The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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05/02/2025 - 01:00
05/02/2025 - 00:05
Manufacturer Incat built Hull 096 to run between Buenos Aires and Uruguay, dubbing it the ‘most complex’ project it has ever undertaken
An Australian boatbuilder has launched what it describes as the world’s largest battery-power ship, describing it as a “a giant leap forward in sustainable shipping” and the “most important” project it has ever done.
Incat, a manufacturer based in Tasmania, constructed the ship – called Hull 096 – after being contracted by the South American ferry operator Buquebus to build a vessel to run between the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires, and Uruguay.
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05/02/2025 - 00:00
A ‘wetter farming’ project explores rehydrating peatland to help grow crops in boggier conditions while cutting CO2 emissions
“I really don’t like the word ‘paludiculture’ – most people have no idea what it means,” Sarah Johnson says. “I prefer the term ‘wetter farming’.”
The word might be baffling, but the concept is simple: paludiculture is the use of wet peatlands for agriculture, a practice that goes back centuries in the UK, including growing reeds for thatching roofs.
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05/02/2025 - 00:00
From the turtle-nesting beaches of Italy to Greek island bird havens, across the Mediterranean campaigners are fighting to protect habitats from tourists seeking a picture-perfect holiday
In the summer months in Puglia, southern Italy, the battle for the beaches begins before dawn. Armed with tractors, beach owners flatten every imperfection from the sand, dragging it to sift out anything large enough to be considered waste. As the sun rises, tourists flood the coastline, often unaware of what lies hidden beneath their feet.
Two feet below the surface, delicate eggs laid by loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) are waiting to hatch. For the turtles, the beach is not a beauty spot but a habitat.
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05/01/2025 - 23:12
Depending on where things end up after Saturday, the biggest climate push may come from the crossbench
Election 2025 results LIVE: Australia votes tracker and federal seat counts
Australia federal election 2025 LIVE – latest news, updates and results
If further confirmation was needed that the Peter Dutton-led Coalition would take Australia aggressively backwards on dealing with the climate crisis, his final election costings released on Thursday tell the story in black and white.
The Liberal and National parties plan to gut programs designed to cut emissions and help create green industries to give the country an industrial future as demand for fossil fuels falls. They also plan to ignore advice that Australian nature is in poor and deteriorating health and strip back already limited funding for environment programs.
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05/01/2025 - 18:05
Action in Deschutes national forest for wildfire prevention plan follows Trump order to increase timber production
Dozens of homeless people who have been living in a national forest in central Oregon for years were being evicted on Thursday by the US Forest Service, as it closed the area for a wildfire prevention project that will involve removing smaller trees, clearing debris and setting controlled burns over thousands of acres.
The project has been on the books for years, and the decision to remove the encampment in the Deschutes national forest comes two months after the Trump administration issued an executive order directing federal agencies to increase timber production and forest management projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk. It was not immediately clear if the evictions were a result of that order, but homeless advocates seized on the timing on Thursday, as US Forest Service officers blocked the access road.
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05/01/2025 - 15:59
DoJ says Clean Air Act creates program to oversee air pollution and ‘displaces’ states’ ability to regulate it
The US justice department on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan over their planned legal action against fossil fuel companies for harms caused by the climate crisis, claiming the state actions conflict with federal government authority and Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda.
The suits, which legal experts say are unprecedented, mark the latest of the Trump administration’s attacks on environmental work and raise concern over states’ abilities to retain the power to take climate action without federal opposition.
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05/01/2025 - 13:00
Study using citizen data finds three-quarters of nearly 500 species in decline, with steepest trend in areas where they once thrived
Bird populations across North America are falling most quickly in areas where they are most abundant, according to new research, prompting fears of ecological collapse in previously protected areas.
Analysis of nearly 500 bird species across North America has found that three-quarters are declining across their ranges, with two-thirds of the total shrinking significantly.
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04/26/2025 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 27 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00115-8
A psychologically wise intervention to inform relational organizing in the face of climate and ocean change
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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