Fisheries minister announces 28% increase, but environmentalists say steep drop in number of minkes killed is sign of a dying industryNorway has announced a 28% increase of its annual whaling quota to 1,278 whales in a bid to revive the declining hunt amid international controversy.Whalers have for several years failed to meet the quotas set by Oslo and the number of whaling boats has plunged. Continue reading...

Areas with growing pine marten populations have seen grey squirrel numbers fall as they provide easy prey for the predators – unlike native reds, a new study showsThe invasion of grey squirrels that has decimated native reds across the UK is reversed when pine martens prowl the woods, new research has shown. Unlike reds, grey squirrels appear to be easy meat for the predator.Pine marten populations have also been drastically reduced in the past. But where they are recovering, they send grey squirrel numbers plummeting while reds thrive, according to scientists. Continue reading...

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: Some were like wisps of bonfire smoke, others formed rolling circles of spindrift or reel-shaped vortices that blew themselves apart after a couple of secondsWatching snow devils rise, dance and vanish in the field, as if they were beings composed of moonlight, was strangely compelling.It was really parky. For the past few days there had been intermittent snow showers, slow-motion flakes drifting without direction that settled into a sugaring. These were separated, like the flick of a switch, by moments of dazzling sunshine and blue skies but bone cold, nothing thawed. There was a storm coming and sheep folded themselves into the lee of tall trees as the wind picked up; redwings left the fields and leaves blew about like lost birds. At first the air was quiet except for the growl of a chainsaw and disconsolate tutting from 30 jackdaws in the high branches facing into the breeze. They were watching, too. Continue reading...

Experts warn the grid could be over-supplied during low demand periods

The treaty determines entitlement to Timor Sea oil and gas reserves, including in the Greater Sunrise basinAustralia and Timor-Leste have a permanent maritime border for the first time after the signing of a significant and unprecedented treaty in New York on Wednesday.The treaty finally determines each nation’s entitlement and ownership of the rich oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea, including the untapped Greater Sunrise basin, estimated to hold $53bn worth of gas reserves. Continue reading...

Sea ice has hit record lows for time of year as experts say global warming probably fueled big storms in Europe and north-eastern USThe Arctic winter has ended with more news that is worrying even the scientists who watch the effects of climate change closely.The region experienced its warmest winter on record. Sea ice hit record lows for the time of year, new US weather data revealed on Tuesday. Continue reading...

New deal replaces previous attempt at treaty torn up after it emerged Timorese negotiators had been buggedAustralia and Timor-Leste are expected to sign a historic maritime border treaty in New York, after decades of talks dogged by acrimonious dealings and accusations of greed and espionage.But negotiations remained bitter until the end, with former Timorese president and chief negotiator, Xanana Gusmao, accusing Australia of collusion and revealing no deal was reached on how to develop the resources. Continue reading...

Less than 50% of Australia’s original wilderness still exists, thanks to the colonialist view that development of land means eliminating native vegetationKate (not her real name) and her husband have run cattle grazing properties in central Queensland for more than 30 years. On remote and isolated properties like that, communities are close-knit and neighbours rely on each other to survive.But Kate says her neighbours hate her family. Their crime? Not cutting down enough trees. Continue reading...

There is still time to stop an imminent program that would allow facilities to increase slaughter speeds, while reducing the number of trained government inspectorsIf you care about animal welfare or food safety, this news will concern you: the nationwide expansion of a risky US Department of Agriculture (USDA) high-speed slaughter program is imminent. But the good news is there is still time to stop it.

Tax exemption for all-new zero-emission electric taxi brought forward in boost for new greener cabsProspects for London’s new electric taxi have been boosted after the Treasury brought forward a £1,550 tax exemption to this April.The British-built, zero-emission capable taxi had been liable for a luxury car tax, introduced in 2017, of £310 per year for five years, deterring cab drivers from upgrading to the greener vehicle. Continue reading...

Agency reports ‘insufficient evidence’ that Civil Rights Act was breached in case of huge landfill near mostly African American townThe US Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed a civil rights case brought by residents of a small, overwhelmingly African American town in Alabama who have spent much of the past decade battling a toxic landfill they blame for causing a myriad of physical and mental illnesses.Related: A civil rights 'emergency': justice, clean air and water in the age of Trump Continue reading...

Niall Blair corrects statistics provided to state parliament from WaterNSWA New South Wales minister has been forced to correct the parliamentary record on the number of prosecutions by WaterNSW for breaches of water laws, saying that his department had provided him with figures found “not to be accurate”.The Guardian revealed last week that the New South Wales ombudsman was investigating whether WaterNSW – the body responsible for compliance with the state’s water laws – had misled the ombudsman when it provided data last year on the number of prosecutions and enforcement actions it had taken in the previous 15 months. Continue reading...

