Plant enthusiasts stumble across 2-metre long snake consuming egg-laying mammal in Marys Creek State Forest in Queensland
A botanist was admiring a myrtle shrub in bloom in an obscure state forest just west of Gympie in Queensland when his companion uttered 10 words that can rarely have been heard before – at least in English.
“I was just looking at a Gossia bidwillii, in flower and Darren calls out,” Elliot Bowerman said.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/23/2024 - 23:00
10/23/2024 - 22:54
Plant enthusiast Darren Williams made the discovery in Marys Creek State Forest just west of Gympie in Queensland. The male platypus was freshly killed, probably after what would have been a fierce struggle with the ambush predator. Williams and his companion Elliot Bowerman photographed the roughly 2-metre long carpet python with its jaw firmly clasped around the platypus before quickly moving on. 'We didn’t want to disturb the snake,' Bowerman said
‘There is a python with a platypus in its mouth: botanist’s extreme monotreme v reptile encounter
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10/23/2024 - 17:36
New research has revealed Marri trees are critical to the survival of more than 80 species of native bee in Western Australia's South West region, which is one of the world's most biologically rich but threatened biodiversity hotspots.
10/23/2024 - 16:25
Grizzly No 399 was at least 28 years old and beloved by many in Grand Teton national park
A famous grizzly bear beloved for decades by countless tourists, biologists and professional wildlife photographers in Grand Teton national park is dead after being struck by a vehicle in western Wyoming.
Grizzly No 399 died on Tuesday night on a highway in Snake River Canyon south of Jackson, park officials said in a statement on Wednesday.
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10/23/2024 - 12:17
RHS says ensuring access to green space as part of housebuilding push could make Britons healthier
Requirements for gardens and the planting of trees must be included in Labour’s planned new rules for housebuilders, green groups have said.
The government is drawing up its future homes standard for new developments and it is not yet clear what requirements there will be for green space.
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10/23/2024 - 12:00
With no power, no water and soon-to-spoil food, Asheville residents fired up their grills and emptied their freezers for communal meals
Erin Kellem’s Asheville, North Carolina neighborhood is a short drive from the city center, but feels remote. The Haw Creek area’s culs-de-sac are fronted by spacious yards and surrounded by thick woods that give the illusion of isolation.
Hurricane Helene changed that, dropping an ocean of rain on the southern Appalachian mountains. Floods of biblical proportions killed dozens. Power outages left thousands without electricity for at least two weeks in most places. There was no gas or cellphone service for days following the storm, and most of the city is still without potable water. Roads disappeared under rushing water and mud. The help that was on its way had no way in, and those stranded in their homes had no way of checking on loved ones.
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10/23/2024 - 11:06
US firm Wolfspeed and German car parts supplier ZF postpone plans over doubts about viability
A project to build a €3bn factory making microchips for electric vehicles once hailed as part of a “return of the industrial revolution” in Germany has been put on hold, as the crisis in the country’s hi-tech manufacturing industry deepens.
The US company Wolfspeed and the German car parts supplier ZF have postponed plans to build an EV chip factory, adding to problems caused by a delay to two large-scale factories belonging to the US chip giant Intel and possible factory closures being considered by Volkswagen.
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10/23/2024 - 09:17
US readers are responding to the reality of the climate crisis by adapting their homes, from insulation as a refuge from heat to removing yard debris in case of wildfires
Rose, 62, was living in a remote area of Washington, west of Seattle, when the scorching “heat dome” of 2021 hit the Pacific north-west. As the house Rose shared with her then 93-year-old mother grew hotter, and their two air conditioning units struggled to make any dent on the wall of heat, Rose’s heart rate climbed, and she watched as all the rubber bands in the house liquefied.
The heat dome – which broke local records to reach highs of 120F (49C) – buckled roads, melted electrical cables and caused about 600 excess deaths, and research showed it was “virtually impossible” without climate change. It’s just one example of a worsening picture for US extreme weather driven by human caused global heating: including more frequent hurricanes, wildfires and devastating floods.
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10/23/2024 - 09:00
The Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg has told the US cable host its biggest threat is not the climate crisis, but do his claims stack up?
Great Barrier Reef’s worst bleaching leaves giant coral graveyard: ‘It looks as if it has been carpet bombed’
Instead of an existential crisis for species worldwide, or threatening to submerge entire Pacific nations and coastal cities where hundreds of millions of people live, or a phenomenon driving unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires, the climate crisis was characterised somewhat differently on the major US cable show Real Time with Bill Maher.
Climate change was “a problem”, the Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told the comedian, but would only shave a few percentage points off global GDP by the end of the century and in any case, he said, by then people would be much richer anyway.
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10/23/2024 - 09:00
Greens MP says number of mortalities is ‘enormous’ and ‘most likely the result of overstocking’
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Environmentalists are calling on the Tasmanian salmon industry to explain why more than 1,000 tonnes of salmon died in fish farms in Macquarie Harbour over seven months last spring and summer.
A government document published after a request by the Neighbours of Fish Farming, a group that campaigns against commercial salmon operations, suggest 1,150 tonnes of fish died in farms in the vast harbour on the state’s west coast between September and March.
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