Environment | The Guardian

Money will be spent on expanding an Interpol taskforce dedicated to investigating the gangs driving illegal deforestationThe Norwegian government has announced a pledge of 145m kroner (£12m) to help fight forest crime such as illegal tree clearances.The money will be shared by Interpol, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Rhipto Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, which collects data on illegal logging. The funds will allow Interpol to expand its dedicated taskforce from six to 15 detectives. Continue reading...

Lower Benefield, Northamptonshire: The stubby little white specimen turns out to be my first concolorous mothNational Moth Night has inspired me to dust off my moth trap and indulge in a summer pageant of colourful insects. With some disappointment I clock the dropping temperatures and cleared sky with twinkling stars. Not a positive development. Clear, cold nights deter moths from taking to the wing. I consider hanging the trap back up, but decide a small haul of moths would be suitably charming. Continue reading...

Five-year report makes a case for how Aboriginal custodianship can revitalise ailing riversA “ground breaking” new plan to enshrine Aboriginal water rights in law and practice has been released, which gives governments a way to overturn “aqua nullius” and demands Aboriginal people have more say in how water is allocated and managed across Australia.The national cultural flows research project is the “unfinished business of national water reform,” Nari Nari man and chair of the Murray lower Darling river Indigenous nations (MLDRIN) Rene Woods said. Continue reading...

Water shortages cause alarm over crop yields and keeping livestock aliveWhile millions of Britons are enjoying the heatwave, the dry weather is causing problems for farmers who are concerned about their crops and livestock, forcing some into desperate measures to keep their cattle alive.Guy Smith, the deputy president of the National Farmers Union, said it was too early to predict a disastrous harvest, but every day of heat and lack of rain was likely to make it smaller.

Conservation scientists believe our current mass extinction crisis requires a far more ambitious agreement, in the style of the Paris Climate Accord. And they argue that the bill shouldn’t be handed just to nation states, but corporations too.

Oil spill disaster reduced biodiversity in sites closest to spill, report finds, as White House rolls back conservation measuresThe 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump.Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf. Continue reading...

Acquisition of Chargemaster, with 6,500 charging points, praised as milestone towards cleaner motoringBP has bought the UK’s biggest electric car charging network, in the latest sign of major oil producers addressing the threat that low-carbon vehicles pose to their core business.The acquisition of Chargemaster, which has more than 6,500 charging points across the country, will begin to result in the deployment of fast chargers at BP’s 1,200 forecourts over the next year. Continue reading...

In this extract from Rising, Elizabeth Rush explains ‘sunny day flooding’ – when a high tide can cause streets to fill with water

Thailand has been swamped by waste from the west after Chinese ban on importsAt a deserted factory outside Bangkok, skyscrapers made from vast blocks of crushed printers, Xbox components and TVs tower over black rivers of smashed-up computer screens.This is a tiny fraction of the estimated 50m tonnes of electronic waste created just in the EU every year, a tide of toxic rubbish that is flooding into south-east Asia from the EU, US and Japan. Continue reading...

Failure to build energy-efficient homes and clean cars risks UK missing its carbon targets, says government’s climate adviserThe homebuilding and carmaking industries “should be ashamed” of their efforts to tackle global warming, according to the UK government’s official climate change adviser.Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said housebuilders were “cheating” buyers with energy-inefficient homes and that motor companies were holding back the rollout of clean cars. Continue reading...

Poachers killed 800,000 birds on UK base in 2016 but 72% drop was recorded in last yearWhen Britain’s armed forces minister, Mark Lancaster, assumed office he was surprised by the amount of letters in his mailbag regarding an issue the military would not ordinarily address. One after the other spoke of the killing of migratory songbirds on Cyprus. Hundreds of thousands of robins, blackcaps, thrushes and other much-loved garden species were being illegally slaughtered by trappers on Ministry of Defence land. Was there nothing he could do?Lancaster, who served in Cyprus during a gap year commission in the army in 1987, resolved to right the wrong. He made good on the promise last weekend. Continue reading...

Reculver, Kent: For now, granite boulders the size of a Mini keep the tide at bay, but along the coast the sandstone cliffs are left vulnerableA church without a congregation, a lighthouse without a light, the twin towers of Reculver are a seashore emblem of solidity and transience. The fortress-like rectangularity of this imposing structure summoned me from miles away, only to find it was frontage to a roofless ruin.Related: Floods and erosion are ruining Britain’s most significant sites Continue reading...

