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Moving migratory pied flycatchers further north to breed where food remained resulted in twice as many chicks

How do you help a migratory bird adapt to the climate crisis? One radical solution, as a team of Dutch ecologists discovered, is to move them further north.

Pied flycatchers are handsome black-and-white songbirds, which breed in deciduous woodlands across much of temperate Europe. Each autumn, they head south across the Sahara desert to overwinter in west Africa.

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The Trump administration has declared litigation to hold oil companies responsible for climate change a threat to the American economy and has taken aggressive steps to fight it.

The E.P.A. said it would maintain limits on the two most common “forever chemicals” in tap water. Rules for four others will be rolled back.

Daré accepted the £10,000 prize for her latest novel, And So I Roar, the follow-up to her bestselling debut The Girl with the Louding Voice

Nigerian writer Abi Daré has won the inaugural Climate fiction prize for her novel And So I Roar, the follow-up to her bestselling debut The Girl with the Louding Voice.

Daré was announced as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Wednesday evening.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is set to testify before Congress this week, and he should be held accountable for decimating bedrock environmental protections that keep our air clean, the water we drink safe, waterways we swim and fish in clean, and soil unpolluted, as he oversees massive staffing and budget cuts, an assault on agency science, and unprecedented loopholes for polluters.

The rhetoric from this administration that mischaracterizes core public health and environmental programs as wasteful or ideologically driven is a dangerous distortion of reality. Framing environmental protection as excessive or radical is a deliberate tactic to discredit science, weaken enforcement, and strip communities—especially frontline and low-income communities—of essential protections against pollution, climate risk, and environmental injustice.

In addition to all the harms that have already happened, now President Trump’s “skinny” budget for fiscal year 2026 proposes cutting EPA funding by a massive 54.5%, or $4.2 billion, and includes harmful, anti-science provisions such as cutting funding for state clean and drinking water programs, the hazardous substance Superfund program, and even removing air monitors at National Parks. If implemented, these cuts would represent a reckless and deeply unpopular assault on the health and safety of all Americans. Despite holding the power of the purse, Congress has thus far put up little resistance to President Trump’s overreach. 

Zeldin’s unprecedented assault on the EPA’s ability to deliver on its mission is entirely designed to prop up big polluters, including fossil fuel interests—while the rest of us pay the price. The American public—across the political spectrum—support clean air, water and land. According to a 2024 post-election poll sponsored by Environmental Protection Network, 88% of all voters, and 81% of Trump voters want Congress to increase EPA funding or at least keep funding steady.

As Zeldin goes up before Congress, here’s what lawmakers could ask him.

Question one

How do you expect to protect clean air, water and lands while acquiescing to the lowest EPA funding levels since the 1980s, including steep cuts to critical environmental programs, which would inevitably put our children’s health at risk and place the burden of cleanup on future generations?

President Trump’s proposed budget will put children, seniors, and frontline workers in harm’s way, and Congress should reject it. Cutting EPA’s budget by greater than 50% will result in higher asthma rates, more contaminated water systems, and delayed cleanups of toxic sites. And from a historical perspective, these cuts would lower EPA funding to levels not seen since the early years of EPA’s history (EPA was formed under President Richard Nixon in 1970) when its statutory mandate was much narrower.

Source: the Environmental Protection Network

Over the past 40 years, regardless of political persuasion, presidential administrations have generally recognized EPA’s vital function and funded it accordingly.  The Trump 2026 proposal constitutes an abdication of environmental governance and mocks the thoughtful, intentional, hard-fought process of setting up a system upholding public health priorities.  

The White House’s EPA budget shows an absolute and irreverent disregard for their responsibilities to the American people. There’s a proposed 89 percent cut to EPA’s bipartisan water infrastructure programs. And major cuts to noncompetitive state passthrough grants.

No doubt, states will be forced to shoulder responsibilities once backed by robust federal programs, from clean water enforcement to toxic site cleanups, all while facing rising pollution, public health crises, and climate-related disasters. The result will be patchwork protections, deepening inequities, and greater risk for every community, especially those least able to absorb the blow.

Imagine the smokestack across the state line making your child’s asthma attacks worse, or your swim in the river unsafe because of water pollution from the state upstream.

