Drag queen, environmentalist, diversity and inclusion advocate and social media star arrives in San Francisco
Pattie Gonia, the drag queen and environmentalist, arrived in San Francisco on Friday afternoon and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge with $1m more than when she set out on her journey last week.
The diversity and inclusion advocate completed the 100-mile trek from Point Reyes national seashore to San Francisco in full drag with her voluminous red wig and smokey eye. The effort was part of a campaign she launched to raise $1m for eight non-profits that aim to expand access and make the outdoors a more “equitable place”.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/06/2025 - 10:00
12/06/2025 - 01:00
Exclusive: ‘extremely unhelpful’ policy seen as deterrent to clearing thousands of dump sites across England
Millions of pounds in landfill tax owed to the government has to be paid by the Environment Agency (EA) if it clears any of the thousands of illegal waste dumps across the country.
Of the £15m that taxpayers are paying for the clearance of the only site the agency has committed to clearing up – a vast illegal dump at Hoad’s Wood in Kent – £4m is landfill tax.
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12/06/2025 - 00:52
Drone attack that Ukraine blamed on Russia blew hole in painstakingly erected €1.5bn shield meant to allow for final clean-up of 1986 meltdown site
The protective shield over the Chornobyl disaster nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which was hit by a drone in February, can no longer perform its main function of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced.
In February a drone strike blew a hole in the “new safe confinement”, which was painstakingly built at a cost of €1.5bn ($1.75bn) next to the destroyed reactor and then hauled into place on tracks, with the work completed in 2019 by a Europe-led initiative. The IAEA said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure found the drone impact had degraded the structure.
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12/05/2025 - 11:42
Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence
The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.
Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.
The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.
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12/05/2025 - 10:00
Designer Michael Schmidt’s 36-piece collection was made from the wool of rams who have shown same-sex attraction
When a ram tips its head back, curls its upper lip, and takes a deep breath – what is known in the world of animal husbandry as a “flehmen response” – it is often a sign of arousal. Sheep have a small sensory organ located above the roof of the mouth, and the flehmen response helps to flood it with any sex pheromones wafting about.
Usually, rams flehmen when they encounter ewes during the mating period, according to Michael Stücke, a farmer with 30 years of experience raising sheep in Westphalia, Germany. But on Stücke’s farm, the rams flehmen “all the time”.
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12/05/2025 - 09:00
Ads to be removed from Adelaide Metro buses after advertising regulator rules they breach its environmental claims code
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South Australia’s transport department misled the public by running ads on buses claiming “natural gas” was “clean and green”, the advertising regulator has found.
The SA Department for Transport and Infrastructure has agreed to remove the advertising that has been on some Adelaide Metro buses since the early 2000s after Ad Standards upheld a complaint from the not-for-profit organisation Comms Declare.
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12/05/2025 - 09:00
RSPB says growing trend for honouring species that are in decline is not matched by action on conservation
Britain’s street names are being inspired by skylarks, lapwings and starlings, even as bird populations decline.
According to a report by the RSPB, names such as Skylark Lane and Swift Avenue are increasingly common. Using OS Open Names data from 2004 to 2024, the conservation charity found that road names featuring bird species had risen by 350% for skylarks, 156% for starlings and 104% for lapwings, despite populations of these having fallen in the wild.
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12/05/2025 - 08:00
The anti-coagulant rodenticides also unintentionally harm wildlife across the state, including endangered species
The administration of Gavin Newsom, the California governor, is moving to loosen restrictions around the most toxic rat poisons, even as a new state report shows the rodenticides are unintentionally poisoning wildlife across the state, including endangered species.
Blood-thinning, anticoagulant rodenticides were significantly restricted when a 2024 state law approved after 10 years of legislative wrangling required the California department of pesticide regulation to limit the substances’ use unless data showed species collaterally harmed or killed by it had rebounded.
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12/05/2025 - 06:51
Conservationists say changes, coupled with underfunding, will curb take-up and leave less land protected for nature
UK politics live – latest updates
An ambitious scheme to restore England’s nature over coming decades has been undermined after the government inserted a clause allowing it to terminate contracts with only a year’s notice, conservationists have said.
The project was designed to fund landscape-scale restoration over thousands of hectares, whether on large estates or across farms and nature reserves. The idea was to create huge reserves for rare species to thrive – projects promoted as decades-long commitments to securing habitat for wildlife well into the future.
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12/05/2025 - 03:00
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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