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Watt says fur seal death from H5 bird flu ‘very serious’, but government prepared
Murray Watt, the environment minister, said the confirmed death of a fur seal, was a “very serious development”.
What we’ve been doing over the last couple of years is trying to build up larger populations of these mammals, so if we do have bird flu come, and it does kill some of them, we still have resilient populations for the future. …
I know it’s a distressing thing for Australians to hear but we need to be realistic. This is the sort of thing we have seen overseas. We’re very fortunate we’re the last continent to have the bird flu happen. But we’ve been preparing for this, for some time.
We started on some of the quieter penguin pathways to fine-tune the whole process and and get it working as quickly as we can, so we can process as many penguins as we can each night.
We’ve now moved to the western end of the penguin parade, where the larger numbers are, and it’s working really well.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/23/2026 - 17:05
08/23/2026 - 13:22
Human-caused Hawk fire covers more than 13,000 acres as blaze approaches University of Nevada campus in Reno
A fast-moving Nevada wildfire exploded to more than 13,000 acres (5,200 hectares) on Sunday, pushing from the Sierra foothills toward the center of Reno and urging nearly 90,000 residents to evacuate as flames threatened neighborhoods and reached the edge of the University of Nevada campus.
The Hawk fire’s “GO NOW” evacuation zone had expanded to the edge of the university campus as strong, gusty winds, low humidity and dry vegetation fueled the blaze, according to Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue in Reno. Of those urged to evacuate, 42,000 were under strict orders. An additional 45,000 people were in the evacuation warning zone, and encouraged to leave now and be prepared to stay away for several days to clear the roads for first-responders.
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08/23/2026 - 10:01
An abandoned farm field became a flourishing wildflower meadow within little more than a decade, with plant diversity doubling and thousands of orchids appearing naturally. The discovery suggests that simply giving nature time to recover could be a powerful and inexpensive tool for restoring biodiversity.
08/23/2026 - 10:00
Hundreds of experts write to environment minister calling for stronger protections for ‘unique and distinct’ marine ecosystems
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The Australian government has been accused of leaving coastal waters largely unprotected by establishing the bulk of highly protected marine parks in remote areas.
More than 270 leading marine scientists from 84 research institutes have written to the environment minister, Murray Watt, urging stronger protections for marine ecosystems, as a once-in-a-decade review of marine parks gets under way.
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08/23/2026 - 10:00
Once the economic lifeblood of the region, Latrobe Valley’s coal industry is in terminal decline. Jesse Thompson’s photographic project aims to document this period of rapid change and examine its legacy
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08/23/2026 - 06:00
Capitalism and the climate crisis are conspiring to destroy the concept of seasons. I’ll take solace in my pumpkin spice
Happy spooky season, everyone! Get those jack-o’-lanterns out, because Halloween is just around the corner!
Just kidding, no, it’s not.
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08/23/2026 - 06:00
An 1857 decree to drain swamps and plant a monoculture, detritus from the trees and global heating combined to produce the conditions for the Gironde inferno
The ruinous fires that overran parts of France this summer have burned more land than ever recorded, forced more people from their homes than at any point since the second world war and caused what scientists suspect is the country’s first firestorm thundercloud. The smoke from France’s biggest inferno in nearly 80 years choked Limoges, a city 125 miles (200km) from the flames, with more toxic dust than Delhi residents inhaled on the city’s worst day of smog last year.
The blaze that tore through forests outside Bordeaux in late July took just a few weeks to reforge France’s relationship with fire, but the conditions behind it were centuries in the making.
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08/23/2026 - 05:00
Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a growing labor movement has addressed the climate crisis and economic inequality
Ryan McElroen had spent years repairing the New York City subway underground when he got the opportunity to work in the middle of the ocean.
“I had no views other than the darkness at work,” he said. “Then I went polar opposite.”
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08/23/2026 - 02:00
Similar initiatives have been launched from Barcelona to Bogotá, but they have misinformation, political pressure and vested interests stacked against them
Ten years ago, Alastair Harper was an advocate for young people’s health sitting in a stuffy meeting room in London planning an air pollution campaign. “My phone started buzzing,” he said. “I took the call, and then told the room I needed to leave immediately.
“I had to get to UCLH [one of London’s major hospitals]. My own child was headed there in a blue-lit ambulance because she was struggling to breathe London’s toxic air.”
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