Labor leader’s position on proposed Queensland coalmine shifts againBill Shorten has adjusted Labor’s position on the Adani Carmichael coalmine again by dropping threats to use an investigation into alleged doctoring of scientific reports to cancel its licence.Shorten has been accused of inconsistency after offering highly qualified support for the mine last year, threatening to revoke its licence in January and February, stating that he does “not support” the mine on Monday and reversing the licence threat on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Video posted on YouTube shows water densely strewn with food wrappers, cups and sachets as tropical fish dart in and outA British diver has captured shocking images of himself swimming through a sea of plastic rubbish off the coast of the Indonesian tourist resort of Bali.A short video posted by diver Rich Horner on his social media account and on YouTube shows the water densely strewn with plastic waste and yellowing food wrappers, the occasional tropical fish darting through the deluge. Continue reading...

Claxton, Norfolk: All the elements have come together to create a moment of seasonal delightIt is one of the more subtle attractions of our parish but its seasonal window is brief and upon us right now. It is composed of four very commonplace elements, but their convergence is as special and unpredictable as the arrival of a rare migrant. Continue reading...

2017’s energy output equivalent to a medium-sized coal-fired power stationThe future of Australia’s solar industry is looking bright after a record 3.5m panels were installed on rooftops last year, giving the equivalent output of a medium-sized coal-fired power station.The record 1,057 megawatts of capacity in small-scale systems installed across the country smashed the previous record set in 2012, figures from the Clean Energy Regulator showed on Tuesday. It equated to 9,500 installed every day. Continue reading...

This map shows the scale of land clearing in Australia by visualising the extent of clearing in states where data is availableAustralia is in the midst of a land clearing crisis. Some estimate that 3m hectares of woodland will be cleared between 2010 and 2030.This is having a huge impact on the environment. Loss of habitat is one of the main threats to about three-quarters of Australia’s 1,640 plants and animals listed by the government as at risk. Land clearing, and land-use changes that follow it, have caused a fivefold increase in the sediment pollution pouring on to the embattled Great Barrier Reef, further diminishing its ability to deal with climate change. Continue reading...

Owners fear for health of lemurs, marmosets, monkeys, birds and tortoises removed from Miami site in incident police are treating as theftThe advertisement on Craigslist was specific: “Free exotic animals. We’re a sanctuary going out of business. Go around back and help yourself.”

Thousands sent home in West Midlands as Severn Trent prioritises households amid dwindling supplyThousands of staff at two Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) car plants have been sent home, while chocolate production has been halted at Cadbury’s Bourneville factory, amid water shortages in the West Midlands caused by burst water mains after the recent cold weather.The local water company, Severn Trent, said it had asked a “handful of big businesses” to shut down factories as it tried to prioritise household supplies. Continue reading...

New treaty compels states to investigate and punish killings and attacks on people defending their land or environmentOfficials from 24 Latin American and Caribbean states have signed a legally binding environmental rights pact containing measures to protect land defenders, almost two years to the day since environmental leader Berta Cáceres was killed in her home in Honduras.Last year almost 200 nature protectors were killed across the world, 60% of them in Latin America. The new treaty obliges states to “guarantee a safe and enabling environment for persons, groups and organisations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters”. Continue reading...

Replacing the government-controlled system by private companies made the costs of the delivery process soar, writes David Reed. Plus letters from John Heawood and Mark LewinskiPrivatising our vital energy services was a disaster waiting to happen, though the Tories daren’t admit it (Row over rise in energy bills for 1m households, 3 March). Every house has one set of cables carrying electricity and one set of pipes with gas; in addition, all the key energy market prices are set nationally, regionally or even globally, so there can be little or no competition in supply costs. You could argue that having more buyers actually increases competition, pushing prices higher.We may not realise it, but it has been cold in all of Europe, so price rises are inevitable. As your report says, the 7.9% rise in prices in the last six months was “driven primarily by increases in wholesale gas and electricity costs”. How will the government’s much-vaunted price cap help with that? I have changed suppliers almost every year in the last five or more years, but my bills are higher than ever, for a very simple reason: replacing the government-controlled system by more than a dozen private companies, all with highly paid chief executives and shareholders to keep happy, made the costs of the delivery process soar. How could it not? Continue reading...

Only five habitats put on critical habitat register since national environmental laws enactedAustralia has not listed any critical habitat for the protection of threatened species on the federal critical habitat register for more than a decade.And only five places have been registered on the database since Australia’s national environmental laws – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – were enacted.

Ex-UN secretary general tells the Guardian decision to withdraw hampers global political actionDonald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement has created serious problems for global efforts to tackle climate change, Ban Ki-moon has said.The former UN secretary general said Trump’s move was politically damaging to international action to limit carbon emissions and had created difficulties in delivering financial aid from richer to poorer countries to help the latter cope with a warming world. Continue reading...

