Environment minister Murray Watt is returning from oceans conference where he pledged to curb the scourge of plastics and ratify a treaty to protect the high seas
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The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, is returning from a UN oceans conference where he pledged to curb the scourge of plastics and make good on Australia’s promise to ratify a treaty to protect the high seas.
The five-day meeting in Nice, France finished on Friday, and conservationists celebrated some key steps towards protecting wildlife in international waters.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/13/2025 - 10:00
06/13/2025 - 10:00
Environment minister Murray Watt is restarting the process after the government shelved earlier proposed reforms
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A select group of environment and industry leaders will be brought together in a fresh attempt to build consensus on a long-awaited rewrite of federal nature laws, Guardian Australia can reveal.
The environment minister, Murray Watt, will soon detail the next phase of consultation as he presses ahead with an ambition to enact sweeping changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) in the next 18 months.
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06/13/2025 - 06:27
Welfare of sows confined to farrowing crates was compromised and they displayed signs of extreme stress, experts say
The use of restrictive pens to temporarily house pregnant pigs in the UK severely compromises their welfare, can traumatise them and should be banned, experts have said.
Analysis by Animal Equality UK of footage collected from a farm in Devon showed that three pregnant sows in farrowing crates spent more than 90% of their time lying down, with one not standing up at all for a day. On average, between them they bit the bars (a sign of extreme stress) more than once an hour.
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06/13/2025 - 05:00
The Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division strives to provide ‘full sensory experience’ in country’s national parks
The Trump administration appears poised to cut the US Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD), a little-known office that works to rein in noise and light pollution in national parks, a task that is seen as a vital environmental endeavor.
Advocates say the division’s work is quiet but important – many plants and animals rely on the darkness, and light pollution is contributing to firefly and other insect die-offs. The office led efforts to reduce light pollution at the Grand Canyon and snowmobile noise that drowned out sounds emanating from the Old Faithful geyser, among other initiatives.
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06/13/2025 - 04:00
The documentary shows the damage that fishing does to our planet. So why does the industry still hold governments to ransom?
I have been saying this a lot recently: “At last!” At last, a mainstream film bluntly revealing the plunder of our seas. At last, a proposed ban on bottom trawling in so-called “marine protected areas” (MPAs). At last, some solid research on seabed carbon and the vast releases caused by the trawlers ploughing it up. But still I feel that almost everyone is missing the point.
David Attenborough’s Ocean film, made for National Geographic, is the one I’ve been waiting for all my working life. An epoch ago, when I worked in the BBC’s Natural History Unit in the mid-1980s, some of us lobbied repeatedly for films like this, without success. Since then, even programmes that purport to discuss marine destruction have carefully avoided the principal cause: the fishing industry. The BBC’s Blue Planet II and Blue Planet Live series exemplified the organisation’s perennial failure of courage.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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06/13/2025 - 01:00
Sale covering 56,000 square miles set to go ahead despite opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups
The Brazilian government is preparing to stage an oil exploration auction months before it hosts the Cop30 UN climate summit, despite opposition from environmental campaigners and Indigenous communities worried about the environmental and climate impacts of the plans.
Brazil’s oil sector regulator, ANP, will auction the exploration rights to 172 oil and gas blocks spanning 56,000 square miles (146,000 sq km), an area more than twice the size of Scotland, most of it offshore.
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06/13/2025 - 01:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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06/12/2025 - 21:01
Climate change is real and Coalition’s job is to determine how to cut emissions, shadow assistant minister to opposition leader Maria Kovacic says
Kovacic on what the Coalition needs to move forward – Australian Politics podcast
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Coalition MPs should stop questioning climate change science and instead fully embrace emissions policies to deliver net zero by 2050, the Liberal senator Maria Kovacic says, warning that Australia’s environment and economy are at risk.
After its historic drubbing at the 3 May election, some Coalition MPs are preparing for a protracted brawl over climate targets, leaving support for net zero policies under the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, in significant doubt.
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06/12/2025 - 19:20
Order aims to centralize efforts, which are now split among five agencies and two cabinet departments
Donald Trump has ordered the US government to consolidate its wildland firefighting force into a single program, despite warnings from former federal officials that it could be costly and increase the risk of catastrophic blazes in the middle of peak wildfire season.
The order aims to centralize firefighting efforts, which are now split among five agencies and two cabinet departments. Trump’s proposed budget for next year calls for the creation of a new Federal Wildland Fire Service under the US interior department.
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06/12/2025 - 13:32
Proposals this week to weaken EPA restrictions will help tiny group of owners while ‘the American people will breathe dirtier air’
Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed on Wednesday that its plan to eviscerate power plant pollution standards will save the US about $1bn a year. In reality, though, this represents a starkly uneven trade-off, experts say.
The savings for “Americans” will go entirely to power plant operators who won’t have to cut their pollution, while at the same time climate and health benefits for all Americans that are 20 times larger in dollar terms will be deleted.
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