Question 2

During your confirmation hearing, you promised to “defer to scientists,” yet you have repeatedly undercut science-based public health protections, distorted scientific facts and undermined scientific expertise at the EPA. How do you intend to ensure that the EPA’s actions to protect our health are guided by the best available science?

Administrator Zeldin is also seeking to undermine and eliminate scientific expertise and evidence, giving the Trump administration a way to avoid taking action to cut pollution despite the overwhelming proof of harms to people. By bypassing regulatory processes and silencing scientific expertise, the Trump administration is seeking to gut efforts to address the impacts and economic damage caused by climate change, and the impacts of toxics exposures to the American people. All to protect the profits of the oil, gas and chemical industries at our expense.

Source: the Environmental Protection Network Question 3

You say the environment will be safer for all and “a cleaner planet for future generations”. How will EPA protect communities most in danger from pollution if there is no staff or budget in the environmental justice program left to help while you expend taxpayer dollars to dig up dirt for your appeals in the courts? 

The EPA’s environmental justice office was created to challenge the historic pattern of pollution disproportionately harming low-income communities and communities of color. The office’s work is based on robust research that identifies communities most affected by pollution. Scientific data shows that, due to historic and ongoing injustices, communities overburdened by polluting industries, smog-forming traffic, and contaminated waterways and soil are home to predominantly low-income, Black, Brown and Indigenous people. Exposure to consistently higher levels of pollution increases the risk of asthma, heart and lung ailments, cancer and even death. Prioritizing limited public resources into the most overburdened communities is efficient governance.

EPA received $3 billion for Climate and Environmental Justice Block Grants through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and also had been given clear direction from the previous administration to more fairly distribute the benefits of environmental protections across the country. After doing their jobs of getting sorely needed money to communities, while complying with abundant government regulations on contracts and grants, employees were vilified, and their grantees were denied their rightfully executed funding agreements. Promises made were broken. Despite numerous court orders to turn IRA funding back on, Zeldin’s EPA has repeatedly denied funding, and instead terminated nearly 800 grants, all with environmental justice in the descriptions, without demonstrating mismanagement or negligence. Although an agency official stated that they did “an individualized, grant-by-grant review” to satisfy court orders, it is hard to see how that was possible.

Not only has Zeldin gone after the $3 billion IRA Climate and Environmental Justice grants, he has targeted $20 million of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. He has repeatedly alleged falsehoods and set the investigative power of government on a witch hunt to find fraud, waste and abuse. It seems that EPA and the Trump administration would rather search for evidence to support their legal appeals, while communities suffer the effects of climate change caused by the very greenhouse gases this program was designed to prevent.

Simultaneously, Zeldin’s team has announced their intent to shutter EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR) and regional environmental justice divisions by laying off or reorganizing staff effective July 31. This means leaving those living, working, studying, and playing near polluting industries, smog-forming traffic, and contaminated waterways and soil with little support from the very agency they rely on to enforce protective laws.

Thousands of people have been intimidated into resigning through the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) infamous “fork in the road,” terminating recent hires, suggesting all scientists be reclassified from positions with career civil service protections into ones that allow for easy removal, much like political positions (formerly known as “Schedule F”). The words of Russell Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, about intentionally traumatizing federal workers, should set off alarm bells of our appropriators in Congress.

Once again, the Trump administration is sidelining both science and programs to assist the nation’s most overburdened people.

Question 4

Bedrock clean air and water protections are designed to take account of the latest science, but you’ve signaled your intent to scrap science-based standards and question the scope of EPA’s clear statutory obligations. Are you planning on taking EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation back to the 1970s?

The EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) leads a large share of the regulatory work of EPA, required by the Clean Air Act statute. In the 1970s the Clean Air Act covered only four chemicals, now it’s in the hundreds – not to mention the threat of climate change.

A recent study showed that rollbacks of just a subset of these regulations would lead to nearly 200,000 premature deaths by 2050 (think 20 sports arenas-full) and at least 10,000 asthma attacks every day. And the cost? For every dollar saved by corporate polluters, it would create six dollars of cost to the public from things like health care bills and the loss of a longer, healthier life—and that doesn’t even capture many known but difficult to quantify impacts.

