Archive for September, 2009

Sydney Begins Massive Clean Up After Storm

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Australia has begun the huge clean up operation needed after its worst dust storm in seven decades.

Sydney’s residents are spending time today cleaning their streets, homes and cars.

Yesterday a dust storm dumped millions of tonnes of dust over New South Wales before heading north to Queensland. Today the skies are clean but the cost of the storm is still being calculated. Wasted working hours, loss of agricultural soil and flight delays are just some of the costly things the storm has affected.

The storm began in the drought stricken centre of the country where tonnes of top soil was sucked up by powerful winds and then blown eastwards.

The haze could actually be seen from space appearing as a huge brown smudge in satellite photographs of Australia.

People there described waking up to a red glow in their houses, looking out of their windows they described the scene as being like the end of the world. Small children and the elderly were advised to stay at home. Some residents made it to work despite the traffic mayhem and difficulties with public transport.

The BBC quoted Andrew Hawkins, who lives in Northmead, about 20km from the centre of Sydney, as saying, “To see a city of such beauty shrouded in red, was a sight which cannot be described - even pictures fail to capture the eerie nature of the scene which surrounded us this morning,”

By Wednesday evening the dust had settled and the skies had returned to a beautiful blue, but everything was covered in dust. The clean up operation began today and all effected areas are being painstakingly cleaned of the red dust which cloaked the area.

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UK Rivers Fail New EU Standard

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

The Environment Agency has reported that three quarters of the rivers in England and Wales fall below a new European environment standard.

On a positive note water standards have improved across the UK for the 19th year in a row and wildlife is returning to a vast majority of the rivers.

6,000 rivers were surveyed and only 5 were classified as ‘pristine’. Environment groups are asking for tougher action to be taken to improve Britain’s water ways.

Improvements have been made over the last 20 years but the Environment Agency knows that things could be better.

The improvements in water quality have led to the return of some species which were at one point thought to be in terminal decline along some stretches of Britain’s rivers.

Otters, eels and Salmon have all returned to the Thames, Mersey and Tyne.

Despite these improvements the new European Water Framework Directive which became law in the UK in 2003 sets a much higher quality standard. It uses a much wider and more sophisticated range of tests to determine the water quality.

Under the new directive only 5 rivers satisfy the highest standards and they are situated in remote areas of Northumberland and Wales. 117 rivers have been newly classified as ‘bad’ these include stretches of the rivers Trent and Stour.

The Environment Agency has accepted that they need to act now to protect our waterways for future generations. They have announced the introduction of new measures which aim to improve more rivers by 2015.

The River Basin Management Plans include tackling discharge from sewage works, limiting the removal of water from rivers and preventing pollution from farmland and built up areas leaking into our watercourses.

It is important that we do something about the state of the UK’s rivers now rather than just hoping it will sort itself out. It is time we thought about future generations and made more of an effort to protect our planet.

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Giant Rat Found in Papua New Guinea

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea a BBC expedition team have discovered a new species of giant rat.

The rat which has no fear of humans measures a massive 82cm long and weighs in at around 1.5kg. There are bigger rats in the world but few can match the new species. This is a true rat, a genus Rattus so comes from the same family as the urban brown and black rats.

It was discovered by an expedition team who are in the jungle filming the BBC programme ‘Lost Land of the Volcano’. The rat is just one of the exotic animals found by the expedition team. As with the other exotic species it is believed that the rat lives within the Mount Bosavi crater and nowhere else.

The expedition team first captured the creature foraging around on the jungle floor when they were filming with an infrared camera which had been set up to watch for wildlife by BBC wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan. The expedition team who are from the BBC Natural History Unit were awed by the creature’s size. They later went on to catch a live specimen which had no fear of the humans around and in fact behaved and is about the same size as your average to small common cat.
The rat has a silver-brown coat of thick long fur, which the scientists who examined it believe may help it survive the wet and cold conditions that can occur within the high volcano crater.

It has provisionally been called the Bosavi woolly rat, while its scientific name has yet to be agreed.

Mount Bosavi, where the new rat was found, is an extinct volcano that lies deep in the remote Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

The island which includes Papua New Guinea and New Guinea is famous for the number and diversity of the rats and mice that live there.

Over 57 species of true “Murid” rats and mice can be found on the island. The larger rats are often caught by hunters and eaten.

According to the BBC website The Lost Land of the Volcano series will begin on BBC One on Tuesday 8 September at 2100 BST. The discovery of the Bosavi woolly rat is broadcast as part of the series on BBC One on Tuesday 22 September.

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