CORNWALL

• Inspired by this, Jake felt called to spread his knowledge with others by launching a mentorship program for young UK dancers looking to pursue an entertainment career.
• "Through this mentorship program, I want to empower young UK dancers who are passionate about pursuing careers in entertainment with the guidance, support, and insight they need to succeed on a global scale," said Jake Moyle.
• As he launches this program, he intends to work with UK-based dancers to help them establish themselves as valuable artists in the entertainment industry.
• With an undying passion for sharing his experiences with aspiring artists, Jake notes he is establishing this new program to allow him to do just that.

• The idea is that, instead of driving a loss of habitats for wildlife, developments will now contribute to a recovery.
• The new policy will be rolled out to small sites in April 2024 and nationally significant infrastructure projects in 2025.
• It’s an exciting moment – we are academics who assess policies like these, and we recognise that this is one of the world’s most ambitious ecological compensation policies.

What does a ‘biodiversity net gain’ actually mean?

• This is a calculation tool which assigns numerical values (“units”) to habitats based on their size, type and ecological condition.
• A small lawn might be one unit, while a small patch of woodland could be 16 units.

• But some harms are inevitable, and these will need to be compensated for – both by improving the quality of the remaining habitats, and by creating new habitats.
• In practice, this means the net gain rules generally promote more grassland, ponds, hedgerows and other natural habitats within developments.
• Researchers have learned a lot about the outcomes of biodiversity net gain from studying councils such as West Oxfordshire and Cornwall, where equivalent commitments were adopted early.

Is it delivering for wildlife?

• A key concern is that the metric used to score biodiversity may not work in the best interests of wildlife – particularly insects.
• The metric is intended to be a practical proxy for biodiversity, by assessing and scoring different habitat features.

• This is because the metric allows large “poor” quality habitats to be traded for small “good” ones.
• This reduces the demand for offsets, and hence the private investment that could be going into large nature recovery projects.

How will it be enforced?

• Our team has previously estimated a quarter of habitat units promised under net gain regulations could be unmonitored and effectively unenforced.
• As developers and planners get used to biodiversity net gain, we hope to see these gaps addressed in further policy tweaks.
• Biodiversity net gain is an exciting, ambitious policy, and we want it to achieve its full potential.

Natalie Duffus receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council NE/S007474/1 Oxford-NERC Doctoral Training Partnership in Environmental Research and an Oxford-Reuben Scholarship. Sophus zu Ermgassen receives funding from the European Commission via EU Horizon 2020 project SUPERB (Systemic Solutions for Upscaling of Urgent Ecosystem Restoration for Forest Related Biodiversity)

• TORONTO, Nov. 16, 2023 /CNW/ - Unifor members of First Student Bus – which provides school bus services for English and French language schools in the Cornwall, Ont.
• region – voted 94% in favour of strike action on Nov. 14.
• "School bus operators are an integral part of the public education system with important responsibilities and yet they continue to be paid less than other professional drivers," said Unifor National President Lana Payne.
• Unifor represents 20,000 members across the road transportation sector, with over 2,000 of them school bus drivers.

• One of the most severe marine heatwaves on the planet is taking place in the shallow seas around the UK and Ireland.
• That’s according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has labelled this a “Category 4” heatwave.
• Rarely used outside of the tropics, a cat 4 heatwave means “extreme” heat.
• The heatwave is strongest in the northern North Sea, northwest of Ireland, and the Celtic Sea between Cornwall and southern Ireland.

Oceans are slow to warm up and cool down

• You might find yourself wearing a jumper on Monday but shorts and a t-shirt by Wednesday.
• But oceans are different – their ability to absorb lots of heat means temperature varies slowly and extremes are rare.
• As such, these already very warm areas will warm further until a sufficiently strong storm comes along and mixes the heat down into a thicker surface layer.

Fish may go hungry

• Those fish eat smaller fish and crustaceans, which in turn feed on microscopic plants known as plankton.
• At this time of year, these plankton are dependent on nutrients mixed up from the deep water into the surface layer.
• A heatwave on the surface could potentially harm the deeper ocean too, and the fish that live there.
• Some warm water fish species are appearing in UK waters for instance, and native fish reproduction cycles and those of the plankton they feed on are no longer in perfect sync.