More than 450 structures are under threat by the Gifford blaze, with only 3% of its perimeter contained
Evacuations have been ordered in central California, as a massive wildfire is churning through the brush-covered hillsides in Los Padres national forest. More than 450 structures are under threat by the Gifford fire, and several injuries have been reported.
The fire had scorched more than 65,000 acres (26,300 hectares) by Monday morning, after the blaze grew out of several smaller fires that erupted Friday along State Route 166 between Santa Maria and Bakersfield.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/04/2025 - 14:20
08/04/2025 - 12:55
More than 700 active wildfires burning across Canada and about two-thirds are currently out-of-control
Billowing smoke from hundreds of out-of-control wildfires – most of which are in the Canadian Prairies – have caused severe air quality alerts across Canada and the United States.
Detroit, Michigan, and the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto, recorded some of the worst air quality in the world on Monday, according to a ranking by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company.
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08/04/2025 - 10:00
Glacial retreat on pristine world heritage-listed island as temperatures warm could endanger unique plant life
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Glaciers on a remote Australian sub-Antarctic island are shrinking rapidly, losing almost a quarter of their size in just 70 years, with researchers fearing glaciers on a neighbouring peninsula may have already disappeared.
Analysis of aerial photographs and maps going back to 1947 were combined with satellite data to track melting on 29 glaciers on the uninhabited wilderness of Heard Island, 4,100km south-west of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica.
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08/04/2025 - 08:00
Governors Island, a 172-acre island in New York Harbor only accessible by ferry, attracts nearly a million visitors each year. More recently, it has evolved into an educational hub and incubator for solutions to facing the city’s climate and environmental challenges
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08/04/2025 - 06:00
A licence to dig in the Cajas region has been welcomed by some as an answer to economic woes. Yet many fear it will devastate a fragile ecosystem and set the tone for further projects in the country
Golden grasses, mossy hummocks and scattered lakes unfurl across the highlands of Macizo del Cajas, Azuay province. The vastness of this high-altitude Ecuadorian moorland combines with its near-silence to create an empty, alien atmosphere.
But this unique landscape teems with life. The páramo – a high-altitude tropical ecosystem that stretches across the northern Andes – is a living sponge, quietly drawing moisture from the clouds that drift at more than 3,000 metres (9,800ft) above sea level.
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08/04/2025 - 04:01
Company to carry out more tests on its Santos basin find as it continues shift from renewables back to fossil fuels
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BP has made its largest oil and gas discovery of the past 25 years off the coast of Brazil as it continues to shift its focus away from renewables and back to fossil fuels.
The Santos basin oil and gas discovery, which is located in deep waters, is the company’s 10th oil discovery of the year and could be its largest since its discovery at the Shah Deniz gasfield in Azerbaijan in 1999.
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08/03/2025 - 23:36
Visitors to pay up to NZ$40 to access certain attractions in coming years amid overhaul of conservation laws
New Zealand plans to start charging international tourists fees to enter its famous natural sites and will make it easier for businesses to operate on conservation land as part of a controversial proposal to “unleash” growth on ecologically and culturally protected areas.
The government plans to start charging foreign visitors NZ$20-40 ($12-24) per person to access some sites. Initially, those would probably include Cathedral Cove/Te Whanganui-a-Hei, Tongariro Crossing, Milford Track and Aoraki Mount Cook. The fees are likely to be imposed from 2027.
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08/03/2025 - 23:16
An intriguing new study reveals that over 80% of parasites found in the ancient poo of New Zealand’s endangered kākāpō have vanished, even though the bird itself is still hanging on. Researchers discovered this dramatic parasite decline by analyzing droppings dating back 1,500 years, uncovering an unexpected wave of coextinctions that occurred long before recent conservation efforts began. These hidden losses suggest that as we fight to save charismatic species, we may be silently erasing whole communities of organisms that play crucial, yet misunderstood, ecological roles.
08/03/2025 - 18:01
Citizen Zoo to map habitats in the capital and consult boroughs and the public about reintroduction of the birds
An urban rewilding group is seeking the public’s views on the potential return of white storks to London as part of a project to see if the birds could make a home in the capital.
White storks could once be seen flying in Britain’s skies and building their huge nests on roofs and in trees, but they disappeared centuries ago as a breeding bird as a result of hunting and habitat loss.
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08/03/2025 - 17:30
Plastic production has increased more than 200 times since 1950 and hits health at every stage from extraction to disposal, says review in the Lancet
Plastics are a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger” to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. The world is in a “plastics crisis”, it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5tn (£1.1tn) a year in health-related damages.
The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use plastics, such as drinks bottles and fast-food containers.
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