She has devoted her career to saving primates. Now scientist and campaigner Jane Goodall is 70 and embroiled in the toughest fight of her life

There are not many women who in their seventieth year take on more commitments and get deeper into public controversy, but Jane Goodall, the world’s leading primatologist, is not like other women.

While some her age draw pensions and play golf, she says she is ‘on the road 300 days a year’. She criss-crosses the world giving lectures, meeting conservationists, pouring energy into her chimp sanctuaries and the environment youth movement she recently founded. She returns whenever she can to the Tanzanian forest home of the chimps who made her famous.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/10/academicexperts.environment

As the EU expands, the battle between developers and conservationists intensifies – and its victims look set to be the unspoilt wildernesses and ancient species of the 10 new member states. Ros Coward reports

In her 87 years living in the village of Pely in the heart of the Hungarian countryside, Widow Rab Laszlone has seen many changes, including the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, two world wars and the rise and fall of communism. But one thing has remained constant: storks, which return every year to nest next to her house. For the past decade, they have adopted the electricity pole by the gate, rather than her roof, but they still cohabit like close neighbours. “Why do you keep dropping those frogs on to my path?” she chides the two storks, reorganising their nest overhead. But Widow Rab isn’t angry. “It’s fine,” she says. “I like them. We’ve always had storks here, since I was a child. Let them stay.”

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/jul/31/europeanunion.weekendmagazine

A plan to drain water from the Ebro in the north-east of Spain to supply tourism and agriculture in the arid south-east has given rise to mass protests in support of a vital wetland.

Last month a small group of protesters set out to walk 1,000 kilometres from Reinosa near the source of the Ebro river to Valencia in time for a demo at last week’s Ramsar Convention on wetlands. In every town they came to, thousands joined them. By Valencia on Sunday there were 100,000 protesters, including those who had walked a different route from the Pyrenees.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2002/nov/27/guardiansocietysupplement3

The EU has ruined the west’s environment. Now it’s moving east

On environmental matters, most of us believe, the European Union is a progressive force. We think of it as an environmental version of the international court of justice, a place of appeal where higher standards of protection are applied. Yet the EU is also implicated in some of Europe’s worse acts of environmental vandalism, in pristine areas of eastern Europe as well as the west.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/29/eu.politics

It’s a haven for elk, wolf, bears, lynx and bird life. But it’s about to be destroyed by a motorway. Ros Coward reports from Biebrza in Poland on the threat to one of Europe’s last wild places

May in the Biebrza marshes of north-east Poland is as near to a nature lover’s paradise as Europe has to offer. It’s an immense, complex area with 250 kilometres of river, rare raised bogs, and water meadows surrounded by the remnants of ancient forests which provide cover for migrating bears, wolves and lynxes.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/19/highereducation.biologicalscience

The government’s proposed relaxation of planning controls will spell environmental disaster

Anyone under the illusion that the British countryside is in safe hands had better think again, and fast. The developers are on the offensive, claiming they need to build on more greenfield sites. The government has bowed to the pressure and is proposing an ill-thought-out reform of planning controls, which would guarantee that the south-east would be concreted over. Behind these so-called reforms is the architect of another fiasco, Lord Falconer of the Dome. He is currently appearing before a House of Commons select committee, protesting that of course the government wants sustainability. Look, he says, the green paper mentions it on the first page. That is practically the only mention – but “business” appears 50 times.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/may/08/greenpolitics.housing

New planning laws bypassing environmental concerns make a joke of Blair’s vision of sustainability

Next September Tony Blair will be going to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg to teach the world about saving the planet, just as his government completes the greatest assault on environmental protection this country has ever known. With his customary messianic zeal, he’s said he “wants the UK to lead the world on sustainability”. So why is his government trying to hustle through reforms in the planning system which rip away current protections?

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/dec/18/localgovernment

Getting housebuilders to take energy efficiency seriously would have a dramatic effect upon the UK’s environment

Only 20 years ago, Sue Roaf’s house in Oxford would have come out of a science fiction novel. Thermal insulation, energy efficiency appliances and solar energy from photo-voltaic panels means that her traditional looking semi not only emits hardly any carbon from fossil fuels but is a power station in its own right, exporting surplus electricity back to the grid.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/dec/12/climatechange.society