The work of the OAR is being threatened through a drastic reorganization plan, which seeks to eliminate its Atmospheric Protection Program and disrupt other parts. The reorganization is planned with Zeldin on record saying there will be a focus on state air programs (a.k.a. expedited permitting of polluting projects). UCS has been tracking the administration’s deregulatory agenda, focusing on key regulations such as carbon rules for power plants and those limiting vehicle emissions.

Zeldin is also proposing to eradicate the climate-related voluntary programs, like the industry supported, popular Energy Star appliance labeling program that delivers huge benefits for consumers’ pocketbooks. He would also eliminate reporting programs for greenhouse gases.

Question 5

How do you expect businesses to navigate the unfair playing field you have created and stay competitive when some have complied with regulations and others can look for a free pass?

The EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and all regional enforcement directors received notice in March that they should not follow any previous guidance documents, particularly where there are EJ concerns. Moreover, they have specific limitations on enforcing for example, methane releases coal ash contamination, reducing air toxics and pollution, and reducing risks of chemical accidents. The preeminence of oil and gas industry interests is laced throughout, as further detailed by my colleague Julie McNamara.

The effect? Enforcement cases have already dropped compared to prior administrations. Not only that, the President’s skinny budget would erase $1 billion in categorical (noncompetitive) grants across all 50 states, which provide the funding to enforce federal clean air, water, and waste rules.

And, let’s not forget the Clean Air Act hotline set up for companies to request presidential waivers. These waivers ensure that certain favored companies can operate outside the law.

Question 6

Can you explain how you plan on meeting EPA’s mission that demands unbiased science while cutting the Office of Research and Development’s budget and proposing to dismantle it?

EPA’s Research and Development Office produces independent science that’s used to keep people safe from pollution and chemical exposure. Industry doesn’t always like what’s coming out of this office. Dismantling this office by cutting its budget by $235 million and planning to remove more than 1,000 staff is a dangerous move during a period of intensifying environmental threats, wildfires, flooding, and other climate change impacts.

UCS has pointed out the threats to human health and the environment from the loss of a one-of-its-kind program, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which provides independent reviews of chemicals like formaldehyde or ethylene oxide tied to certain health effects, like cancer. IRIS assessments are known to be a gold standard in toxicity reviews. Read this fact sheet for more information.  

Question 7

According to post-2024 election polling data, 88% of voters, including 81% of Trump voters, support maintaining or increasing EPA funding. So, who exactly is served by these cuts, and why are you ignoring the public’s clear demand for stronger environmental protections?

If Administrator Zeldin goes forward with this destructive move, he will be responsible for ending decades of work intended to help set right the harmful legacy of pollution in overburdened communities in a handout to big polluters. This is also part of the Trump administration’s larger ongoing strategy to dismantle EPA and its core functions and undermine its very mission, which is to help keep all people in America safe.

Congress can and should hold Administrator Zeldin accountable

During this week’s hearings with Administrator Zeldin, Congress should stand up and take back the power of the purse. Congress must see the proposed budget for the sham that it is and hold Zeldin accountable for his promises to protect public health and the environment during his confirmation hearings. Members of Congress must show Zeldin they understand—even if he’s forgotten— the importance of EPA as a longstanding investment in our health and safety, and see through the ruse of “fiscal responsibility” and “streamlining” as just code words to gut the agency. The administration knows, and history shows, that industry will not regulate itself.

We urge lawmakers to reject these shortsighted and harmful reductions, restore critical EPA funding, and reaffirm the federal commitment to public health, environmental justice, and scientific integrity. If they don’t act, under Zeldin’s watch, the very mission of the agency will be subverted—from protecting public health, environmental justice and scientific integrity to becoming an instrument of unchecked polluting industry interests. The cost of inaction will be measured in lives, livelihoods, and long-term environmental damage.

A new exhibition in the Brazilian city looks at how water, the environment and extreme weather is interwoven with personal stories from 10 marginalised communities

Leticia Pinheiro grew up hearing stories about the Acari River. Her grandmother bathed in its clean waters; her father caught frogs on its margins; and many in the community made a living from fishing there.

