Big Butterfly Count asks volunteers to spend 15 minutes recording numbers in local green space before 10 August
People are being urged to help measure the scale of Britain’s butterfly bounceback after last summer’s dramatic decline with this year’s launch of the world’s biggest insect survey.
The Big Butterfly Count asks volunteers to spend 15 minutes in a local green space counting the butterflies and day-flying moths they see. Results of the survey, which takes place from 18 July to 10 August, can be logged on the Butterfly Conservation charity’s website or via its free app.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/17/2025 - 12:53
Indigenous groups had offered to rehome grizzly nicknamed Tex who was killed without authorization
The journey of Tex, a young grizzly bear that gripped public attention in Canada after swimming to a tiny populated island, came to a violent end this week after he was shot and killed without authorization, despite plans by Indigenous groups to relocate him.
The four-year-old bear’s landfall on 25 May on Texada Island, a tiny island off the west coast, set off a controversy between differing interpretations of how to treat wild predators. Its shooting on Tuesday has advocates calling for the British Columbia government to act faster when it comes to working with First Nations on environmental stewardship.
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07/17/2025 - 10:02
Dogs trained by everyday pet owners are proving to be surprisingly powerful allies in the fight against the invasive spotted lanternfly. In a groundbreaking study, citizen scientists taught their dogs to sniff out the pests’ hard-to-spot egg masses with impressive accuracy. The initiative not only taps into the huge community of recreational scent-detection dog enthusiasts, but also opens a promising new front in protecting agriculture. And it doesn’t stop there—these canine teams are now sniffing out vineyard diseases too, hinting at a whole new future of four-legged fieldwork.
07/17/2025 - 10:00
The president is threatening to deport essential farm workers, grocery clerks and food delivery drivers. But without them, shelves could go empty and prices could soar
The Trump administration’s assault on immigrants is starting to hit the American food supply.
In Texas, farmers who have for years depended on undocumented people for cheap labor – to plant, harvest and haul produce – have reported that workers are staying home to avoid raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). In Los Angeles, restaurants and food trucks have been forced to close as the immigrants who cook and wait tables fear Ice and other law enforcement.
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07/17/2025 - 09:37
Residents of Minot, North Dakota, exasperated by proliferation of furry foot-long neighbors
The Richardson’s ground squirrel weighs less than a pound, is about a foot long and is native to the northern Plains.
The little creature also is a ferocious tunneler, and it’s exasperating the people of Minot, North Dakota, where it’s burrowing everywhere from vacant lots to the middle of town, and growing more plentiful over the past two decades.
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07/17/2025 - 09:02
Pesticide Injury Accountability Act would ensure that Bayer, Syngenta and others can be held responsible for allegedly causing health issues
US politics live – latest updates
Cory Booker on Thursday introduced legislation that would create a federal “right of action”, allowing people to sue pesticide makers such as Bayer and Syngenta, and others, for allegedly causing health issues such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
The Pesticide Injury Accountability Act would “ensure that pesticide manufacturers can be held responsible for the harm caused by their toxic products”, according to a summary of the bill. The legislation would be amended to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act of 1972 (Fifra).
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07/17/2025 - 06:25
President has 15 days to approve or veto legislation that critics say will lead to vast deforestation and destruction of Indigenous communities
Brazilian lawmakers have passed a bill that drastically weakens the country’s environmental safeguards and is seen by many activists as the most significant setback for the country’s environmental legislation in the past 40 years.
The new law – widely referred to as the “devastation bill” and already approved by the senate in May – passed in congress in the early hours of Thursday by 267 votes to 116, despite opposition from more than 350 organisations and social movements.
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07/17/2025 - 06:00
Tires take decades to decompose, and millions are improperly dumped every year. An intrepid group sets out to clear Kentucky’s ‘conveyor belt of trash’
In the 1980s, Russ Miller and his wife moved to a far edge of eastern Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, where they built a homestead on a ridge hugged by three sides of the river. It’s the kind of place you can only get to with a hand-drawn map. A place so remote that the farther and farther you drive to get to it, the more unsure you are that you are in the right place.
They would spend leisurely afternoons drifting the river in inner tubes, until they started noticing what floated alongside them: heaps of discarded junk.
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07/17/2025 - 05:00
Exclusive: 17% increase in military spending will add emissions equivalent to those of some entire countries
Donald Trump’s huge spending boost for the Pentagon will produce an additional 26 megatons (Mt) of planet-heating gases – on a par with the annual carbon equivalent (CO2e) emissions generated by 68 gas power plants or the entire country of Croatia, new research reveals.
The Pentagon’s 2026 budget – and climate footprint – is set to surge to $1tn thanks to the president’s One Big Beautiful Act, a 17% rise on last year.
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07/17/2025 - 04:22
Industry says party’s threat to strip wind and solar subsidies if it enters power undermines national interest
Business live – latest updates
Britain’s green energy industry has accused the Reform UK party of undermining the national interest by threatening to strip public subsidies for wind and solar projects if it comes to power.
Groups representing Britain’s biggest clean energy investors said the populist party was “putting politics before prosperity” after Reform’s deputy leader gave “formal notice” to large developers that it would axe any deals struck in an upcoming renewables subsidy auction this summer.
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