For generations the Gurung community in Taap, about 175km (110 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, and other villages in the districts of Lamjung and Kaski, have scoured the steep Himalayan cliffs for honey. The villagers say the proceeds, split among them, are drying up as the number of hives has declined over the past decade, although some also earn a living from growing crops of rice, corn, millet and wheat
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/24/2024 - 00:00
From bees to burrowing owls, many species are adapting to urban environments and, with a little extra help from us, more could follow suit
In Sapzurro bay on the Colombia-Panama border, the blue land crab can be found scuttling around human infrastructure, burrowing in the nooks and crannies of the coastal settlement. The species, which can grow up to 15cm and ranges in colour from violet to bright cerulean blue, is considered critically endangered or vulnerable in this region, although it can be classed as invasive elsewhere. It traditionally lived in the region’s rich mangrove forests, many of which have now been urbanised – habitat loss that scientists have blamed for the crab’s decline.
But when scientists studied the distribution of the species around Sapzurro bay, they were surprised to find it was still thriving in areas where vegetation had been eliminated: crawling in pastures, banana and coconut plantations, and scurrying below concrete structures. While burrows in urban areas were fewer and smaller, it had successfully built homes along sewage canals and among houses.
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06/24/2024 - 00:00
Almost a third of installers surveyed say finding skilled fitters is a barrier for customers, while 40% note lack of interest
The UK’s drive to replace gas boilers with heat pumps is being stymied by a lack of consumer demand and a shortage of skilled installers to fit heat pumps where they are wanted, according to an industry survey.
The most comprehensive poll of heat pump installers to date found that the biggest barrier was the low number of households choosing to get one fitted.
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06/24/2024 - 00:00
Retailer says ‘circular design’ collection is the first stage of an environmental overhaul of its products
Fabric that shrinks or bobbles is a pet peeve of Britons who want to buy long-lasting clothes, with the low quality of high street fashion contributing to the 30,000 shipping containers of clothing and homewares dumped by consumers every year.
With retailers tasked with finding ways to reduce the environmental impact of the clothing they sell, the first wave of products in a new range especially designed to “minimise waste and maximise longevity” has gone on sale at John Lewis.
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06/23/2024 - 23:00
Adult cats were released into national park last year after British population had come close to extinction
The birth of wildcat kittens in the Cairngorms national park has been hailed as a “major milestone” in efforts to rescue the secretive mammals from extinction in the UK.
In footage exclusively shared with the Guardian by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), two of the kittens can be seen playing in grassland with their mother and leaping on to a fallen tree branch.
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06/23/2024 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 24 June 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00067-5
Operationalizing climate risk in a global warming hotspot
06/23/2024 - 22:43
Former NSW Liberal MP spoke out against the lack of climate action by the Morrison government during the 2019-20 black summer bushfires
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The federal Labor government has appointed prominent New South Wales Liberal Matt Kean as the new chair of the Climate Change Authority.
Here’s a short explainer on Kean and the agency he will chair.
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06/23/2024 - 17:20
This blog is now closed.
Medicinal vapes to be sold over the counter at pharmacies after Labor and Greens reach deal
Watch: Shadow minister Ted O’Brien ejected from parliament during energy debate
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David Pocock also spoke to the ABC about his private member’s bill that would see housing treated as a human right. He said it was needed because:
There’s no overarching national plan and this would legislate that these are the objectives, we want to see housing affordable, we want to reduce homelessness and then it would be up to the government to actually work out – how are we going to do that?
What are the policies that we think will address this?
One of my heroes Desmond Tutu used to say ‘don’t raise your voice, improve your argument’.
It’s pretty tragic the major parties tear the opposition down rather than improving their argument and making their plans stand on their own two feet.
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06/23/2024 - 10:00
Exclusive: French survey of 26 countries finds fewer Australians than global average agree that climate change is the greatest health threat facing humanity
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Australians are among the most sceptical around the world that climate disruption is being caused by humans and that the costs of tackling it will be less than that of its impacts, according to polling across 26 countries.
Just 60% of Australians accept that climate disruption is human-caused, a fall of six percentage points from the previous poll 18 months earlier and well behind the global average of 73%, according to the results from French polling company Elabe.
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06/23/2024 - 02:00
Rachel Cooke traces the long history of the UK’s resorts through nostalgia, deprivation and revival
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Anyone who has read him will know that the historian Nikolas Pevsner was not a man much given to excessive praise. But even he was inclined to sigh at the sight of the Grand Hotel in Scarborough. In his series of architectural guides, The Buildings of England, he describes the hotel, which was completed in 1867, as wondrous, a “High Victorian gesture of assertion and confidence”. Believing no other building in Britain had as much to say about a certain kind of 19th-century ambition, in his perambulation of the Yorkshire town, he instructed readers on no account to miss the magnificent view of the hotel from the harbour.
And it’s true. Stand on the beach below and look up – perhaps while eating a choc ice – and the Grand really does look marvellous: a gigantic confection of towers and balconies that recalls a French chateau. From this vantage point, it isn’t hard to imagine the poet Edith Sitwell drinking cocktails in its ballroom (the Sitwells owned a holiday villa in Scarborough); to picture Winston Churchill, who once stayed in one of its suites, lighting a cigar at the bar.
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