Agriculture is often seen as the enemy of biodiversity, but in an excerpt from her new book Sophie Yeo explains how techniques from the middle ages allow plants and animals to flourish
The Vile clings on to the edge of the Gower peninsula. Its fields are lined up like strips of carpet, together leading to the edge of the cliff that drops into the sea. Each one is tiny, around 1-2 acres. From the sky, they look like airport runways, although this comparison would have seemed nonsensical to those who tended them for most of their existence.
That is because the Vile is special: a working example of how much of Britain would have been farmed during the middle ages. Farmers have most likely been trying to tame this promontory since before the Norman conquest.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/23/2024 - 07:00
05/23/2024 - 05:00
After old rivalries between Dogon farmers and Fulani herders erupted into violence, exacerbated by Islamist rebels, thousands of the semi-nomadic pastoralists have fled to camps in towns, leaving their cherished animals and way of life. Many must beg to survive at sites lacking food and clean water, with no end in sight to the conflict
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05/23/2024 - 04:00
In Fort Mohave, Arizona, even Republican voters are fighting gas power plants as utilities try to lock in fossil fuels
Retirement was pretty idyllic for Mac and Debbie McKeever, who moved to Fort Mohave in Arizona for the desert views, starry nights and fresh air. The couple hosted cocktails by the pool and taco Tuesdays with their neighbors – an active bunch of Republican-voting retirees with a penchant for gas-guzzling RVs and side-by-sides, and the unlikeliest environmental activists.
However, in late November 2023, the McKeevers found out that the local government, the Mohave county board of supervisors, was about to vote on a zoning proposal for a gas-fired peaker plant less than 1,200ft (0.2 miles) from their middle-class neighborhood Sunrise Hills.
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05/23/2024 - 03:40
Infrastructure firm raises £6.8bn to connect homes to renewable energy sources across US and UK
National Grid has tapped shareholders for nearly £7bn to fund a £60bn spending spree to upgrade its networks to cope with the switch to low-carbon energy on either side of the Atlantic.
The energy infrastructure company announced a £6.8bn rights issue – where existing shareholders are offered new shares – to provide fresh funds for investment in thousands of miles of cables to connect homes with renewable energy projects in the UK and the US.
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05/23/2024 - 03:00
Conservationists say Barbara Creecy has failed to implement vital changes to stop fishing around colonies amid fears African penguins could be extinct by 2035
It’s 3.40pm on a Thursday and Penguin 999.000000007425712 has just returned to the Stony Point penguin colony in Betty’s Bay, South Africa, after a day of foraging. She glides elegantly through the turquoise waters before clambering comically up the rocks towards the nest where her partner is incubating two beige eggs. She doesn’t realise it, but a rudimentary knee-high fence has funnelled her towards a state-of-the-art weighbridge. When she left the colony at 6.45am this morning she weighed 2.7kg. Now, after a full day of hunting, she has gained only 285g.
Eleanor Weideman, a coastal seabird project manager for BirdLife South Africa, is concerned. “In a good year they come back with their stomachs bulging,” she says. Penguins can put on up to one-third of their body weight in a single day of foraging. “But there’s just no fish out there any more.”
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05/22/2024 - 23:00
The loss of the ecosystems, which are vast stores of carbon, would ‘be disastrous for nature and people across the globe’, says IUCN
Half of all the world’s mangrove forests are at risk of collapse, according to the first-ever expert assessment of these crucial ecosystems and carbon stores.
Human behaviour is the primary cause of their decline, according to the analysis by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with mangroves in southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives most at risk.
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05/22/2024 - 16:38
Invitation-only meeting comes on heels of controversial dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Trump reportedly offered $1bn quid pro quo
Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.
The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three big oil executives.
This article was amended on 23 May 2024 to clarify that the FTC did not accuse Occidental of collusion with Opec.
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05/22/2024 - 13:02
Plaintiffs claim $38.7bn gas export project, which would triple state’s greenhouse gas emissions, infringes constitutional rights
Eight young people are suing the government of Alaska – the nation’s fastest-warming state – claiming a major new fossil fuel project violates their state constitutional rights.
The state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has proposed a $38.7bn gas export project that would roughly triple the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades, the lawsuit says. Scientists have long warned that fossil fuel extraction must be swiftly curbed to secure a livable future.
This story has been updated to add comments from Taylor and Fitzpatrick.
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05/15/2024 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 16 May 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00066-6
Author Correction: Do fishers follow fish displaced by climate warming?
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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