Breaking Waves: Ocean News

For decades, the men and women of the Venezuelan Crocodile Specialist Group have been raising younglings of the critically endangered species in a race against time to avoid its extinction Continue reading...

Green groups and industry warn axing of Moonlight Range Wind Farm project risks undermining confidence in renewables Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Liberal National party’s axing of a conditionally approved windfarm that could have powered hundreds of thousands of homes risks undermining confidence in the renewable energy sector in Queensland, green and industry groups have warned. Planned for a site 40km north-west of Rockhampton, Greenleaf Renewables’ $1bn Moonlight Range Wind Farm Project would have been able to power about 260,000 homes, using 88 260-metre turbines. It also included a grid-scale battery. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

A groundbreaking tree-planting programme is uniting farmers and rewilders, as portions of common ground in the Yorkshire Dales national park are being restored to their ancient glory Photographs by Rebecca Cole The Howgill Fells are a smooth, treeless cluster of hills in the Yorkshire Dales national park, so bald and lumpy that they are sometimes described as a herd of sleeping elephants. Their bare appearance – stark even by UK standards – has been shaped by centuries of sheep grazing. Yet beneath the soil lie ancient tree roots: the silent traces of long-lost “ghost woodlands”. Over the past 12 years, 300,000 native trees have been planted by the project Continue reading...

Stark warnings about threatened coastal areas should prompt fresh efforts to protect those most at risk In his classic study of the 17th-century Dutch golden age, The Embarrassment of Riches, the art historian Simon Schama showed how the biblical story of Noah’s ark resonated in a culture where catastrophic floods were an ever-present threat. The history of the Netherlands includes multiple instances of storms breaching dikes, leading to disastrous losses of life and land. These traumatic episodes were reflected in the country’s art and literature, as well as its engineering. In countries where floods are less of a danger, memories tend to be more localised: a mark on a wall showing how high waters rose when a town’s river flooded; a seaside garden such as the one in Felixstowe, Suffolk, to commemorate the night in 1953 when 41 people lost their lives there. Continue reading...