Chagossian people would be allowed to fish in area that has teemed with life since ban was introduced in 2010
One of the most precious marine reserves in the world, home to sharks, turtles and rare tropical fish, will be opened to some fishing for the first time in 16 years under the UK government’s deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Allowing non-commercial fishing in the marine protected area (MPA) is seen as an essential part of the Chagossian people’s return to the islands, as the community previously relied on fishing as their main livelihood. But some conservationists have raised the alarm, as nature has thrived in the waters of the Indian Ocean since it was protected from fishing.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/03/2026 - 02:56
Ministers’ proposals to tackle ‘forever chemicals’ fail to match tougher stance taken in Europe, say experts
Environmental campaigners have criticised a “crushingly disappointing” UK government plan to tackle “forever chemicals”, which they warn risks locking in decades of avoidable harm to people and the environment.
The government said its Pfas action plan set out a “clear framework” of “coordinated action … to understand where these chemicals are coming from, how they spread and how to reduce public and environmental exposure”.
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02/03/2026 - 00:00
Sector bounces back as consumers focus on provenance and healthy eating, but is still well behind Europe
Consumers searching for healthy food from trusted sources have fuelled the UK organic market’s biggest boom in two decades, according to vegetable box seller Riverford.
The delivery business, which sells meat, cheese, cookbooks and recipe boxes alongside vegetables, recorded a 6% increase in sales to £117m in the year to May 2025, as the UK organic food and drink market grew by almost 9% in that year, according to new figures from the Soil Association. The strong growth, significantly outpacing the wider food market, helped the employee-owned business give a £1.1m bonus to workers.
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02/02/2026 - 23:56
Researchers dig ‘spas’ and install ‘saunas’ in ACT wetlands to give green and golden bell frogs the best chance of survival
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Scientists have reintroduced green and golden bell frogs to the Australian Capital Territory for the first time since the species became locally extinct four decades ago.
The first cohort of 25 frogs was released on Tuesday morning, a milestone for conservation of the animals, whose numbers have been devastated by the chytrid fungal disease that has wiped out 90 amphibian species in 50 years.
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02/02/2026 - 22:28
Residents living near Cadia goldmine in central western NSW allege in court filings that dust containing heavy metals has contaminated the water supply
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Residents of a small regional community near Orange in New South Wales have filed an environmental class action over a “toxic trifecta” of alleged pollution caused by Cadia goldmine.
The supreme court challenge against Cadia Holdings, which trades as Cadia Valley Operations and is owned by Newmont, is seeking compensation including damages for a reduction in property values and an injunction to restrain further pollution.
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02/02/2026 - 07:01
Volunteer workers say increasing case numbers and dozens of dead birds raise fears spread is wider than recorded
Members of the public and charity volunteers are working to contain a suspected outbreak of bird flu among swans in the Thames Valley, amid signs that confirmed cases are continuing to rise.
Since October, 324 cases of bird flu in swans have been recorded by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha), which is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Of these, 39 were recorded in the first four weeks of 2026 alone.
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02/02/2026 - 07:00
A US judge will decide if, as research suggests, a chemical tyre additive is harming endangered fish species
Last week, a district judge in San Francisco, California, presided over a three-day trial brought by west coast fishers and conservationists against US tyre companies. The fishers allege that a chemical additive used in tyres is polluting rivers and waterways, killing coho salmon and other fish. If successful, the case could have implications far beyond the United States.
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02/02/2026 - 04:00
With some of Ukraine’s most valuable biodiversity sites and science facilities under occupation, experts at Sofiyivka Park in Uman are struggling to preserve the country’s natural history
In the basement laboratory of the National Dendrological Park Sofiyivka, Larisa Kolder tends to dozens of specimens of Moehringia hypanica between power outages. Just months earlier, she and her team at this microclonal plant propagation laboratory in Uman, Ukraine, received 23 seeds of the rare flower.
Listed as threatened in Ukraine’s Red Book of endangered species, Moehringia grows nowhere else in the wild but the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine. Of those 23 seeds, only two grew into plants that Kolder and her colleagues could clone in their laboratory, but now her lab is home to a small grove of Moehringia seedlings, including 80 that have put down roots in a small but vital win for biodiversity conservation amid Russia’s war with Ukraine.
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02/01/2026 - 17:51
About 150m faced cold weather advisories along eastern US, and two in North Carolina died in storm-related conditions
A bomb cyclone produced freezing temperatures across a large portion of the US from the Gulf coast to New England, bringing heavy snow to North Carolina where two were killed in storm-related conditions, and setting records in Florida, where officials warned of ice and falling iguanas.
About 150 million people were under cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings in the eastern portion of the US, with wind chills near zero to single digits fahrenheit in the south and the coldest air mass seen in south Florida since December 1989, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather prediction center in College Park, Maryland.
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02/01/2026 - 12:25
Inadequate food supplies and collapsing rainforests must be recognised as national security threats – not pigeonholed as green issues
Ecosystems and national security used not to be mentioned in the same breath all that often – unless environmental campaigners were doing the talking. For years, climate and nature experts have struggled to get across the message that species extinctions, dead rivers and deforestation are an existential threat to people as well as animals and plants. As George Monbiot wrote last week, the publication of a government report thought to have been authored by intelligence chiefs, about the threats to the UK’s national security from biodiversity collapse, should be viewed as a step forward. The risks have become too extreme to be ignored.
The document is a national security assessment, not a scientific report. The data that it relies on comes from other sources. But the warnings that it contains about the UK’s heavy dependence on food and fertiliser imports, and the probable consequences of nature depletion, must be heeded. Originally due to be published in the autumn, the review appears to have had some sections removed. An earlier version is reported to have included warnings about the risks of “eco-terrorism” and the growing likelihood of war between China, India and Pakistan due to competition over a shrinking water supply from the Himalayas.
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