‘Duplomb law’ provision to allow use of acetamiprid, toxic to pollinators, found not to abide by environmental charter
France’s top constitutional authority has ruled against the reintroduction of a pesticide that is harmful to ecosystems, saying it is unconstitutional.
The decision on Thursday night deals a blow to the government. It comes after weeks of opposition from the left, environmentalists and doctors, and a record-breaking 2m signatures on a petition against a bill that would have allowed a pesticide banned in France in 2020 to come back into use.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/07/2025 - 12:35
08/07/2025 - 10:41
Environmental group says industry figures will be obstructive and aim to reduce overall ambition of meeting
More than 200 industry lobbyists are attending the UN’s meeting to hammer out a global plastics treaty, raising fears that moves to prevent runaway plastic production may be undermined.
The 234 lobbyists from the oil, petrochemical and plastics industries outnumber the combined delegations of all 27 EU member states, and far exceed the number of people attending with the delegation of scientists as well as Indigenous peoples at the Geneva talks.
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08/07/2025 - 10:00
Overall clearing was up 3%, with almost half in Great Barrier Reef catchment areas while 21% was remnant woodland, government data shows
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Forest and woodland across an area more than 1,000 times the size of the Sydney CBD was bulldozed in Queensland in 2022-23, newly published figures show, sparking warnings the state is escalating risks to endangered species and worsening climate change.
Almost half (44%) of the 332,015 hectares of clearing was in Great Barrier Reef catchment areas, causing nutrient and sediment flow that puts additional pressure on corals already bleaching due to climate change.
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08/07/2025 - 05:00
Park bosses say they’re running visitor centers and even cleaning bathrooms as remaining staff try to keep sites open
Across the US’s fabled but overstretched national parks, unusual scenes are playing out this summer following budget cuts by Donald Trump’s administration. Archeologists are staffing ticket booths, ecologists are covering visitor centers and the superintendents of parks are even cleaning the toilets.
The National Park Service (NPS), responsible for maintaining cherished wildernesses and sites of cultural importance from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff since Trump took office in January, with the administration seeking to gut the service’s budget by a third.
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08/07/2025 - 04:00
The recent hopeful surge of some wildlife isn’t down to us. But in an era of climatic decline, it shows the resilience of our fellow species
Butterflies flit across my vision wherever I go this summer. Screams of swifts have been unusually audible in cities. Hedges are laden with blackberries. Hordes of plump wood pigeons devour my kale. Fruit trees bow with plums and apples. There are wasps galore and each morning I’m woken by a raucous new neighbour: a herring gull that’s moved on to the factory roof next door.
Wild nature, in Britain this year, is visibly abundant. Most of us share similar stories. But is there really a blizzard of butterflies? Are there actually more swifts? Is nature in recovery after years of decline? Or is this shifting baseline syndrome in action, whereby we are so inured to decimated levels of nature that we are deceived by tiny blips of hope?
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08/07/2025 - 03:00
A new polar project compared samples with those collected more than a century ago by by Scott, along with voyages led by Shackleton and Borchgrevink
Three glass specimen jars full of satsuma-sized sea urchins sit on Dr Hugh Carter’s desk in the Natural History Museum. Each one, collected from the depths of the Southern Ocean by polar teams led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, Capt Robert Falcon Scott and the Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink, tells a tale of heroic exploration and scientific endeavour.
Now, more than a century later, Carter, the Natural History Museum’s (NHM) curator of marine invertebrates, hopes the preserved Antarctic urchins, 50 in all, will help tell a different, increasingly urgent story of modern times: how changes in the world’s southernmost waters may be affecting marine life.
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08/07/2025 - 00:00
Release of 20 lynx over several years into Kielder Forest area would create population of about 50 animals
Releasing just 20 lynx in Northumberland would be enough to create a healthy wild population, research has found, and most people in the area would support the practice.
Northumberland Wildlife Trust has been working to see if the wild cats, which became extinct in Britain about 1,300 years ago as a result of hunting and habitat loss, could be returned to the area.
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08/06/2025 - 23:00
Soundproofing buffers at tunnel mouths to be rolled out on China’s latest magnetic levitation train prototype
Researchers hope they may have solved the “tunnel boom” problem as they prepare to roll out China’s latest prototype magnetic levitation train.
The newest version of the maglev train is capable of travelling at 600km/h (about 370mph). However, the train’s engineers have wrestled with the problem of the shock waves that occur as the train exits the mouth of a tunnel.
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08/06/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 07 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00150-5
Divergent patterns of global tuna fishing fleet dynamics among different continents
08/06/2025 - 21:20
It’s not the sisterhood busting your balls, fellas – it’s the fossil fuel interests making money from the tonnes of synthetic garbage spewed on to the planet every day
There is plastic in your balls!
Surely this should be headline news every day until the news breaks that “there is no longer plastic in your balls”, accompanied by photographs of celebration parades and ecstatic couples kissing in the streets.
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