Now, Pinheiro, 28, and her peers do not even call it a river; it’s become known as a valão – an open canal for sewage and rubbish. It borders the Acari favela, which spread over swampy terrain in northern Rio de Janeiro from the 1920s.

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Research shows companies ‘aligned’ with strategies to meet climate goals have risen from 3% in 2019 to 23% in 2025

European companies are increasingly lobbying for strong climate action, research has found, in a “profound shift” that analysts say challenges the narrative that businesses see green rules as a threat to profits.

The share of companies whose corporate lobbying is “aligned” with pathways to meet global climate goals rose from 3% in 2019 to 23% in 2025, according to an analysis of 200 of the largest European companies by InfluenceMap, while the share of companies who were deemed “misaligned” fell from 34% to 14%.

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The French study of 15,000 people shows men emit 26% more pollution due to eating red meat and driving more

Cars and meat are major factors driving a gender gap in greenhouse gas emissions, new research suggests.

Men emit 26% more planet-heating pollution than women from transport and food, according to a preprint study of 15,000 people in France. The gap shrinks to 18% after controlling for socioeconomic factors such as income and education.

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Climate change and energy minister accuses Sussan Ley’s Coalition of ‘keeping the climate wars going’ with decision to review net zero stance

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Chris Bowen has ridiculed the Liberal party for putting net zero by 2050 up for review after its election defeat, comparing it to putting the “sky being blue” up for debate.

The climate change and energy minister also warned that breaking Australia’s bipartisan commitment to the “bare minimum” emissions target risked creating a sovereign risk for renewables investors.

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The Trump administration has moved to roll back efficiency and water standards for appliances, fueled by the president’s fixation on low-flow showers and toilets.

In a letter, Milieudefensie says it wants to stop firm developing new oil and gas projects ‘to curb crisis’

Climate campaigners in the Netherlands have promised to take Shell to court for a second time to force the energy company to stop developing new oil and gas projects.

In a letter to Shell, the Dutch climate non-profit Milieudefensie vowed to take legal action because the company has 700 oil and gas projects in development that will continue to drive up carbon emissions despite efforts to slow global heating.

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In recent weeks, the Trump administration has ramped up attacks on climate science, data, research and scientists across the board—including jeopardizing the National Climate Assessment, halting the publication of data on billion-dollar climate and weather disasters, and stopping federal agencies from using the social cost of carbon to create policies. Behind these individual instances of harm is a clear strategy: they want to bury the scientific evidence of the impacts and economic damages caused by climate change to avoid having to take any action to address them.

But climate change is all too real, and there’s no getting away from the many ways it’s showing up in our daily lives, from catastrophic wildfires and floods to rising property insurance costs. To limit the public health and economic costs of the climate crisis, the country must transition quickly from fossil fuels to clean energy and invest in resilience—but of course the Trump administration is hell-bent on doing the exact opposite. And what better way to boost fossil fuels than to hide the facts on their true costs and spread lies and propaganda instead?

Yes, climate change is contributing to billion-dollar disasters

For over four decades, NOAA has been tracking and collecting data on US extreme weather and climate-related disasters with costs exceeding a billion dollars. Last week, NOAA announced that it will no longer be updating this dataset beyond 2024. Specifically: “In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product.” For now, the dataset and documentation spanning 1980-2024 will remain available at this landing page. An external consortium of researchers has also saved it in a Harvard Dataverse repository.

The motivation couldn’t be clearer: this dataset is uncomfortably inconvenient because, among other things, it shows that climate change is costly, right now, across the nation. That reality doesn’t sit well with an administration that peddles climate disinformation, going as far as to call it “a hoax.”

A look at the 2024 map is revealing: billion-dollar disasters hit every region of the country and many of them—including Southwestern wildfires, extreme heat and drought, as well as several intensified hurricanes in Gulf Coast states and the Southeast—were worsened by climate change. Of course, other important factors are also at play, including the increase in development along coastlines and other places exposed to disasters. More expensive property and infrastructure exposed to climate-fueled disasters contribute to higher damage costs.

The extreme weather we experience today is occurring in the unavoidable context of a warming world—the roughly 1.3˚C (2.3˚ F) increase in global average temperature over the 20th century average that we have already seen is now baked into the background conditions in dangerous ways. In 2024, the hottest year on record following on a decade of hottest years on record, the global annual average temperature was about 1.5˚C (2.6˚ F) above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels.

