Jane Thurlow

Canary lost in Tottenham. #NCFC #garden #bikes

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Lough Neagh is the largest lake in the British Isles. It supplies more than two-fifths of Northern Ireland's drinking water. And for three summers running it has been too poisonous to touch.

The whole lake turns a livid, paint-thick green, smothered under toxic blue-green algae. Bathing signs line all seventy-eight miles of shore. Dogs that drank at the edge fell sick. Europe's largest eel fishery, worked for centuries, was shut down. Scientists pulled the scum apart and found it teeming with hazardous bacteria, E. coli and salmonella among them, plus a toxin never before recorded on the island of Ireland. And they are still drawing drinking water out of it.

The lake is now classed hypereutrophic, the worst grade of nutrient pollution there is. The poison is phosphorus, which feeds algae like rocket fuel, and the official figures lay around 62% of it at the door of agriculture, with roughly another quarter from sewage.

None of this was a mystery. A field grazed at a sensible rate hands its nutrients back to the soil that fed it. Cram in far more animals and far more chemical fertiliser than the ground can absorb, and the surplus pours off into the rivers and down into the lough. Northern Ireland runs that phosphorus surplus year after year, because a government growth strategy told farmers to expand and keep expanding. Campaigners warned for decades exactly where it would end. They were met with shrugs.

So the largest lake in these islands was knowingly fed to death to chase agri-food output, and a warming climate and an invasive mussel finished what the slurry started.

The cruelty is the timeline. Stop every drop of pollution tomorrow, and the phosphorus already buried in the sediment will keep the blooms coming for up to forty years.

A lake ten thousand years in the making, wrecked in a single generation, and the people who run it are still pulling the tap water out of the green.

[Paul Lewis @paullewismoney]

In a scene reminiscent of the opening of The Devil Wears Prada 2 the wonderful @MoneyBox Live won Broadcast of the Year at the Headline Money Awards last night just 6 days after BBC announced it would be cut as part of its "urgent need to make really significant savings"

[Scott Hamilton RTM @SikotiHamiltonR]

1/4 Jimmy Corry is a Belfast Protestant man whose house was burned down by a Loyalist gang hunting for non-whites. After Corry appeared on TV & protested that the gang was picking 'on its own', something very revealing happened. Corry lost his racial status.

[GO GREEN @ECOWARRIORSS]

Whales, dolphins and seabirds are being killed in large numbers as “collateral damage” by fishing vessels every year, according to first-ever analysis of bycatch data
Gillnets a type of static net that hangs like a curtain in the water,cause 400,000 seabird deaths globally
https://t.co/zEMvey7Vz2

[BBC News (UK) @BBCNews]

Why super-sized and politicised World Cup comes at a cost https://t.co/IXBuvVvJAo

[GO GREEN @ECOWARRIORSS]

5 million fish are killed every minute by fishing industry Super trawlers are devouring the ocean of marine life
These ships can catch, process and store hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fish
This is not sustainable
Make it stop
Ban super trawlers now

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

Solar panels have a dual purpose in this orchard. They produce clean electricity while shading apple trees from hail, frost and heavy rain.

We have the solutions. Implement them. #ActOnClimate

#ClimateEmergency #climate #energy #renewables

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

This school in Denmark is covered in #solar panels. It's the longest solar panel facade in the world.

RT if you think all schools should get a solar upgrade.

#ActOnClimate #climate #renewables #sustainability #solar #energy #innovation #tech #design #GreenNewDeal

[Philip Lymbery @philip_ciwf]

Breaking: More than 700 dolphins killed in one day of Faroe Islands hunts amid equipment failures, chaotic scenes & arrest of conservation observers!

Wicked beyond belief and utterly heartbreaking
Complete blood thirsty devastation of a gentle species all in the name of tradition
#NoWords
https://t.co/Pz8nqpRSzJ

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

In 2008, a group of friends in a small Yorkshire town decided to start planting food in unused public spaces.

The town is Todmorden, population about 15,000, tucked into a valley between Burnley and Halifax. The group is Incredible Edible Todmorden. Their motto is "if you eat, you're in."

Today the railway station beds grow herbs. The fire station is surrounded by fruit trees. The canal towpath is lined with edible plantings. The forecourt of the local police station has been transformed into what's now called "possibly the finest and greenest looking police station in the UK," with a small library of crime novels installed for good measure. Everything is free to harvest.

They have no paid staff, no buildings, and no public funding. They've operated this way for almost two decades. Their guiding principles: "believe in the power of small actions," "kindness underpins everything we do," and "it's sometimes better to ask for forgiveness, not permission."

Over the years they've added a Tool Library, a Makery, and little free libraries scattered around town. They host visitors from around the world (they call it "vegetable tourism"). Their gardening Sundays have grown from four or five people to forty or fifty.