If waste is burned for energy, recyclable material is lost forever. There are better solutionsThe vast recycling problem facing communities right around Australia has been a ticking time bomb.

Steve Robertson’s bonus stopped for two years after firm hit with £55m Ofwat fineThames Water will not pay its chief executive a bonus for the next two years and after that will link it to leak and pollution targets being met.Britain’s biggest water company was recently fined £55m by the watchdog Ofwat and ordered to pay £65m to customers for failing to adequately tackle leaks in 2017. It has warned it will miss its leak targets again this year. Continue reading...

Juru traditional owners say Adani has ignored demands to inspect “unauthorised” cultural assessments

The oil industry is building yet another pipeline - but Native American groups and progressive activists are fighting back

Lower costs and battery technology offer hope – but industry says it needs support“I’m 87% self-powered today. Yesterday I was 100%,” Howard Richmond said, using an app telling him how much of his London home’s electricity consumption is from his solar panels and Tesla battery.The retired solicitor lives in one of the 840,000-plus homes in the UK with solar panels and is part of an even more exclusive club of up to 10,000 with battery storage. Continue reading...

The rejected Welsh tidal power scheme is a missed opportunity on many fronts, says the chair of the planning inspectors who studied the proposalThe rejection by ministers of the proposed Swansea Bay tidal lagoon (Report, 26 June) must be the final nail in the coffin of what was once claimed would be “the greenest government ever”.When I and my fellow planning inspectors spent the best part of a year examining and reporting on both the principle and the detail of the project in Swansea, it was clear that this pathfinder project had important environmental, cultural and regeneration benefits. Continue reading...

Israel | Butterflies | Doughnuts at the cricket | Bra sizes | Morris MinorsTony Greaves asks for Israel to be treated like other states (Letters, 26 June) on the very day that Britain, after a wait of 70 years, treats Israel like other states with a first royal visit.

Part 1 of a report on the indigenous Siona people in the Putumayo region in the AmazonPlacido Yaiguaje Payaguaje, an indigenous Siona man, was standing right where his 80-something mother was blown apart by a land-mine. There was a crater about the size of a beach ball. Surrounding foliage had been shredded, and on some of the leaves and fronds you could still see the dynamite.This was a 20 metre, steepish climb down to the banks of the River Piñuña Blanco, deep in the Colombian Amazon. Placido’s mother had come here to fish in a lagoon nearby. It was a popular spot for singo, sábalo and garopa.

After visiting a whale sanctuary in Iceland there is also the chance to eat whale at a nearby restaurant. It seems like a bizarre idea, but what are the ethical and culinary implications?Should you eat whale meat? Reports on Iceland’s new retirement home for beluga whales note that, after viewing the animals – rescued from a Shanghai marine park – tourists can then visit a harbourside restaurant where they can dine on whale meat. Last week, Iceland resumed whaling after a three-year hiatus, killing a 20-metre fin whale on the country’s west coast.The Iceland sanctuary has been set up with the assistance of the highly reputable Whale and Dolphin Conservation organisation. Danny Groves of WDC notes that only 3% of Iceland’s local population now eat whale. He points out that the country’s whale-watching industry far outweighs whaling economically. “The sanctuary ... should be championed as an alternative to the cruel practises of whale and dolphin hunting and the keeping of these animals in captivity,” he says. Continue reading...

£250m deal allows official market access negotiations to begin, 20 years after beef was banned following the BSE outbreakBritish beef will be back on the menu in China for the first time in more than 20 years, after it officially lifted the longstanding ban on exports from the UK.More than two decades since the Chinese government first banned British beef after the BSE outbreak, the milestone is the culmination of several years of site inspections in the UK and negotiations between government officials. Continue reading...

With Brexit looming our animal welfare standards are vulnerable. We’ve got welfare reform wrong in the past - how can we get it right in the future?

Butchers’ federation claims vegans want to ‘impose their lifestyle’ on the majorityButchers in France have asked the government for police protection from animal rights activists, claiming their security was being threatened and that vegans were trying to impose a meat-free lifestyle on the nation.The French federation of butchers wrote to the interior minister saying shops had been sprinkled with fake blood and covered in graffiti. It claims that a growing media focus on veganism was threatening butchers’ safety. Continue reading...