Source: NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information

In 2024 alone, the nation experienced 27 individual billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, which together caused at least 568 direct or indirect fatalities and cost approximately $182.7 billion in total. The most catastrophic by far was Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 hurricane that hit Florida and traversed far inland to Georgia and North Carolina, causing 219 deaths and approximately $79.6 billion in economic damages, according to NOAA. The hurricane was intensified by record warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, and it drove storm surges of up to 15 feet in the Big Bend coastal area, and caused historic rainfall of up to 30+ inches in western North Carolina.

As my colleague Dr. Marc Alessi noted last year: “Helene was an example of what hurricanes will look more like in the future. With ocean surface temperatures more than 2 degrees Celsius above normal in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, Helene was able to rapidly intensify to a Category 4 hurricane before making landfall in Florida.”

While many factors contributed to the destruction caused by Helene, climate attribution studies (for example, here) show that:

• The overall rainfall amounts associated with Helene were about 10% heavier due to climate change, and as much as 50% heavier in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas. The rainfall totals over the 2-day and 3-day period were made about 40% and 70% more likely by climate change, respectively.
• In general, climate change is enhancing conditions more favorable to rapid intensification of Atlantic tropical storms, and more conducive to those storms carrying heavy precipitation.

The long-term trend data on billion-dollar disasters is also striking. Adjusted for inflation, the annual average number of these events for 1980–2024 is 9.0 events (Consumer Price Index-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2020–2024) is 23.0 events (CPI-adjusted). Their costs, too, have risen since 1980, even after adjusting for inflation. The highest cost years are all post-2000.

Source: NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information

Hiding this data doesn’t make us safer. It only hinders our ability to take protective action, based on facts, to limit harms to communities, infrastructure, and critical economic assets. Those actions include: limiting the heat-trapping emissions driving climate change by transitioning away from fossil fuels and ramping up clean energy, while using energy more efficiently; and investing in climate resilience, including by enhancing pre- and post-disaster response, ramping up adaptation measures, and thinking carefully about where and how to build in disaster-exposed places.

The social cost of carbon shows that fossil-fueled climate change is costly

In another blatant anti-science move, the Trump administration has also issued a directive to stop federal agencies from using the social cost of carbon in their actions. The social cost of carbon is a widely accepted economic metric that puts a dollar value on the damage caused per ton of heat-trapping emissions, allowing federal agencies to set policies and regulations that take those costs into account. In economist-speak, this is just a commonsense way to correct a market failure and internalize the climate-driven externality costs of using fossil fuels.

The social cost of greenhouse gases (SC-GHG) helps quantify the costs of climate change related to heat-trapping emissions, in terms of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4) or nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted. It can also be used to quantify the benefits of reducing these emissions. Based on science, this metric simply underscores the obvious: climate change is costly and right now, many of the costs are falling to society at large instead of being assumed by fossil fuel companies and others who are making decisions that ultimately determine how much of these pollutants are emitted.

How costly? Well, the latest estimates of the social cost of greenhouse gases from the EPA—before the Trump administration’s attempts to gut them—are summarized in the table below. The dollar costs of a ton of CO2 emitted in 2020, using a 2% discount rate, are $190. These estimates are based on cutting-edge climate science and economics, and went through an extensive peer-review and public comment process. If anything, these are underestimates of the true costs because of the challenges of monetizing many categories of climate harms (e.g. ecosystem damages).

One additional important area of continued improvement is the recognition that estimating damages over long periods, especially those that are profound, long-lasting, and even irreversible, requires a different approach to the choice of discount rates. Estimating dollar values also comes with important justice and ethical considerations because of the multi-generational, global nature of climate damages.

Now, the Trump administration wants to eliminate any consideration of these costs by fiat. Yup, they want to force us to act as if the costs of climate change are exactly zero, even as extreme heatwaves take a deadly toll, people are losing their homes, farmers face dire crop failures, and businesses are experiencing costly disruptions! Guess who that crooked math benefits? Fossil fuel companies and other polluters, who don’t want to limit their egregious profits and want to keep dumping the rapidly growing costs of their harmful products on all of us.