The model has been replicated in over 700 projects worldwide and continued to spread.

[Carl Bovis @CarlBovisNature]

This is what entitlement looks like! 🤬
There are nesting waterbirds on this pond on Hampstead Heath... there are also big 'No Swimming' signs, all being totally ignored! 🤬
Pure selfishness... 😒🤬🤬

(Shared from Instagr*m with permission from 'swansofhampsteadheath')

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

The largest animal ever to have lived, the majestic blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus).

Nature is amazing. Protect it.

#ActOnClimate #climate #nature #rewilding #oceans #biodiversity
via dolphindronedom/IG

[Rosie P 🦇 🦎 🕷️ 🦭 🐌 🍃🌳🚲💧 @RosieP4]

Today contractors from National Grid turned up at this farm ready to clear all of this vegetation, including the four oaks, without the required dawn bird survey.

It is only because the land owner was on his toes and challenged them that they left.

Plus National Grid has not explained why it is ‘not practicable’ to uphold their DCO obligation to avoid nesting season.

They were not even able to explain why the oaks need to be felled for a bell mouth when they do not cause visibility issues.

This is a horrific disregard for nature.

(This is Bramford to Twinstead, ‘only’ 30km long. Imagine the destruction if Norwich to Tilbury at 180km goes ahead as proposed. We seek underground HVDC laid by cable ploughs for N2T)

[Dan Roan @danroan]

UK police sending just three officers to the US to accompany 10,000+ England fans at each match at World Cup after American authorities refuse to provide funding https://t.co/KzkkOp6TgT

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

These irreplaceable old growth forests continue to be logged across British Columbia. Over 1,200 people have been arrested trying to keep them standing.

There is no time to waste. Protect the Irreplaceable.

#ActOnClimate #climate #nature @bcndp #bcpoli #bcgov Pic @TJWattPhoto

[Jane Thurlow @NJaneyT]

@pinkun So pleased for him! 💚💛 And Villa tbh

[Ben Goldsmith @BenGoldsmith]

I’ve just been in Scotland.

The writer Aldo Leopold once said that even the smallest ecological education leaves you walking through ‘a world of wounds’ which nobody else seems to see.

Scotland’s beautiful hills and glens have for the most part been stripped and scarred and left utterly desolate by generations of landowners, land managers and dreadful politicians.

You can drive in any direction for hours and see nothing but sheep and more sheep on denuded hillsides, pockmarked with vast, artless blocks of monocultural conifer plantation deadzones.

Even where there are few sheep, red deer numbers are artificially inflated for the canned shooting industry and the deer do just the same as the sheep, leaving nothing but cropped grass from the top of the hills to the bottom of the valleys, a gigantic bowling green with contours.

Developing countries which have suffered a loss of trees and nature on anything like the same scale have the rest of the world rushing to offer assistance in restoring it. Think Madagascar, or Nepal, where things are fast now being turned around.

Many of the pockets of natural woodland that remain in Scotland are totally infested with head-height invasive rhododendron.

Some landowners are turning things around, to the fury of their neighbours, but they remain a small minority. Those places are fast becoming truly magical islands of what once was and what could be again.

It’s even worse under the sea, out of sight, out of mind. Scotland says that marine protected areas represent 38% of its seas. It’s bollocks. Even the most destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling are permitted with impunity in nearly all of it. Just 1% of Scotland’s seas are actually protected.

This is what happens when you have a population that has lost touch with what nature is, and can’t see the ravages which surround it; governed by politicians who are in hock to a small minority of established vested interests who simply won’t have it any other way.

[Russell ChalkStreamsInCrisis 🦇🦎🦇🦎 @RussellB1ggs]

@Feargal_Sharkey @maxribbs @EnvAgency The @GaywoodRiver a RARE #ChalkStream suffers the similar fate☹️enriched with Phosphate leading to Brown Algae scum which coats everything @AnglianWater @EnvAgencyAnglia claims this river has “Good ecological status” 🤷‍♂️

[STAUNCH @STAUNCHcampaign]

A developer has illegally cleared what was an open mosaic field in @NNorthantsC. Destroying active nests of Red-Listed woodcock & skylark. @NorthantsPolice said it’s not for them to investigate. Help. @ChrisGPackham @RSPBEngland @LeeBarronMP @NTelegraph @BBCLookEast @NorthantsLL

[Glevum glass eels @leerust1966]

@UnderwaterMedia @elverdave @EmmaforWycombe It’s deeply concerning that the plight of millions of critically endangered baby eels, currently trapped and dying in the River Severn, isn’t receiving the time or attention it urgently deserves.