The invaders present a devastating threat to Britain’s pollinators – constant watchfulness and clever technology are needed to thwart their progress
Were it not for the bags of destroyed hornets nests in the corner, you could be forgiven for confusing Peter Davies’ office with the set of a TV detective show. Maps dotted with Post-it notes cover the wall in the repurposed hotel suite just off the M20 in Kent. There is no natural light: the only window looks down on an atrium below, and is partly obscured by a flip chart with the plan for the day. From here, Davies and his team run the national command centre for holding back the Asian hornet, an invasive species that preys on honeybees and other pollinators.
“In effect, I’m the incident commander to tackle the hornet. We have a forward operating base at the hotel so we can get anywhere in Kent quickly, because that’s where we’ve had the most incursions,” he says.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/28/2025 - 04:00
08/28/2025 - 03:03
Steps to make electricity cheaper, such as ending levies, could transform prospects for pumps, thinktank shows
Heat pumps could save households hundreds of pounds a year on heating bills, if the government took simple measures to reform the energy system, an analysis has found.
The average household’s heating bills could be roughly halved, saving about £375 a year with a heat pump instead of a gas boiler, if steps were taken to make electricity cheaper.
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08/28/2025 - 02:00
A tournament in Cornwall will pit anglers against these magnificent creatures, as part of a rising trend for so-called ‘sportfishing’
It’s the UK equivalent of bullfighting. Next week, in Falmouth in Cornwall, anglers will compete to fish for bluefin tuna in a three-day tournament. Sponsored by companies including Suzuki and Shimano, it’s a festival of cruelty and destruction, waging war on a magnificent giant which, in a rare instance of ecological hope, has begun returning to our shores.
Where’s the sport in this “sportfishing”? While some forms of angling require knowledge and skill, in this case the paying customer (the angler) sits in a boat while the professional skipper motors up and down, trailing a set of lures. When a tuna is hooked, the angler, strapped into a harness, either stands or sits in what is called the “fighting chair” and “plays” the fish to exhaustion: a one-sided fight of 30 minutes or more. It’s a risk-free means of pitting yourself against nature, a truly pathetic form of macho gratification. You can imagine my surprise on discovering that Nigel Farage is a big fan.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian’s climate assembly with George Monbiot and special guests On 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and Emma Pinchbeck as they discuss the forces driving the big climate pushback, with an address by Feargal Sharkey
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08/28/2025 - 00:00
The old saying about late summer rain being good for vineyards and bees may be plausible
Each month has its weather folklore, and according to one old saying: “When it rains in August, it rains honey and wine.”
Historically, vineyards were not irrigated, and some winemakers believe natural rainfall is needed to keep the all-important terroir characteristic of a particular area. Irrigation increases the grape yield, potentially quadrupling the weight per hectare, but supposedly reduces wine quality. Similarly drought years are sometimes said to produce the best vintages.
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08/27/2025 - 23:00
In the waters of the Johor strait, Indigenous communities are struggling to survive as nearby cities expand and fishing stocks dwindle
Words and photographs by Izzy Sasada
Aween Bin Terawin submerges himself in the mangrove swamp to reach a crab cage on the riverbed below. After a moment of suspense, he lifts the cage above the water’s surface and inspects its interior. Empty.
After stowing the collapsible cage away in his boat, he continues his journey through the vast swamp to retrieve the 40 cages he set early that morning, each marked by a floating bottle tied to string.
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08/27/2025 - 09:41
A group of farmers, bikers, truckers and scientists from the political left and right are working to bring attention to the health risks of using toxic sludge as fertilizer
An unlikely alliance of farmers, bikers, truckers, a detective and scientists from across the political spectrum are working to pressure the Trump administration and Republican leadership to rein in the use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer on the nation’s farmland.
Sludge often teems with Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, which present a health risk to farmers and the public, and have destroyed farms and contaminated water across the country. The issue has touched the groups’ lives in different ways, highlighting its broad risks to health.
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08/27/2025 - 09:33
Aerial footage shows thick plumes of smoke from wildfires raging in the northern Spanish region of Asturias.
Wildfires have burned more than a million hectares (2.5m acres) of land in the European Union this year so far, the highest amount in any year since official records began in 2006, EU data showed.
Spain and Portugal have been worst hit and together accounted for about two-thirds of the EU's burnt area
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08/27/2025 - 06:00
A professor teamed up with student musicians to inspire interest in data about the ‘catastrophic scale’ of the crisis
A university professor has set her team’s research on the plight of Florida’s declining oyster population to music, aiming to inform a receptive new audience about the “catastrophic” scale of the crisis.
Heather O’Leary, professor of anthropology at St Petersburg’s University of South Florida (USF), partnered with student composers and faculty from its music department to create Oysters Ain’t Safe, a soft jazz alternative to crunching data into a “boring” technical report.
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08/27/2025 - 04:00
Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find
Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.
Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.
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08/27/2025 - 03:51
Thinktank predicts wider inequality gap and calls for revised policies to tackle flying and excess private car use
Inequality in transport emissions between the richest and the poorest in the UK is set to widen dramatically over the next decade, an analysis has found.
The most affluent and mobile already produce 10 times more carbon through their domestic travel than the poorest and least mobile. Under current decarbonisation policies, thinktank researchers forecast this to grow to 13 times by 2035.
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