An abandoned farm field became a flourishing wildflower meadow within little more than a decade, with plant diversity doubling and thousands of orchids appearing naturally. The discovery suggests that simply giving nature time to recover could be a powerful and inexpensive tool for restoring biodiversity.
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/23/2026 - 10:00
Hundreds of experts write to environment minister calling for stronger protections for ‘unique and distinct’ marine ecosystems
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The Australian government has been accused of leaving coastal waters largely unprotected by establishing the bulk of highly protected marine parks in remote areas.
More than 270 leading marine scientists from 84 research institutes have written to the environment minister, Murray Watt, urging stronger protections for marine ecosystems, as a once-in-a-decade review of marine parks gets under way.
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08/23/2026 - 10:00
Once the economic lifeblood of the region, Latrobe Valley’s coal industry is in terminal decline. Jesse Thompson’s photographic project aims to document this period of rapid change and examine the legacy that is being left behind
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08/23/2026 - 06:00
Capitalism and the climate crisis are conspiring to destroy the concept of seasons. I’ll take solace in my pumpkin spice
Happy spooky season, everyone! Get those jack-o’-lanterns out, because Halloween is just around the corner!
Just kidding, no, it’s not.
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08/23/2026 - 06:00
An 1857 decree to drain swamps and plant a monoculture, detritus from the trees and global heating combined to produce the conditions for the Gironde inferno
The ruinous fires that overran parts of France this summer have burned more land than ever recorded, forced more people from their homes than at any point since the second world war and caused what scientists suspect is the country’s first firestorm thundercloud. The smoke from France’s biggest inferno in nearly 80 years choked Limoges, a city 125 miles (200km) from the flames, with more toxic dust than Delhi residents inhaled on the city’s worst day of smog last year.
The blaze that tore through forests outside Bordeaux in late July took just a few weeks to reforge France’s relationship with fire, but the conditions behind it were centuries in the making.
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08/23/2026 - 05:00
Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a growing labor movement has addressed the climate crisis and economic inequality
Ryan McElroen had spent years repairing the New York City subway underground when he got the opportunity to work in the middle of the ocean.
“I had no views other than the darkness at work,” he said. “Then I went polar opposite.”
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08/23/2026 - 02:00
Similar initiatives have been launched from Barcelona to Bogotá, but they have misinformation, political pressure and vested interests stacked against them
Ten years ago, Alastair Harper was an advocate for young people’s health sitting in a stuffy meeting room in London planning an air pollution campaign. “My phone started buzzing,” he said. “I took the call, and then told the room I needed to leave immediately.
“I had to get to UCLH [one of London’s major hospitals]. My own child was headed there in a blue-lit ambulance because she was struggling to breathe London’s toxic air.”
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08/23/2026 - 01:00
Surge in proposals follows Labour’s lifting of de facto ban, with about 45 plans submitted in the year to March
Plans for new onshore windfarms in England have reached their highest annual level in a decade, after the government overturned the Conservatives’ de facto ban in 2015.
About 45 applications for new onshore windfarms were submitted in the year to March,according to a Guardian analysis of government data.
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08/22/2026 - 19:42
Seal found dead at Beachport in South Australia presages ‘significant losses’, minister warns
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A long-nosed fur seal has died from H5 bird flu in South Australia, marking the first confirmed case in a mammal on the Australian mainland.
The seal was found dead at Beachport on Wednesday on the state’s Limestone Coast.
It marks a fresh escalation in the spread of the virus days after the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, announced three mass mortality events on offshore islands involving more than 1,000 greater crested terns.
The federal agriculture minister, Julie Collins, said the seal death was “not unexpected” as the virus begins to spread through the country.
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08/22/2026 - 19:00
Exclusive: campaigners warn 600-year-old New Barn at Harmondsworth could be ‘shaken to pieces’ by vibrations
Six hundred years after it was built, England’s largest surviving medieval timber-framed barn could now be “shaken to pieces” by aircraft vibrations, campaigners warn.
The public has until 1 September to submit objections to the Heathrow airport expansion, which could threaten the survival of the New Barn at Harmondsworth, considered a remarkable example of medieval architecture.
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