Despite the hardest winter for 30 years, birdwatchers have been
thrilled to hear Cetti’s warblers singing on a wetland nature reserve at its northernmost
limit - ahead of World Wetlands Day (Tuesday 2 February).
February finds the blackbirds beginning to sing. It is always
a glorious, startling moment when one first hears the rich, lazy-sounding notes
coming from a hedge or a rooftop in the sunset.
One
of the highest concentrations of flounder shelters in Waterford Harbour and may
well be unique in Western Europe, according to sea-angling consultants Norman
Dunlop and Mike Thrussell of World Sea Fishing Limited.
Do non-native invasive fish
support elevated lamprey populations?
Managing
populations of predators and their prey to achieve conservation or resource management
goals is usually technically challenging and frequently socially controversial.
Otters make a return to
Leicestershire's cleaner waterways
Environmentalists
are celebrating the return of a rare mammal to our waterways. In November 2008,
for the first time in about 30 years, an otter was caught on camera in the River
Soar, within swimming distance of the city centre.
The detrimental
impacts of invasive, non-native species on islands are widely acknowledged and
it is often best to act rapidly against such species, even where uncertainty exists
over the best way to proceed.
Long-term changes in the flora of the cereal ecosystem on the
Sussex Downs
There has been a surge
of interest in the effects of modern agriculture on biodiversity but studies of
farmland flora have lacked continuity and historical context.
Government gives go-ahead for 'green' gas to heat
homes
Five projects to pipe "green"
gas into people's homes for heating are set to go ahead after the Government announced
support for the renewable technology today.
Biodiversity, already decaying fast as a result of climate change
and intensive farming, is under further threat by genetic modification (GM) of
seeds, says a leading German ecological activist.
Trump row rebel group accuses council of ‘tyranny’
A major Scottish local authority has been accused of “tyranny”,
“bullying” and “Orwellian corporatism” for attempting to close down dissent and
silence critics.
TV botanist in democracy row despite
turbine vote delight
Botanist David
Bellamy has questioned democracy in Wales following a key wind farm debate — but
hailed the result of the debate as "great news for democracy".
Green energy firms
fear new feed-in tariffs will be too low
The
government will tomorrow publish the long-awaited levels of remuneration it will
offer for renewable energy generated by households and communities and fed back
into the national grid.
The
Peruvian National Protected Areas Service has decided to allocate funds to help
protect a large swath of the Amazon this year, which is home to several endangered
species and indigenous groups.
Huge hydroelectric dam approved in Brazil's Amazon
Brazil's government has granted an environmental license for
the construction of a controversial hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon
rainforest, the Environment Minister said on Monday.
Lopsided fish show that symmetry is only skin deep
Putting function before form, members of the Perissodinus
genus of fish have developed a hugely lopsided jaw that provides a distinct feeding
advantage.
France will support
a ban on global trade in bluefin tuna, but in exchange wants to be granted an
exclusive fishing zone for line-caught tuna as well as aid to retrain laid-off
fishermen, a newspaper said on Monday.
The loss of wetlands in the prairie pothole region of central
North America due to a warmer and drier climate will negatively affect millions
of waterfowl that depend on the region for food, shelter and raising young, according
to research published today in the journal BioScience.
China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and
the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines,
and is poised to expand even further this year.
Fifty-five
countries accounting for almost 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions have
pledged varying goals for fighting climate change under a deadline in the "Copenhagen
Accord," the United Nations said on Monday.
Global deal on climate change in
2010 'all but impossible'
A global
deal to tackle climate change is all but impossible in 2010, leaving the scale
and pace of action to slow global warming in coming decades uncertain, according
to senior figures across the world involved in the negotiations.
Chances of Copenhagen climate talks
'rematch' unlikely
In the tense run-up
to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December, a senior British diplomat
warned the Guardian: "We can go into extra time, but we can't afford a replay."
China backs a climate change accord struck at a contentious summit
late last year and wants a binding global agreement from talks culminating in
Mexico later this year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said.
Faulty science risks obscuring 'larger truth' of climate change
Faulty science published by the United Nations' climate change
body is in danger of obscuring a “much larger truth”, a senior Government official
warned yesterday, amid fears of growing public scepticism about the reality of
global warming
Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked
climate emails has been based on brief soundbites publicised by professional sceptics
and their blogs.
A
highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of
emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out
by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government's former chief scientist.
Emissions of potent greenhouse gas increase
despite reduction efforts
Despite
a decade of efforts worldwide to curb its release into the atmosphere, NOAA and
university scientists have measured increased emissions of a greenhouse gas that
is thousands of times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide and
persists in the atmosphere for nearly 300 years.
Breeding grasses to improve nitrogen use efficiency in the rumen
could be part of the solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according
to Jon Moorby, IBERS.
