Prices paid for large estates not being disclosed on official register, land reform advocates say
Land reform campaigners are alarmed at the increasing use of a legal loophole that allows landowners to conceal the price paid for Highland estates from the public register.
Andy Wightman, a land reform analyst, said the loophole meant the prices paid in more than £300m-worth of Highland property transactions were not disclosed on the register.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/07/2026 - 02:00
02/07/2026 - 01:00
Special pods at Chester zoo helped conservationists breed and release more than 100,000 greater Bermuda snails
A button-sized snail once feared extinct in its Bermudian home is thriving again after conservationists bred and released more than 100,000 of the molluscs.
The greater Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) was found in the fossil record but believed to have vanished from the North Atlantic archipelago, until a remnant population was discovered in a damp and overgrown alleyway in Hamilton, the island capital, in 2014.
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02/06/2026 - 08:30
Storm has ravaged southern regions of Spain and Portugal this week, leaving one man dead in Portugal and one woman missing in Spain
Calls to postpone presidential election as Storm Leonardo lashes Portugal and Spain
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02/06/2026 - 06:54
Portugal’s far-right Chega party has said vote should be delayed as state of calamity declared in 69 areas
Heavy rains and strong winds have continued to batter parts of Spain and Portugal, causing at least two deaths, forcing the evacuation of more than 7,000 people and prompting calls to postpone the second-round of Portugal’s presidential election.
Storm Leonardo, which has lashed the Iberian peninsula this week, has led the Portuguese government to extend the current state of calamity in 69 municipalities until the middle of February.
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02/06/2026 - 05:20
Data shows 29 hybrid and 98 diesel cars also sold, while the figure for battery electric vehicles was more than 2,000
Just seven new petrol cars were sold in Norway last month, data shows.
The country, which is the frontrunner in the uptake of electric vehicles, shifted a record low number of new fossil-fuel cars in January, information from the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) reveals.
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02/06/2026 - 03:00
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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02/05/2026 - 21:50
When marine biologist Océane Attlan saw the tiny Braun’s wrasse, it was like ‘recognising a familiar face, but you can’t put a name on it’
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The chances of encountering the rare reef fish were so far-fetched, it took marine biologist Océane Attlan a few seconds to clock what she was seeing.
“All of a sudden I saw this fish. You know when you recognise a familiar face, but you can’t put a name on it. That’s the feeling I had,” she said.
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02/05/2026 - 14:00
Toxicity from farm chemicals increased for most species groups between 2013 and 2019, with insects worst affected
Ecological harm from pesticides is growing globally, a study has found, with bugs, fish, pollinators and land-based plants among six species groups hit hardest.
Insects suffered the greatest increase in harm from synthetic farm chemicals between 2013 and 2019, the study shows, with “applied” toxicity rising by 42.9%, followed by soil organisms, which faced an increase of 30.8%.
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02/05/2026 - 12:58
President condemns ‘environmental and health crime’ as critics say Israel seeks to make southern Lebanon uninhabitable
Lebanon has accused Israel of spraying a herbicide linked to cancer on farmland in the south of the country as a “health crime” that would threaten food security and farmers’ livelihoods.
The country’s president, Joseph Aoun, condemned what he called “an environmental and health crime” and a violation of Lebanese sovereignty, and he vowed to take “all necessary legal and diplomatic measures to confront this aggression”.
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02/05/2026 - 12:52
State culled a number of the non-native reptiles after thousands were ‘cold-stunned’ and dropped from trees
Wildlife officials in Florida say they euthanized more than 5,000 non-native iguanas in the state after hordes of the reptiles froze and fell from trees in this week’s cold snap.
The Florida fish and wildlife commission (FWC) authorized the first officially sanctioned cull of “cold-stunned” iguanas as temperatures plunged below freezing in many areas of the state.
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