Coalition government announces budget funds for national plan to control Australia’s worst freshwater feral pest

Tuesday’s federal budget will include funding for a $15m for a national carp control plan in an attempt to eradicate Australia’s worst freshwater feral pest, the government announced on Sunday.

The plan includes the staged release of the carp-specific herpes virus in the Murray-Darling basin. CSIRO scientists have been testing the virus in Australian native fish species and other animals found along the river for the past seven years and have established that it is safe to release into the ecosystem without harming other species.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Big cats arrive in South Africa, where sanctuary beckons, after having suffered cruel treatment in Colombia and Peru

The roars of lions filled the cargo section of Johannesburg’s main international airport on Saturday evening as 33 lions rescued from South American circuses landed in South Africa.

The animals will now be released into a bush sanctuary for big cats.

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Source: Guardian Environment

President Uhuru Kenyatta orders destruction of more than 100 tonnes of tusks in 11 pyres

The Kenyan president set fire to a huge stockpile of ivory on Saturday in an effort to show his country’s commitment to saving Africa’s elephants.

Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the destruction of more than 100 tonnes of tusks from around 6,700 elephants, stacked in 11 pyres at a ceremony in Nairobi national park. The fires, destroying a quantity seven times bigger than ever before, are expected to burn for several days.

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Source: Guardian Environment

‘Robo-mermaid’ able to reach depths too dangerous for human divers retrieves vase from wreck of Louis XIV’s flagship

Robotics scientists at the US’s Stanford University have achieved a remarkable first: they have successfully sent an automated avatar – which they describe as a robo-mermaid – down to an ancient shipwreck to retrieve a vase from the sunken vessel.

La Lune, the flagship of Louis XIV of France, sank 20 miles off the south coast city of Toulon in 1664. Only a few dozen of the hundreds of men on board survived. The wreck, which lies at a depth of 100 metres, had never been disturbed until the OceanOne robot craft reached it two weeks ago and recovered the grapefruit-size vase.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Government’s failure to tackle health and safety issues, food poisoning and pollution leading to ‘largely avoidable’ deaths, says thinktank

Thousands of people are dying each year because of the government’s failure to tackle food poisoning, health and safety breaches and pollution, a thinktank is warning.

A new report from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) claims that lax regulation and weak enforcement are failing to hold businesses in check and are tantamount to state-facilitated “social murder”.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Kenya sets ablaze 100 tonnes of elephant ivory and one tonne of rhino horn, in what is being called the largest stockpile of the material to be destroyed. Led by Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta at the Nairobi national park, eleven giant pyres of ivory is set on fire using 20,000 litres of gasoline. The decision to destroy the ivory was made to highlight the impact of poaching

• Kenya burns largest ever ivory stockpile to highlight elephants’ fate

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Source: Guardian Environment

Kenyan president lights pyres in move some fear will drive further poaching by taking 5% of global stock out of circulation

More than 100 tonnes of ivory has been set ablaze in Kenya, the largest ever such fire, in an attempt to shock the world into protecting endangered elephants.

Eleven giant pyres of tusks from around 6,000 elephants, a quantity seven times the size of any previous burn, were lit by the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, at a ceremony in Nairobi national park on Saturday.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Nearly wiped out in a bid to demolish Native American resistance, the bison’s history paints a picture of strife and redemption that mirrors the US’s own

The bald eagle may appeal to America’s sense of self – soaring, majestic, hard to tame – but as a national symbol, the more humble bison paints a truer picture of the strife and redemption that has marked US history.

The bison is to become the first national mammal of the US, elevating it to the giddy heights of symbolism currently occupied by the bald eagle. Little more than 100 years since it was virtually exterminated in America in a manic bid to demolish Native American resistance, the bison now has establishment status.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Kenya has destroyed approximately 105 tonnes of confiscated ivory, almost all of the country’s stockpile, at an event in Nairobi national park attended by several African heads of state and conservationists. The event was intended to send a strong anti-poaching message

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Source: Guardian Environment