Breaking Waves: Ocean News

German mayors call for night-time ban on robot lawnmowers to protect hedgehogs

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:20:37 +0000

Leaders say automated mowers’ blades threaten nocturnal animals as studies highlight risks to wildlife

German mayors have called for a nationwide ban on night-time use of robot lawnmowers to protect hedgehogs and other small nocturnal animals from being killed or maimed in the dark.

Recent studies have highlighted the threat lawnmower blades pose to wildlife active between dusk and dawn, prompting growing calls for regulation. Hedgehogs also tend to curl into a ball when threatened rather than running away, making them harder for a robot mower’s sensors to detect.

‘A surrender to special interests’: alarm as Utah shields fossil-fuel companies

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:00:18 +0000

New legislation comes amid push from big oil, as critics warn polluters’ profits prioritized over Americans’ health

Utah has made it nearly impossible for residents to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for climate damages in a move one advocacy group described as putting “profits for the biggest polluters over communities”, with other states expected to follow suit.

‘I just legged it’: teenage shark bite victim recalls lucky escape while surfing in South Australia

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:22:15 +0000

Oliver Tokic-Bensley, 16, says he had been in the water mere minutes when a shark bit his foot

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A teenage surfer bitten by a shark at a South Australian beach has described how he “flicked it off” and “legged it back to shore”.

‘I escaped death a lot of times’: one man’s lifelong work protecting gorillas and communities in Congo

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:00:16 +0000

As a child, Dominique Bikaba, was displaced by a new national park in the DRC. Now he is helping to secure land for wildlife and Indigenous groups against the backdrop of ongoing fighting

Mist hangs low over the forested slopes of Kahuzi-Biega national park, where the canopy still shelters one of the last strongholds of the eastern lowland, or Grauer’s, gorilla. It is a landscape of immense biological wealth and equally immense political fragility. For 54-year-old Dominique Bikaba, it was once home.

As a business founder and as a man, I regret the decades I spent confined by masculinity | Guy Singh-Watson

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:00:16 +0000

Making women more powerful in my farm business and closing the gender pay gap was not just the right thing to do – it has brought commercial benefits

Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila could hit far north Queensland three weeks after Narelle tore through

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:14:10 +0000

While path and strength of storm remain uncertain, BoM warns Cape York could again take direct hit if cyclone makes landfall

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Another cyclone may hit the Queensland coast just over three weeks after the same area was smashed by Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle, the Bureau of Meteorology says.

Thousands in Texas protest against border wall through national park: ‘big love for Big Bend’

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:10:57 +0000

Rally met with bipartisan support after US border patrol revealed plans for steel wall across parts of beloved parks

The story is co-published with Public Domain, an investigative newsroom that covers public lands, wildlife and government

Thousands of people gathered at the steps of the Texas capitol on Saturday to protest against the construction of a border wall through Big Bend, in a show of bipartisan opposition to the White House’s plans.

Beavers thriving after being reintroduced to English wild – video

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:20:50 +0000

The National Trust’s wetlands project officer has described the effect of four Eurasian beavers on the ecosystem as astonishing, a year after they were reintroduced into the wild in England for the first time in 400 years.

How Trump’s Iran war could make the world more reliant on coal

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:00:49 +0000

The energy crisis sparked by the war is making some countries consider ramping up their use of dirty fuels

Not two months in office, as the price of west Texas crude approached $14 a barrel, Jimmy Carter, then president, donned a cardigan to speak candidly about his strategy to face the permanent energy shortage he saw in the nation’s future.

Rice’s whales existed before humans. Now Trump could make them extinct

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:00:49 +0000

The US has invoked national security to remove protections for the endangered cetacean, of which only about 50 are left

Since before modern humans existed Rice’s whales have been diving to the depths of the ocean to gorge on fat-rich fish while growing to leviathan proportions, their bodies spanning the length of a bus and weighing as much as as six elephants.