As climate scientist Dr. Robert Kopp said in a recent New York Times interview: “By effectively saying the social cost of carbon should be treated as zero, this policy arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the science and economics of climate change.”

Jeopardizing the National Climate Assessment (NCA) doesn’t stop climate change

In another assault on science last month, the Trump administration fired the staff of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and soon followed that by disbanding the author team for the sixth National Climate Assessment. As one of the 400+ volunteer authors, I received an email stating that “the scope of the NCA6 is currently being reevaluated,” but the administration has yet to announce any plan for how it will deliver on this Congressionally mandated comprehensive climate science report.

People around the nation rely on the NCA to understand how climate change is impacting their daily lives already, and what to expect in the future. While not policy-prescriptive, the findings of these quadrennial reports underscore the importance of cutting heat-trapping emissions and investing in climate resilience to protect communities and the economy. Trying to bury this report won’t alter the scientific facts one bit, but without this information our country risks flying blind into a world made more dangerous by human-caused climate change.

The only beneficiaries of disrupting or killing this report are the fossil fuel industry and those intent on boosting oil and gas profits at the expense of people’s health and the nation’s economic well-being. Congress must step up to ensure the report it requires by law is conducted with scientific integrity and delivered in a timely way.

Rigging the facts to benefit polluters

This recent series of actions underscores the Trump administration’s ongoing strategy of rigging the math to put a thumb on the scale in favor of polluters while saddling the rest of us with the costs. It’s all shamefully clear and premeditated.

Drastically slashing the social cost of carbon was a tactic used during the first Trump administration, when the administration lowered the value to $1-$7 per ton (see Table 4-1 in the link). The Project 2025 manifesto took an even more aggressive approach, saying that the President ‘by executive order should end the use of SCC analysis.’ The last Trump administration also tried to bury the fourth NCA by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving—which ironically back-fired and only served to give it more attention! In its second term, the Trump administration’s actions have escalated well beyond those taken in the first term. Now the goal seems to be to get rid of scientific data, facts, and research entirely—for example, as EPA’s Administrator Lee Zeldin is trying to do with a “reconsideration” of the Endangerment Finding, or via the administration’s wholesale attacks on NOAA.

We need Congress to step up and ensure we have policies and outcomes guided by the best available science to help protect lives and our economy, especially as the climate crisis worsens.

This is not just ordinary politics and run-of-the-mill disagreements on policy details. More disturbingly, it’s become increasingly clear that the Trump administration is following the classic playbook of authoritarian regimes. Burying facts and replacing them with propaganda is a way to exert control over independent thought and consolidate power. People who care about science and facts must resist this dangerous turn and protect the democratic institutions that allow free thought to flourish.

Plus, California’s crackdown on homelessness.

Cuts at the E.P.A. jeopardize the program that certifies efficient home appliances. Manufacturers could run a similar one themselves, but they may not want to.

The party’s signature tax plan would kill most Biden-era incentives, but there’s a sticking point: G.O.P. districts have the most to lose.

Exclusive: Andrew Bowie calls climate scientists biased and says country should not be ‘hamstrung by arbitrary targets’

The Conservative party’s energy spokesperson has attacked leading climate scientists as biased and claimed Kemi Badenoch could take the UK out of the Paris climate agreement.

Andrew Bowie, the acting shadow secretary for energy, told the Guardian that the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – passed into law by Theresa May – was “arbitrary” and “not based on science”.

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The Agriculture Department pledged to restore online climate information that farmers said helped them do business, but which officials had deleted.

Experts say the moves, which would apply to household appliances, will raise energy costs for consumers.

An environmental review of the project, known as Velvet-Wood, would normally take roughly a year. The government says it will complete the process in two weeks.

Karenia mikimotoi algae can suffocate fish, cause haemorrhaging and act as a neurotoxin, one expert says

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More than 200 marine species, including deepwater sharks, leafy sea dragons and octopuses, have been killed by a toxic algal bloom that has been affecting South Australia’s coastline since March.

Nearly half (47%) of the dead species were ray-finned fish and a quarter (26%) were sharks and rays, according to OzFish analysis of 1,400 citizen scientist reports.

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