Following the destruction from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an anti-drilling coalition took action with HB 1143 – and got it signed by DeSantis
The giant and catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the BP oil spill, didn’t reach Apalachicola Bay in 2010, but the threat of oil reaching this beautiful and environmentally valuable stretch of northern Florida’s Gulf coast was still enough to devastate the region’s economy.
The Florida state congressman Jason Shoaf remembers how the threat affected the bay.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/05/2025 - 07:00
07/05/2025 - 06:00
Climate change, development, labor shortages and tariffs are making life the pits for the state’s cherry farmers
Nearly 100 years ago, north-west Michigan cherry farmers and Traverse City community leaders started a festival to promote the city and their region’s tart cherry crop as a tourist destination.
Now known as the “cherry capital of the world”, Traverse City’s National Cherry Festival draws 500,000 visitors over eight days to this picturesque Lake Michigan beach town to enjoy carnival rides and airshows, and to eat cherries. It also sparked a thriving agrotourism industry amid its rolling hills that now boasts dozens of shops, wineries, U-pick orchards, and farm-to-table restaurants helmed by James Beard-award-winning chefs.
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07/05/2025 - 03:15
At least 24 people have died amid torrential rain and dozens of children from Camp Mystic are among those still missing
We have more from the Associated Press on Camp Mystic, the all-girls Christian summer camp from which up to 25 people are missing.
Chloe Crane, a teacher and former Camp Mystic counsellor, said her heart broke when a fellow teacher shared an email from the camp about the missing girls.
At least 24 people have died and up to 25 people are missing after torrential rain caused flash floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas on Friday.
Rescue teams are searching for the people who were attending the Christian all-girls Camp Mystic summer camp just outside the town of Kerrville 104km (64 miles) north-west of San Antonio.
As of Friday night, emergency personnel had rescued or evacuated 237 people, including 167 by helicopter, Reuters reports.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management had 14 helicopters and hundreds of emergency workers, as well as drones, involved in search-and-rescue operations.
A month’s worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours. In less than an hour the river rose 26 feet (7.9m) in what Kerr county sheriff’s office called “catastrophic flooding”.
The flooding swept away mobile homes, vehicles and holiday cabins where people were spending the 4 July weekend, the BBC said.
A state of emergency has been declared in several counties.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, US President Donald Trump said, “We’ll take care of them,” when asked about federal aid for the disaster.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the top local elected official, said a disaster of such magnitude was unforeseen. “We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what’s happened here,” he said. “None whatsoever.”
More rain is expected in the state, including around Waco, and flooding is anticipated downriver from Kerr county.
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07/05/2025 - 02:00
A14 in Cambridgeshire promised biodiversity net gain of 11.5%, but most of the 860,000 trees planted are dead. What went wrong?
Lorries thunder over the A14 bridge north of Cambridge, above steep roadside embankments covered in plastic shrouds containing the desiccated remains of trees.
Occasionally the barren landscape is punctuated by a flash of green where a young hawthorn or a fledgling honeysuckle has emerged apparently against the odds, but their shock of life is an exception in the treeless landscape.
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07/04/2025 - 11:00
Ecologists say 283 purple emperor recordings on one day at Knepp signal higher numbers nationwide
A conservation project in West Sussex has had its best day on record for rare purple emperor butterfly sighting, and ecologists say they are confident the species is doing well nationally.
Purple emperor populations steadily declined over the course of the 20th century but they have been slowly recolonising the landscape at Knepp since 2001, when Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, decided to turn the stretch of former farmland into a “process-led” rewilding project.
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07/04/2025 - 10:00
The women are raising larvae of the endangered Taylor’s checkerspot for release into the wild
Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae.
Of the many things the team here has tried to tempt larvae of the Taylor’s checkerspot – a native of the Pacific north-west – with, it is the invasive English plantain they seem to love the most.
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07/04/2025 - 08:00
Loss of access to lake and waterfall in Thomas Hardy country prompts action at Bridehead estate
Heaven only knows what Thomas Hardy would have made of it. On Saturday, protesters will arrive at the Bridehead estate in Dorset, hop across a low stone wall and take part in a “peaceful trespass” to express their anger and sadness at the loss of access to a spot in the sort of landscape Hardy wrote about so evocatively.
They will picnic near a lake, listen to songs and some will join a writing workshop, while drawing attention to the closure of a permissive path that local people and visitors have used for generations.
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07/04/2025 - 07:00
In an Arctic reshaped by the climate crisis, less ice really means more as countries face risks in push for more ships
For millennia, a mass of sea ice in the high Arctic has changed with the seasons, casting off its outer layer in summer and expanding in winter as it spins between Russia, Canada and Alaska. Known as the Beaufort Gyre, this fluke of geography and oceanography was once a proving ground for ice to “mature” into thick sheets.
But no more. A rapidly changing climate has reshaped the region, reducing perennial sea ice. As ocean currents spin what is left of the gyre, chunks of ice now clog many of the channels separating the northern islands.
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07/04/2025 - 06:00
New study finds troubling levels of Pfas near wastewater plants and sludge sites in 19 states
Sewage sludge and wastewater treatment plants are major sources of Pfas water pollution, new research finds, raising questions about whether the US is safely managing its waste.
A first-of-its-kind study tested rivers bordering 32 sewage sludge sites, including wastewater treatment plants and fields where the substance is spread as fertilizer – it found concerning levels of Pfas around all but one.
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07/04/2025 - 03:00
Eni has filed at least six defamation suits against journalists and NGOs since 2019 in what critics say is intimidation campaign
‘Legal bullying’: global protest rights on line in Dutch court case, say activists
When Antonio Tricarico was summoned to his local police station in October and told he was being investigated for defamation, he was stressed but not shocked. Months earlier, Tricarico, the director of the Italian environment NGO ReCommon, had filed a joint legal challenge against the country’s biggest oil company, Eni, which he knew had a history of using lawyers to clamp down on critics.
The company had previously limited itself to civil defamation lawsuits, including against ReCommon, but in Tricarico’s case it initiated criminal proceedings over statements he had made in a television interview.
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