In the middle of a forest reserved for timber harvesting on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Mark Elbroch and two other members of the Olympic Cougar Project prepared to investigate a likely cougar den. They were tipped off to its location by a young female they’d fitted with a GPS collar and nicknamed Scalp last year.
Scalp’s collar connects with satellites to calculate her movements, seen as red track lines on the team’s GPS devices. These cougar experts had a pretty good idea what the seemingly erratic tracks meant. Scalp was going out to hunt deer, then circling back to nurse kittens.
It’s legal in Washington to hunt cougars. But the leading cause of death for the project’s study animals is “lethal removal,” the state’s go-to response when a landowner thinks a cougar attacked their livestock or pets. Cougars prefer deer and elk but will settle for smaller animals if they happen upon them, especially when they’re young and still learning the art of hunting larger prey. More often than not, it will cost them their life.
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📸: Michael Kodas
The global construction industry is closely monitoring outcomes from COP30 in Belém as debates over adaptation finance and emissions targets intensify. The summit’s negotiation gridlock between developed and developing nations exposes an ongoing failure to bridge the funding gap required for climate-resilient and sustainable construction across vulnerable regions such as Bangladesh. The absence of robust financial frameworks is delaying progress in carbon neutral construction and the implementation of Whole Life Carbon Assessment methodologies critical to achieving net zero Whole Life Carbon performance in buildings facing extreme weather risks.
Brazil’s role as both host nation and custodian of the Amazon shapes new tensions between deforestation, low carbon design policy ambitions, and land-use reforms that threaten global carbon footprint reduction progress. Any weakening of environmental safeguards could undermine decarbonising the built environment strategies and erode the circular economy in construction principles that underpin resource efficiency in construction initiatives.
In the UK, the Environmental Audit Committee has reaffirmed that nature-positive planning regulations are not impeding housing supply, strengthening the argument for sustainable building design and eco-design for buildings within urban policy frameworks. The Committee’s position supports the expansion of green infrastructure and sustainable urban development through data-led lifecycle assessment and Life Cycle Cost analysis tools linked to environmental product declarations (EPDs).
Industry leaders continue to push for measurable progress beyond declarations. Adoption of BREEAM v7 and low embodied carbon materials specifications signals growing attention to the embodied carbon challenge and the environmental impact of construction. Better integration of circular construction strategies and end-of-life reuse in construction practices would enhance building lifecycle performance while advancing the Circular Economy transition.
As the built environment sector moves toward net zero carbon buildings, practitioners recognise that tangible decarbonisation relies on aligning public policy, private finance, and innovation in sustainable building practices. The momentum from COP30 underscores that environmental sustainability in construction is not merely policy rhetoric but a technical and economic imperative demanding global coordination.
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