With golden orioles and golden eagles identified, records
broken and thousands of skylarks recorded - 2011 was another eventful
year for the RSPB’s Volunteer & Farmer Alliance.
The feeding patterns of seabirds around the UK coastline
can be can used to help identify the location of possible marine protection
areas, a study says.
The Government has been accused of "appalling
complacency" after it emerged that not a single minister has
met with the Environment Agency's experts to discuss the hugely
controversial gas exploration technique known as fracking.
Middle England and eco-activists unite in opposition
to shale gas and fracking
The UK's shale gas boom is spreading. After more
than a year of exploratory drilling in Lancashire, new sites are
now being established in the south-east of England.
Campaigners have reacted with dismay to the government’s
decision to plough ahead with a £32 billion high speed rail
link through protected Chilterns countryside.
Dungeness's strange beauty under threat from shingle
plan
The view from the windows of Ken and June Thomas's
black-tarred cottage is extraordinary. The largest expanse of shingle
beach in Europe is dotted with rare plants and desert flowers. Birds
screech as they flock beneath the vast sky.
Olympics expansion on Hackney Marshes ‘stifling’
local sports clubs and ‘vandalising’ land
Johnnie Walker shakes his head as he looks down over
a drizzly Sunday morning of football on the Marshes. “The
Olympics has cost us dearly,” declares the chairman of the
Hackney and Leyton Sunday football league.
The South Pennine moors will turn green and healthy
once more as one of the largest landscape conservation projects
in the UK airlifts and spreads five-and-a half thousand dumpy bags
of heather brash (cuttings) on to Bleaklow in the Peak District
and South Pennines.
The Environment Agency is nearing the end of a scheme
to improve a length of the St John’s Brook in Priory Park,
Warwick, making it more natural and creating better habitat for
local wildlife.
Developers of Corrib gas pipeline warned over environmental
breaches
Shell EP Ireland has received a written warning from
the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources over
breaches of conditions regarding the construction of its pipeline
at its Corrib gas site at Aughoose, northwest Mayo.
Revealed: Europe's plan to penalise Canada's tar sands goes Dutch
Following in the UK's footsteps, the Netherlands is
now working to derail a European Commission proposal to officially
designate fuels from Canada's vast tar sands fields as highly polluting
and discourage their use.
Island of Montecristo to be bombed with poison after
rat infestation
It was immortalised by the novelist Alexandre Dumas
as the location for a stash of buried treasure, but the tiny Italian
island of Montecristo is now struggling with a rather less romantic
reality – a plague of black rats.
Cavanilles Institute for Biodiversity and Evolutionary
Biology, University of Valencia Science Park (PCUV), began a genetic
study on Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) populations,
a crustacean that is invading the rivers of Europe and North America.
More than 50 New Zealand fur seals have washed up dead
on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula and will be examined at Adelaide
University to determine how they died.
San Francisco's plan to cut non-native trees sparks
environmental clash
An intense battle is building over a little-known plan
to cut down thousands of eucalyptus and other trees in urban forests
here and at a city-owned golf course in Pacifica.
First ever chick photos give hope for threatened Caribbean
seabird
A new nesting location for Black-capped Petrel Pterodroma
hasitata has been discovered in Haiti by the efforts of a joint Dominican
– Haitian field team.
A first-ever water pollution audit carried out by the
Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pegged Jharkhand at the
bottom of the performance chart with most river conservation projects
lying incomplete in the state.
the past 20 years, the climate in Europe has been
getting warmer. Species of bird and butterfly which thrive in cool
temperatures therefore need to move further north.
RenewableUK says wind power supplied an average of
5.3% of the UK’s demand for electricity for December and early
January, reaching a record share of 12.2% on 28 December.
The Government's "botched" announcement
of cuts to the solar subsidy scheme caused a scramble in which more
than 100,000 people rushed to join at the old higher rate.
Include trees in climate modelling, say scientists
Current climate models and projections may be inaccurate
because measurements are based on guidelines that do not include
the effects of trees on the local climate, according to agroforestry
experts.
A rise in the atmosphere of aerosols - miniscule
particles which include soot, dust and sulphates - has led to more
rainfall in certain parts of the world and could provide vital clues
for future climate predictions, a scientific study shows.
Rising carbon dioxide levels could turn fish into
drunken daredevils
Climate change might turn lizards into geniuses,
but fish won't be quite so lucky. All the billions of tons of carbon
dioxide that enters the oceans each year is like alcohol for fish,
turning them into risk-taking idiots.
Students walking out of classrooms when global warming
is mentioned; teachers pressured to change lesson plans to avoid
the subject or portray it as speculative rather than a matter of
scientific consensus.