Joe Romm’s new book details the sticky messaging tactics successfully employed by Trump and others

‘Disastrous decisions’ such as Heathrow expansion and rejection of Swansea tidal lagoon spark concern over government directionEnvironmental campaigners and clean air groups have warned that the government’s green credentials are in tatters after a flurry of “disastrous decisions” that they say will be condemned by future generations.

The Humboldt marten could soon be an endangered species in California as the weed industry threatens its habitatFierce yet adorable, Humboldt martens have been described as the west coast’s own Tasmanian devils. The biologist Tierra Curry compares the red-chested mammal to another small, tenacious creature: “It’s a kitten that thinks it’s a honey badger,” she said. “It will crawl right into a bee nest and eat the honeycomb and larvae, getting its face stung the whole time.”But there are some dangers that the marten cannot withstand – such as marijuana cultivation. Continue reading...

Global deforestation is on an upward trend, jeopardising efforts to tackle climate change and the massive decline in wildlifeThe world lost more than one football pitch of forest every second in 2017, according to new data from a global satellite survey, adding up to an area equivalent to the whole of Italy over the year. Continue reading...

The first national ‘tree champion’ is charged with reversing the fortunes of the country’s woodlands and beleaguered urban treesEngland is running out of oak. The last of the trees planted by the Victorians are now being harvested, and in the intervening century so few have been grown – and fewer still grown in the right conditions for making timber – that imports, mostly from the US and Europe, are the only answer.“We are now using the oaks our ancestors planted, and there has been no oak coming up to replace it,” says Mike Tustin, chartered forester at John Clegg and Co, the woodland arm of estate agents Strutt and Parker. “There is no oak left in England. There just is no more.” Continue reading...

Inquiry initiated by Greens follows Guardian investigation exposing funding and management failingsThe Senate has launched an inquiry into Australia’s threatened species crisis after an investigation of national threatened species management by Guardian Australia revealed problems including poor monitoring and a lack of funding.The inquiry, initiated by Greens senator Janet Rice and supported by Labor and crossbenchers on Wednesday, will examine issues including the country’s alarming rate of species decline, the adequacy of Commonwealth laws that are supposed to protect threatened wildlife, and the effectiveness of funding for threatened species.

Citizens Advice urges action after small supplier generates record complaintsRecord levels of complaints against a small energy supplier have prompted the consumer watchdog to call for stronger regulation to protect households from poor customer service.The plea by Citizens Advice came as the group published a customer service league table of energy companies that ranked Iresa, which was the cheapest on the market, as the UK’s worst. Continue reading...

The government-funded program was designed to reduce polluted run-off to the reefAgriculture industry groups have refused to show the Queensland government the results of a government-funded program that aims to improve Great Barrier Reef water quality.The Queensland Audit Office, in a report to parliament, said the farming industry groups had withheld data about the best management practices program due to “privacy concerns” and that its effectiveness might be “overstated”. Continue reading...

Dolgellau, Gwynedd: The similarity of this corner of Wales to the landscape of the southern Lake District is strikingThe path by the Afon Wnion was liberally scattered with small branches and twigs still carrying tattered leaves, the debris of the storm the previous night. The wind had moderated slightly but the flag on St Mary’s church still stood out strongly from the pole on the tower. Beyond it, the severe northern flanks of Cadair Idris slid in and out of focus as clouds swept across the mountain, their speed reinforcing my doubts about taking a high-level route alone. Today, I decided, was one for the lowlands – a decision that, coincidentally, allowed time for a cooked breakfast. Continue reading...

In a country of more than 17000 islands, seaweed might be the ideal raw material for a bio-plastics revolution.

Wood Buffalo national park also faces danger from oil and gas development and hydroelectric projects, government report saysThe world’s second-largest national park is under threat from a destructive combination of climate change, oil and gas development and hydroelectric projects, according to a new report from the Canadian government.Related: Canada's National Parks: from Hollywood beauties to beautiful beasts – in pictures Continue reading...

A new subsidy would ‘destroy any chance of the government attracting broad support’Labor has warned the government that new subsidies for coal as part of any internal settlement on the national energy guarantee will scuttle the chances of securing peace after 10 years of warring over climate and energy policy.The shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, told Guardian Australia that the construction of any new coal-fired power stations “will paralyse Australia’s transition to clean energy” and “run against all the advice of industry and business, including Snowy Hydro”. Continue reading...

