Environmental News for Kids

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📉 The Living Planet Report says the wildlife groups scientists watch have shrunk by 73 percent on average since 1970.
🏞️ Animals living in rivers and lakes had the biggest drop, at 85 percent.
🐯 There is good news too: tigers, turtles, tuna and elephants are making a comeback.
🌾 WWF says the way we grow food is one of the biggest things we need to change.
💚 Experts say nature can still recover when people take action to protect it.

🌳 Only 10 Fay's whitebeam trees grow in the whole world, all on cliffs in Somerset.
🧗 Volunteers of all ages climb up the gorge to reach them.
👵 One climber, botanist Libby Houston, is 85 years old!
🌰 They collect seeds and keep them safe in a botanic garden as a backup.
🐦 The trees give food and shelter to birds and other animals.

🌏 The seasonal hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica grew unusually large this September.
🛡️ Ozone high in the atmosphere acts like sunscreen by blocking much of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet light.
🌬️ Cold temperatures and strong winds helped create conditions that damaged more ozone.
📡 Scientists had noticed warning signs months earlier and tracked the changes with satellites and balloons.
🌱 Global rules have reduced ozone-damaging chemicals, but the layer still needs many years to recover fully.

🔥 Big wildfires have been burning across France and Spain this week.
🚒 Thousands of firefighters, plus helpers from other countries, are working hard to put out the flames.
📰 News about the fires and a new heatwave came out on Wednesday, July 29th.
🌡️ Very hot weather, over 40 degrees Celsius, is making the fires even harder to control.
🌧️ Firefighters are hoping cooler weather comes soon to help them finish the job.

🔥 Huge wildfires in France and Spain forced more than 250,000 people to leave their homes.
🚒 Firefighters, helicopters, and planes are battling the fast moving flames.
🏕️ Families are staying in shelters as fires threaten towns and forests.
💔 Sadly, one person died, and large areas of land have burned.
🌡️ Hot weather and strong winds are making the fires harder to stop.

🌊 Scientists warn that oceans, lakes, and rivers are slowly losing their oxygen.
🐟 Fish and other water creatures need oxygen in the water to breathe, just like we need air.
🌡️ Warmer water and pollution are two big reasons the oxygen is disappearing.
📉 Ocean oxygen has dropped by about 2% over the last 50 years.
📣 Scientists want world leaders to take this problem as seriously as climate change.

🌊 Scientists say the world's oceans were the hottest ever measured for the month of June.
🌡️ The water even beat old heat records from a few years ago.
🌎 A weather pattern called El Niño is forming and could make things even warmer.
☀️ Warmer oceans can mean more heatwaves and stronger storms.
🧑‍🔬 Scientists are watching closely to see how warm things might get this year.

⚡ In 2017, a HUGE lightning bolt called a megaflash happened in the United States, and it was so long that it broke the world record at 829 km (that's like a giant light stretching from Texas all the way to Kansas City!).
🚗 To understand how long that is, if you tried to drive from the start of the lightning bolt to the end, it would take 8 to 9 whole hours in a car!
🛰️ Scientists only found out how big it was recently because they used special satellites and new technology that can see and measure super long lightning bolts in the sky.
🌩️ Megaflashes are very rare, they are lightning bolts that stretch more than 100 km long (normal lightning is shorter!).
🏠 Lightning can be dangerous, so if there's a storm, the safest place is inside a strong building or a car with a roof, not outside, not at the beach, and not on a motorcycle.

🌀 A very big earthquake happened in Russia and it made giant waves called tsunamis that went to Russia and Japan, but Australia stayed safe.
🌊 Tsunamis happen when the bottom of the sea moves suddenly because of an earthquake, a volcano, or a landslide, and this pushes a lot of water to make big waves.
🌍 Australia is in a safe place far from most of the big cracks in the Earth, but scientists still watch the oceans all the time just in case.
🛟 There are special machines like deep ocean buoys, tide gauges on piers, and supercomputers that work together to warn people when a tsunami might be coming.
🚨 If these machines find a dangerous wave, Australia's warning centre quickly sends messages to the police, TV, radio, and the internet so people can leave the beach and stay safe.