Hundreds of thousands of people were left without electricity across the U.K. and Ireland after the onslaught of Storm Darragh this past weekend, local media reported. 

Darragh, which brought wind gusts of 154 kilometers per hour (96 miles per hour), is the fourth named storm of the 2024-25 European windstorm season, which runs from Sept. 1, 2024, to Aug. 31, 2025. 

Multiple flood warnings were raised in parts of the U.K. and Ireland, some of which are still recovering from the widespread flooding that Storm Bert caused last month. Two people died in separate incidents after adverse weather caused trees to fall on vehicles.

U.K. national weather service the Met Office earlier issued a rare red weather warning for Storm Darragh, usually reserved for potentially life-threatening weather. Flight and train services remained disrupted.

Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the government’s independent climate advisory body, told the BBC that the U.K. must plan better for extreme weather events like Darragh. “We’re off track against where we should be — and that’s things like flood defences, or are our houses built on flood plains?” she said.

Thailand and Malaysia also experienced severe flooding last week due to monsoon rains, leaving at least 29 people dead in Thailand and at least six in Malaysia, according to reports. Tens of thousands of people were reported to be staying in evacuation centers. 

Schools and almost 100 health facilities were also forced to close.

Rescue teams were deployed to the southern Thai provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, Songkhla and Yala. Flood relief funds for each province will be increased to 50 million baht ($1.45 million), the Bangkok Post reported. Thailand’s cabinet also approved aid for affected families, with each receiving 9,000 baht ($260), Al Jazeera reported.

Pianporn Deetes, program director for Southeast Asia at environmental NGO International Rivers, told local news site Thaiger that human activities such as deforestation and dam construction greatly contribute to flooding in Thailand.

Meanwhile, Malaysia’s east coast saw five days of continuous rainfall, which was equivalent to six months’ worth of rain, said Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. 

Malaysian farmers faced heavy losses as 38,000 hectares (nearly 94,000 acres) of farmlands were inundated. The damage to crops and homes is estimated at nearly 1 billion ringgit ($226 million), the government said, according to a Reuters report. The amount is a fraction of the $3 billion the country lost in the last four years due to extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.

The Malaysian Padi Farmers Brotherhood Organization lamented that the rice paddies have just been recently planted, Nikkei reported.

Because of the widespread damage, the government is looking at the possibility of giving assistance or “reasonable compensation” to farmers and others affected by the floods. In the meantime, it’s prioritizing the repair of schools, hospitals and basic roads.

Banner image of Storm Darragh from space via the Met Office.

Wisdom, the world’s oldest known wild bird, has laid an egg, this time with a new partner.

She is a Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), or mōlī in Hawaiian, and this is her first egg in four years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Pacific region said in a statement on X.

“She did it again!” the agency wrote.

Wisdom is thought to be around 74 years old. Researchers roughly know her age because they attached an identifying band numbered Z333 on her leg in 1956. She had already laid an egg then, suggesting she was mature and at least 5 years old at the time.

Mōlīs like Wisdom spend months at sea before returning to their nesting sites on land. Most of the birds, including Wisdom, nest in Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge located within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the North Pacific.

At these nesting sites, the albatrosses meet their mates, whom they tend to partner with for life. If the courtship and mating is successful, the female lays a single egg, then both parents take turns incubating it and raise the chick over the next seven months or so. Since the process is extremely energy-intensive, it’s not uncommon for Laysan albatross pairs to skip a year or two between laying eggs, research suggests.

USFWS Pacific said Wisdom has likely “produced 50-60 eggs and as many as 30 chicks that fledged in her lifetime.”

For more than a decade, Wisdom was spotted with her partner named Akeakamai, but the male albatross hasn’t appeared at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge since 2021.

In December 2023, Jon Plissner, USFWS supervisory wildlife biologist at Midway, saw Wisdom engaged in mating dances. “She was still actively courting other birds in March [2024],” he wrote.

The egg that Wisdom laid recently, her first in four years, is “a special joy,” Plissner said.

“We are optimistic that the egg will hatch,” he added. Researchers have now banded her new mate to make future identification easy.

The Laysan albatross is classified as near threatened on the IUCN Red List. Historically the bird’s populations suffered great declines from feather and egg collection, and entanglement in driftnets meant for squid and salmon. Marine plastic is one of their biggest current threats. Studies suggest that the albatrosses “commonly ingest large amounts of plastic, which is in turn fed to their chicks.”

Banner image of Wisdom standing over her recently laid egg. Image by USFWS – Pacific Region via Flickr (Public domain).

Coca-Cola is reducing its plastic recycling targets from previous commitments, which advocacy groups say is an abandonment of its reuse goals. The beverage giant’s announcement comes just as talks for a global plastic treaty stalled this month.