Ministers’ decision to shelve a pioneering wave power scheme in Swansea Bay is based on evidence – but also ideologyThe UK government’s decision to shelve plans to build the world’s first tidal lagoon off Swansea Bay is a hard blow for Wales. That it comes in the wake of Airbus’s warning that 6,000 jobs at its Broughton factory in Flintshire are being put at risk by continuing uncertainty over Brexit, and on the same day that the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders sounded the alarm over the future of car building in the UK, only serves to increase the pain. Ford employs 1,700 people at its Bridgend plant, while a new Aston Martin factory is due to open in south Wales next year. The tidal lagoon project, had it gone ahead, was expected to create 2,200 jobs, plus more in the supply chain. These are the kinds of jobs that Wales, so damaged by steel and coal closures, needs. But the business secretary, Greg Clark, has decided the country can’t have them because they would be too expensive.It’s true that tidal lagoon power is costly at the moment. The so-called strike price that the government would have to agree for Swansea’s electricity, to get the project off the ground, lay between £92.70 and £150 per megawatt hour (MWh), with the difference accounted for by a Welsh government subsidy, and the duration of the contract. While the UK government’s rejection of the scheme – on which the company says it has spent £35m – was based on the higher figure of £150 over 30 years, the company said that, given a longer contract of 60 years, it could supply electricity at £92.70, the same as Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, the government’s flagship energy project in Somerset (Hinkley Point’s strike price is fixed for 35 years). The Welsh government said that its offer of a £200m subsidy made the Swansea project – meant to be the first of six British tidal lagoons, four of them in Wales – competitive with Hinkley even on a similar time span. Welsh politicians have reacted with understandable fury to Mr Clark’s announcement, which comes almost exactly 12 months after the government abandoned plans to electrify the railway from Cardiff to Swansea, and just a day after MPs voted to press ahead with another expensive infrastructure project: a third runway at Heathrow. Continue reading...

Letters from Dr Robin Russell-Jones, Les Bright and Andrew PapworthThis government’s decision to create more pollution at Heathrow (Report, 26 June) while simultaneously rejecting tidal power in Swansea Bay (Report, 26 June) shows it has no strategy for tackling climate change.Although aviation only contributes about 2% of global emissions of carbon dioxide, it accounts for over 6% of global warming due the effects of other greenhouse gases and vapour trails. The upcoming report by the UK Committee on Climate Change shows that a third runway will increase CO emissions from air travel from 37 to 43 million tonnes per annum. But since our overall carbon budget will have fallen by 2030 to 344 million tonnes, the contribution from aviation will have jumped from 6.5% to 12.5% of the UK’s carbon emissions. In other words, a third runway is incompatible with the UK’s climate commitments, and things will only get worse post-Brexit.

The killdeer, a protected bird that weighs less than five ounces, laid eggs in area where the main stage will be for Ottawa’s BluesfestA diminutive bird known for its shrill, high pitched call is threatening to derail one of Canada’s biggest music festivals after it built a nest in the same location as the main stage was slated to be erected.The first hint of trouble for Ottawa’s Bluesfest, an outdoor festival that draws some 300,000 people each year in the nation’s capital, came last week after workers at the site stumbled across an agitated killdeer, a brown and white bird that weighs less than five ounces. Continue reading...

The deforestation it causes is decimating species such as orangutans and tigers - but the alternatives could be worse, finds authoritative reportIt is consumed daily by billions of people but palm oil is “disastrous” for wildlife such as orangutans and tigers, according to an authoritative new report. However, the analysis warns that alternatives are likely to drive biodiversity losses elsewhere, rather than halt them.The analysis, from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), found that rainforest destruction caused by palm oil plantations damages more than 190 threatened species on the IUCN’s red list, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. It also found that palm oil certified as “sustainable” is, so far, only marginally better in terms of preventing deforestation. Continue reading...

Sea level rises are not some distant threat; for many Americans they are very real. In an extract from her chilling new book, Rising, Elizabeth Rush details how the US coastline will be radically transformed in the coming yearsIn 1890, just over six thousand people lived in the damp lowlands of south Florida. Since then the wetlands that covered half the state have been largely drained, strip malls have replaced Seminole camps, and the population has increased a thousandfold. Over roughly the same amount of time the number of black college degree holders in the United States also increased a thousandfold, as did the speed at which we fly, the combined carbon emissions of the Middle East, and the entire population of Thailand.About 60 of the region’s more than 6 million residents have gathered in the Cox Science Building at the University of Miami on a sunny Saturday morning in 2016 to hear Harold Wanless, or Hal, chair of the geology department, speak about sea level rise. “Only 7% of the heat being trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the atmosphere,” Hal begins. “Do you know where the other 93% lives?” Continue reading...

