On Wajarri Yamaji country in WA’s remote mid-west sits Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. This year, early winter rains have left the telescopes surrounded by a carpet of splendid native blooms
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/13/2026 - 10:00
09/13/2026 - 08:00
Thirty years after a US ornithologist first sighted a jocotoco antpitta, the foundation he set up to restore biodiversity is a model for conservation globally
I have to confess that I rarely enjoy birding in montane cloud forests. The birds that live in these mountainous, cool and humid habitats are masters of disguise, usually passing themselves off as a leaf or other form of foliage. But if I want to see antpittas – elusive, ground-dwelling birds that rarely show themselves – then I have no choice.
So, on a cool, cloudy morning my guide, Juan Carlos Crespo, Fredy Ramón Castillo, a local ranger, and I are standing on a steep, muddy path close to Tapichalaca Lodge, 2,500 metres above sea level in the eastern Andes, waiting for the jocotoco antpitta to emerge from the undergrowth.
Continue reading...
09/13/2026 - 02:00
The complacency is staggering: just another hot summer, a flooded street, a crop failure. We are accepting this extraordinary deterioration as normal
Recently, I overheard a conversation in a cafe where someone described their toast as “awesome”. I felt myself bristle. Not because the toast wasn’t good – I didn’t taste it – but because I remember a time when “awesome” meant something that inspired awe: towering mountains, the vastness of the night sky, the haunting song of a humpback whale. Now it’s being used to describe breakfast.
“Fantastic” has met the same fate, shedding its fantastical origins to become a synonym for “great”. Meanwhile “literally” has been so thoroughly abused that it can now mean something that is, quite literally, not literal.
Continue reading...
09/13/2026 - 00:04
South Australian authorities say case discovered on Kangaroo Island is first for species of which less than 12,000 animals remain
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
South Australia has recorded the first death of an endangered Australian sea lion from H5 bird flu.
Experts say about 12,000 Australian sea lions remain – though a more recent estimate put the figure at less than 10,000. Most of the population are found in South Australia, with the remainder in Western Australia.
Continue reading...
09/12/2026 - 06:00
Silicosis sufferers are getting younger as Trump and the coal mining industry push back on protections
Silicosis is one of the oldest workplace hazards and public health experts have known for decades how to prevent it. Yet a new wave of workers, from Appalachian coalminers to Latino countertop fabrication workers, are developing and dying from the disease as industry fights new protections and regulators fail to defend the rules that could protect them.
John Robinson’s grandfather developed black lung back when coalminers could spend decades in the mines before being diagnosed with the disease, often dying in their 60s, 70s and 80s. But Robinson, who mined for coal in south-west Virginia, was diagnosed when he was 47. He’s part of a trend that has grown over the past two decades in central Appalachia, where more coalminers are developing black lung disease at younger ages.
Continue reading...
09/12/2026 - 06:00
Charity urges gardeners in England to swap thirsty brassicas for drought-tolerant crops
They are an integral part of the British Sunday roast – but cauliflowers are now going to be off the menu, according to the Royal Horticultural Society.
England’s climate has changed so much that the RHS is now recommending that gardeners exclude the brassicas from their vegetable patches.
Continue reading...
09/12/2026 - 05:00
Continue reading...
09/12/2026 - 00:00
Rebecca Howard spent two years visiting projects and painting landscapes that feature in West Sussex exhibition
Rewilding areas do not usually conform to traditional notions of beauty in England’s green and pleasant land. Detractors may bewail the beaver-felled trees, untidy scrub, deadwood, weeds, mud and “mess”.
But a new exhibition highlights the aesthetic delights that can be discovered on rewilding sites where fungi grows on dying trees, water buffalo gather in new wetlands and brown-watered beaver pools flood once-desiccated fields.
Continue reading...
09/11/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 12 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00246-6
Aligning Marine Spatial Data Infrastructures and Open Science for FAIR and sustainable ocean knowledge systems
09/11/2026 - 10:50
Greens accuse Labour of hiding position to avoid criticism before contest, in which Zack Polanski is standing
A decision on approving the controversial Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea is to be delayed until later this autumn, with the Greens accusing Labour of hiding their position before the crucial Holborn and St Pancras byelection.
Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, had been poised to give her recommendation to approve the Jackdaw field off the coast of Aberdeen next week.
Continue reading...