In a statement published Dec. 2 on its website, Coca-Cola said it has updated its voluntary environment goals and is now aiming for 35-40% recycled material in primary packaging by 2035. In a 2022 pledge, the company had said it would aim to use 50% recycled material in its packaging by 2030. 

The company also says it now aims to collect 70-75% of the “equivalent number of bottles and cans introduced into the market annually.” Previously, it said it would collect and recycle a bottle or can “for every one we sell by 2030.” 

“Coke’s latest move is a masterclass in greenwashing, ditching previously announced reuse targets, and choosing to flood the planet with more plastic they can’t even collect and recycle effectively,” Von Hernandez, global coordinator of advocacy group Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), said in a statement. “This only reinforces the company’s reputation as the World’s Top Plastic polluter.” 

BFFP, which tagged Coca-Cola as a top plastics polluter in its 2023 brand audit report, noted that Coca-Cola removed the 2022 pledge from its website just before the start of the plastics treaty negotiation. “The company’s new announcement includes no mention of its reusable commitment as if it never existed,” BFFP said.

Coca-Cola also makes no mention of its prior goal of reducing the “use of virgin plastic derived from non-renewable sources by a cumulative 3 million metric tons from 2020 to 2025.” The company’s new announcement simply says “the use of recycled content in primary packaging can help reduce the company’s emissions. This effort, combined with innovations such as lightweighting, can avoid the additional use of virgin plastic.”

In another previous goal, the company had stated that by 2030 at least 25% of the volume of its sold beverages will be in refillable or returnable glass or plastic bottles or in fountain dispensers with reusable packaging. The new goal says the company “intends to invest to expand the use of refillable packaging in markets where infrastructure is in place to support this important part of the company’s portfolio.”

Matt Littlejohn, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at marine advocacy NGO Oceana, said Coca-Cola’s revised goals mean that likely “many more billions of single-use plastic bottles and cups will continue to flood into our waterways and seas.” 

The group estimates that if Coca-Cola had stuck with its 25% reusable packaging goal for 2030, “the company could avoid producing the equivalent of over 100 billion 500ml single-use plastic bottles.”

“Coca-Cola’s investors and governments around the world should take notice and take steps to hold the company accountable,” Littlejohn said.

Banner image of a water vole beside a plastic bottle in Derbyshire, U.K., courtesy of Jack Perks/Greenpeace.

Dutch prosecutors have fined the makers of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’s superyacht for its use of dubious Myanmar teak, in the latest instance of authorities cracking down on “blood timber” from the Southeast Asian country.

Yacht builder Oceanco will pay a 150,000 euro ($159,000) fine under a settlement reached with the Dutch Public Prosecution Service on Nov. 26 for failing to investigate the source of the wood used on the Koru, Bezos’s 417 feet (127-meter) superyacht. 

Mongabay previously reported that Myanmar or Burmese teak is in high demand for luxury yachts because of its superior quality and water resistance. However, the EU has imposed sanctions against the so-called “blood teak” or “blood timber” since its trade, mostly illegal, reportedly funds Myanmar’s military junta. The Koru case comes as a U.K. court fined another luxury yacht maker, Sunseeker, for using Burmese teak.

“Finally, the law is being implemented and, once again, this is a warning to those who think they can continue to buy blood teak from Myanmar without consequences,” Faith Doherty, forests campaign leader at the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency, said in a statement.

Dutch prosecutors found Oceanco had used Myanmar teak for furniture and wood furnishings on the $500 million Koru. While it had purchased the teak from a Turkish company, Oceanco was held liable since it had brought the wood into the EU market without investigating its origin. This violated the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), which came into effect in 2013. The EUTR will be replaced by the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which has been delayed by a year and will cover commodities beyond timber linked to deforestation.

Oceanco told Mongabay in an email that it acknowledges the conclusion of the recent investigation. “Oceanco deeply regrets these oversights and reiterates that it has never intended to violate EUTR regulations,” the company said. It added it decided to stop using Myanmar teak starting 2019; the Koru was commissioned in 2018 and delivered to Bezos in 2022, according to industry publication SuperYacht Times.  

“The prosecution of Oceanco is another positive sign that governments are finally cracking down on the import of blood teak from Myanmar,” Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for advocacy group Justice for Myanmar, told Mongabay, adding that EU members must “do far more to enforce the EUTR and Myanmar sanctions.”

Maung called the EU a “key destination in the illicit trade of Myanmar teak and other natural resources that finances the brutal junta and destroys the environment.” He added that some EU companies “have supplied military equipment to Myanmar in breach of sanctions, even after the military’s illegal coup attempt.”

Dutch authorities also found the Koru’s deck built with teak from Myanmar, but said liability for that lies with the German timber trader that brought it into the EU. This information has been shared with German authorities, it added.