Calls for compulsory water safety lessons in schools after incidents in Nutfield and StokePolice have issued warnings about the dangers of swimming in open water in the hot weather after a boy went missing at a lake in Stoke-on-Trent and the body of a man was recovered from a lake in Surrey.The incidents have prompted renewed calls for compulsory water safety lessons in schools. Continue reading...

A national container deposit scheme should be established in response to the recycling crisis, the report saysA Senate inquiry into Australia’s recycling crisis has recommended that all single-use plastics – which could potentially include takeaway containers, chip packets and coffee cups with plastic linings – be banned by 2023.The wide-ranging report also recommends the establishment of a national container deposit scheme as a response to an unfolding crisis in Australian recycling that forced some councils to tip their recycling into landfill. Continue reading...

Bradford-based chain becomes fastest-growing of the UK’s big four supermarketsBooming sales of “wonky” fruit and vegetables have helped Morrisons secure its position as the fastest-growing of the UK’s big four supermarkets.The Bradford-based chain increased sales by 1.9% in the three months to 17 June, as sales of misshapen or smaller vegetables – which the chain sells at a lower price as a way of cutting down waste – more than tripled, according to Kantar Worldpanel, a consultant. Continue reading...

ABC News says story should have included Malcolm Turnbull’s denial, live9.07am BSTAnd on that note, we will leave you there.Labor has a new policy, Tony Abbott didn’t get the support he wanted but is still threatening to cross the floor, and Scott Morrison has given us the snake of envy.9.04am BSTWHAT pic.twitter.com/APDFiT8VxR Continue reading...

First formal study into their impact finds that boroughs with the schemes have boosted walking and cycling ratesThe so-called mini-Holland schemes – much-debated changes to boost cycling and walking in outer London boroughs – have done precisely that, according to the first formal study into their impact.The research found that after one year, people living in parts of such boroughs were, on average, walking and cycling for 41 minutes a week more than those living in comparable areas. Continue reading...

Four councils back move, claiming proposal will not survive ‘independent, lawful and rational’ scrutinyThe transport secretary, Chris Grayling, is facing a fresh headache over Heathrow as a group of councils confirmed they were planning legal action against expansion, just hours after MPs voted overwhelmingly to back a third runway.In an embarrassing blow for Theresa May, Conservative-run Windsor and Maidenhead, the prime minister’s own local council, suggested after Monday night’s vote that it was seriously considering joining the judicial review. Continue reading...

After a mysterious ‘mass mortality event’ turned ochre stars to goo, experts say rapid evolution may have saved the creaturesFive years after a mysterious virus wiped out millions of starfish off the western coast of North America, causing them to lose legs, dissolve into fleshy goo and taking various species to the brink of disappearance, scientists have announced a remarkable reversal. Continue reading...

Allendale, Northumberland: Growing abundantly along motorways, these pristine white flowers with their yellow centres have an endearing simplicity, like a child’s drawingDriving north from Newcastle up the A1 there’s an upside to the slowing traffic. It’s an opportunity to look at the high embankments on either side that are crowded with oxeye daisies, Leucanthemum vulgare. Growing abundantly along motorways, these pristine white flowers with their yellow centres have an endearing simplicity, like a child’s drawing. Mixed among them I can see the yellow of buttercup, mauve of vetch, sharp pink of campion and isolated patches of red clover. Lower down, near the gritty edges of the road, are canary-yellow sprawls of bird’s foot trefoil, colours that have mostly been banished from farmland.I grow all those wildflowers in my garden. All have nectar for bees, butterflies and hoverflies. The golden centre of the daisy head is not one flower but many, a composite of tiny disc florets, each containing food for insects. A grass path curves through my small perennial meadow, where chimney sweeper moths flicker between umbels of pignut and ragged robin. As I pause there in the evening light, there’s a delicacy to the planting with its fine grasses and small bursts of colour. On tall stems, the oxeye daisies glow as the sun drops behind the wood. Continue reading...

A controversial bill, dubbed the ‘poison package’, is set to go to Brazilian CongressA Brazilian Congress commission has approved a controversial bill to lift restrictions on pesticides despite fierce opposition from environmentalists, prosecutors, health and environment ministry bodies, and even United Nations special rapporteurs.