The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/29/2025 - 00:24
Environment advocates have called for important migratory shorebird habitat off Tasmania to be declared ‘no-go site’
Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here
The Albanese government has greenlit a contentious windfarm proposed for Robbins Island off north-western Tasmania, promising to impose conditions to protect threatened bird species, including the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot.
The environment minister, Murray Watt, announced on Friday that he had approved an application by the renewable energy company Acen Australia to build up to 100 turbines, a 1.2km bridge between the nearly 10,000-hectare island and the Tasmanian mainland, a 500-metre wharf and four quarries.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 20:13
Environment Protection Authority laid charges after investigation into accusations the corporation breached laws while operating in Tallaganda state forest
Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Environmentalists have called for the abolition of the Forestry Corporation of New South Wales after the state-owned agency was charged with 29 offences alleging it repeatedly failed to protect a threatened species.
The state Environment Protection Authority laid the charges on Thursday after a two-year investigation into accusations the corporation breached forestry and biodiversity laws while operating in the Tallaganda state forest, east of Canberra.
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 12:42
Survival International says Mashco Piro seen in nearby Amazon village in alarming sign group is under stress
Members of an Indigenous tribe who live deep in Peru’s Amazon rainforest and avoid contact with outsiders have been reported entering a neighboring village in what activists consider an alarming sign that the group is under stress from development.
The sightings of members of Mashco Piro tribe come as a logging company is building a bridge that could give outsiders easier access to the tribe’s territory, a move that could raise the risk of disease and conflict, according to Survival International, which advocates for Indigenous rights.
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 11:35
Ministers should find out what the regulator says before signing away a further £1.8bn of public money
There is already a scandal of bad accounting at Drax, one could say mischievously. It’s the one that maintains that transporting wood pellets from North America to burn in North Yorkshire is a “carbon neutral” activity because replacement trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. You don’t have to be a green lobbyist to think there’s something wrong there. As the research group Ember regularly reminds us, Drax is the UK’s biggest emitter yet qualifies for renewables subsidies.
That weirdness in the methodology is one for the government to justify. The Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation is into the grittier issue of Drax’s “historical statements” about its sourcing of wood pellets. Three sets of annual accounts – 2021, 2022 and 2023 – are in the spotlight for adherence to listing rules for quoted companies and transparency disclosures.
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 10:32
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Feargal Sharkey back campaign to save the animal, which once inspired placenames, songs and stories
When the Somerset Levels flood in winter, their reed-fringed waterways swell into a glinting inland sea – haunting and half forgotten.
Generations ago, these wetlands pulsed with the seasonal arrival of eels: twisting through rhynes – human-made water channels – and ditches in their thousands, caught in baskets, sung about in pubs and paid as rent to Glastonbury Abbey. Today those same waters flow more slowly, more sparsely: once-teeming channels now show only the barest traces of what was here.
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 10:00
Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic fallout
The collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system. It brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. The Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis.
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 09:04
Volunteers are tasked with logging about 150,000 park trees by hand – and for some, it’s become a strange obsession
On a recent morning, as the late August sun began to beat down, a few dozen New Yorkers stood in the shade of one of the nearly 500 trees adorning Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park, worrying a bit about hurting its feelings.
We had already identified the species – bald cypress – thanks to its feathered leaves and “strong pyramidal shape”, measured its trunk’s circumference (17in; 43cm), and noted that its roots appeared normal, its leaves were healthy and its branches had suffered some damage from improper pruning. But now we were tasked with assigning the tree an overall grade – on a scale of “poor” to “excellent” – and no one seemed to want to say.
Continue reading...
08/28/2025 - 08:58
Exclusive: Analysis of responses shows firms are urging parliamentarians to limit regulation of ‘forever chemicals’
Chemical firms are lobbying MPs not to ban “forever chemicals” in the same way as proposed in the EU, using arguments disputed by scientists and described as “big tobacco playbook” tactics, it can be revealed.
Pfas, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and commonly known as forever chemicals owing to their persistence in the environment, are a family of about 10,000 chemicals, some of which have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers. They are used across a range of industries, from cosmetics to firefighting.
Continue reading...
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
Read more »
