Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Government’s first published land use framework maps how land is used and how it can be adapted to meet changing needs About 7% of England’s land – an area roughly two-and-a-half times the size of Cornwall – will need to be given over to nature, forests and renewable energy, to meet the UK’s environmental targets, new data shows. But there will still be enough land to grow the food needed, and to house a growing population, according to the government’s first land use framework, published on Wednesday. Placing a high priority on restoring peatland, all but 13% of which is degraded across England, but this will not include an outright ban on development such as wind or solar farms. Encouraging the “multi-use” of land, for instance with livestock grazing alongside wind and solar farms, and wildlife protection and nature restoration on arable land. Encouraging local authorities to put nature reserves in urban areas as well as in the countryside. Grouse moors to come under closer scrutiny and tighter regulation, which will go further than EU rules. No new “right to roam” is included in the framework, but there will be a consultation on “making landowner liability more proportionate”, which could open up areas for public access. A national soil map will be published. A new land use unit will be established. Government planning for changes to the UK’s landscape under global heating of 2C above preindustrial levels, and of much higher heating of 4C. Continue reading...

Trillions of insects embark, largely unnoticed, on epic journeys every year across mountain ranges, deserts and seas, and it is only now, as their numbers suffer huge declines, that scientists are tracking their movements On a cloudless sunny day in October 1950, ornithologists Elizabeth and David Lack stood on a mountain pass in the Pyrenees and observed a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle – clouds of migrating insects. Up to 500 butterflies were fluttering past them every hour through the 2,200m-high Puerto de Bujaruelo mountain pass on the French-Spanish border. By mid-afternoon dragonflies were skimming through, outnumbering the butterflies by 10 to one. The spaces between were filled with thousands of tiny flies. Continue reading...

Progressive and green groups join call for tax on major fossil-fuel companies to help offset rising living costs With big oil companies poised to reap billions of dollars in profits from the war in Iran, Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups are calling for a windfall tax on major fossil fuel companies. The US-Israeli strikes on Iran have triggered the largest ever disruption to fuel supply, according to the International Energy Agency, sending crude costs surging over $100 per barrel in recent days. Those high prices have hit US pocketbooks, with average domestic gas prices topping $3.70 a gallon, and Americans spending more than an additional $2bn to fill their tanks in the past fortnight according to one estimate. Continue reading...

Conservationists hope Murray Watt’s review of national marine parks will ‘right the wrongs’ of previous downgrade of protection Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, has pledged to put an extra half a million square kilometres of Australia’s ocean out of reach of fishers and drillers in a step conservationists hope will “right the wrongs” of an Abbott-era downgrade of marine protection. Watt confirmed last year Australia would put 30% of its ocean estate under a high level of protection that bans extractive industries as part of an international agreement to protect 30% of the planet’s oceans. Continue reading...