Banner image of Koru superyacht by Conmat13 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). 

Wolves across Europe are set to lose their “strictly protected” status. The move is seen as a win for farmers concerned about loss of livestock, but conservationists warn that removing protections will jeopardize stable wolf populations.

At a recent meeting of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, EU countries voted to adopt a proposal that will move wolves from “strictly protected” to “protected” status. The one-word change lowers the threshold for when wolves can be culled.

According to the European Commission, which proposed the status downgrade, “The concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger especially for livestock. To manage critical wolf concentrations more actively, local authorities have been asking for more flexibility,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a press release.

Von der Leyen’s pony was killed by a wolf in 2022; she has since been focused on downgrading wolf protection in a way that European diplomats describe as “’strange,’ ‘bizarre,’ ‘puzzling,’ and definitely ‘pushy,’” Politico reports.

Researchers find culling wolves can actually lead to more livestock predation. A 2014 study in the American West found a 4-6% increase in sheep and cattle loss associated with culling wolves. The likely reason is that wolves hunt in packs but when packs are diminished, those left behind have a harder time hunting wild animals and instead target livestock, which are easier to get.

“Downlisting wolves won’t solve the challenges faced by rural communities, but it sets a dangerous precedent: decisions shaped by populism over science,” Sofie Ruysschaert of BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement.

The European Ombudsman is investigating a complaint that the European Commission’s claim that wolves pose a threat to humans and livestock was not based on scientific evidence.

Wolves were extirpated from much of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, but thanks to conservation measures, populations began to steadily increase starting in the 1970s. A 2012 census found roughly 11,000 wolves in Europe; the population nearly doubled to 20,300 wolves by 2023. Today, the animals can be found in every mainland country in Europe.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns that such progress could be eroded with the proposed change in conservation status. “Wolf populations have barely recovered after going extinct in most parts of Europe, and weakening their protection could jeopardise this fragile recovery,” WWF said in a statement.

“If we expect countries like India or Indonesia to protect their tigers … and Africans to protect lions and elephants, then we as relatively rich Europeans should be willing to tolerate some wolves,” Laurent Schley, head of the wildlife department in the Luxembourg government, told the BBC.

The change in protection status will go into effect in three months unless one-third of the members of the Bern Convention object to the change.

Banner image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay

A group of small island nations led by Vanuatu is urging the world’s top court to hold the major greenhouse gas-emitting countries accountable for failing to tackle climate change. The case involves nearly 100 countries and is being heard by 15 judges at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice in the Netherlands.

“These ICJ proceedings … mark a historic moment for climate justice with unprecedented participation that reflects the urgency of addressing ongoing climate destruction,” Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, the lead counsel for Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a regional subgroup that includes Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, said at a press briefing.

The island nations argue that just a few countries have produced the “vast majority” of historic and current greenhouse gas emissions, yet nations that emit very little, such as Vanuatu, face the brunt of the consequences.

They’re seeking the court’s legal opinion on two questions: What are the obligations of governments under international law to protect the planet’s climate system and environment? And what are the legal consequences for countries that have caused significant harm to the climate, environment and people?

“Today we find ourselves on the front lines of a crisis we did not create,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and the environment, told the ICJ. “The importance of the questions before this Court cannot be overstated.”

Vanuatu and others argue that climate-specific treaties, such as the Paris Agreement, aren’t sufficient to tackle climate change. The main emitters have failed to rein in their emissions and have even expanded fossil fuel extraction and use despite knowing its harms, they say. They argue this compels the court to draw from other international laws governing the protection of the environment and human rights that are also relevant to climate change, to give its opinion.

The ICJ’s advisory opinions are nonbinding. But they have the “potential to establish and clarify” governments’ obligations and consequences for climate harm, Wewerinke-Singh said at the briefing.

Regenvanu added that other courts can then draw from these clarifications, and there’s a possibility for governments to change and pay heed to the ICJ’s opinion.

Big emitters like the U.S and Germany argued the ICJ shouldn’t consider non-climate legislation.

“[T]he Paris Agreement at its core, is the only international legal régime specifically designed by States to address climate change,” Margaret Taylor, legal adviser representing the U.S., told the court.

Germany added that the Paris Agreement strikes “a careful balance between legally binding clauses and non-binding political commitments,” without which states may be unwilling to engage in the political processes needed to fight climate change.

Calling these statements disappointing, Regenvanu said the nations were pointing to treaties and commitments “that have regrettably failed to motivate substantial reductions in emissions.”

The submissions before the ICJ began on Dec. 2 and will continue until Dec. 13. The court is expected to deliver its advisory opinion in early 2025.

Banner image courtesy of Greenpeace.