threat to the global pig industry but is not a danger to humans, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).

Continue reading...
Author: Sophie Kevany
Posted: September 25, 2023, 5:31 pm

Stockholders of Re-useable Goods

At Re-Tex we are stockholders of a variety of re-useable goods including:

We also offer a range of recycling, environmental, demolition and clearance services to both domestic and commercial customers throughout the UK.

Click here to find out more