Starfish and crabs among animals piled ankle-deep along parts of the North Sea coastMassive numbers of starfish, crab, mussels and lobsters have been washed up on the North Sea coast of the UK, following the recent freezing weather and storms.

Designer has been doing ethical fashion since 2001 – finally the rest of the world is catching up

EDF’s Torness plant east of Edinburgh has previously been taken offline due to jellyfishRoving jellyfish and seaweed have long been unwanted guests at Scotland’s last two nuclear power stations. Now the marine algae have hit again, forcing one of the plants to partially power down despite freezing temperatures pushing up demand for electricity.During last week’s cold weather, excessive amounts of seaweed entered the cooling system of the Torness plant in East Lothian, causing one reactor to be closed on Thursday. Continue reading...

Number of new cars registered in February falls by 2.8% despite rises in petrol and electric salesSlumping demand for diesel vehicles dragged down new car sales in February, marking the 11th consecutive month of declines for Britain’s new car market.The number of new cars registered dropped 2.8% compared to the same month a year ago to 80,805, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the industry trade body. The rate of decline has slowed from the double-digit drops seen at the end of last year. Continue reading...

The fault lies entirely with the GOP. Focus on fixing it, not laying blame where it doesn’t belongSteven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author of Bill Gates’ two favorite books. However, his latest – Enlightenment Now – has some serious shortcomings centering on Pinker’s misperceptions about climate change polarization. Pinker falls into the trap of ‘Both Siderism,’ acknowledging the Republican Party’s science denial, but also wrongly blaming liberals for the policy stalemate, telling Ezra Klein:there is implacable opposition to nuclear energy in much of the environmental movement ... There are organizations like Greenpeace and NRDC who are just dead set opposed to nuclear. There are also people on the left like Naomi Klein who are dead set against carbon pricing because it doesn’t punish the polluters enough ... the people that you identify who believe in a) carbon pricing and b) expansion of nuclear power, I suspect they’re a tiny minority of the people concerned with climate … What we need are polling data on how many people really would support carbon pricing and an expansion of nuclear and other low carbon energy sources. Continue reading...

Our food – from what we eat to how it is grown – accounts for more carbon emissions than transport and yet staple crops will be hit hard by global warming

Demise of the beetles, that need rotting wood to survive, could have devastating knock-on effect for other species, say scientists in a new reportAlmost one-fifth of Europe’s wood beetles are at risk of extinction due to a widespread decline in ancient trees, according to a new report which suggests their demise could have devastating knock-on effects for other species.The study says 18% of saproxylic beetles – which depend on dead and decaying wood for some of their lifecycle – now exist on a conservation plane between “vulnerable” and “critically endangered”. Continue reading...

Helvellyn, Lake District The combination of deep, drifting snow and mountain wind creates absorbing patterns

Murray-Darling Basin Authority report echoes farmers’ fears irrigators are causing the river to run dry, not the weatherMost of the Murray-Darling system has been placed on red or amber alert for outbreaks of blue-green algae as a new report finds that the increasing incidence in low-flow or no-flow events is due to irrigators extracting more water from the system. Continue reading...

Fiona Howie, Tom Greeves, Andrew Gilruth and Amanda Anderson respond to George Monbiot’s article on reclaiming our national parksGeorge Monbiot raises some legitimate concerns about the management of parts of our national parks (Here’s a novel idea: protecting wildlife in our national parks, 28 February) but to write off all 15 of them entirely is nonsense.Monbiot says: “Much of the land in our national parks is systematically burned.” But they are more than just moorlands; they contain one-third of England’s public forest estate. Northumberland contains some of the cleanest rivers in England; the New Forest includes a special area of conservation, an EU designation, that encompasses almost 30,000 hectares; and the Pembrokeshire coast some of the most biodiverse coastal habitats. Continue reading...

Cat Burton, Steve Emsley and Geoff Williams on using the car batteries to turn up the heat in their electric vehicles when neededI had to laugh at John Richards’s worry about people freezing in stuck electric vehicles because their batteries would run down in “no time” while those in a petrol car could run their heater (Letters, 3 March). Running the heated seats and climate control for about seven hours costs about three miles of range for my Tesla and it’s probably something similar for a petrol or diesel car. The big difference is, the electric vehicle won’t be killing the occupants with carbon monoxide poisoning. Indeed, the advice has always been not to run the engine if stuck.Teslas have a 12v battery for “domestic” uses and a 400v battery for motive power. The 400v kicks in to recharge the 12v when needed. Think of the 400v battery as the equivalent of running the engine to top up the battery.

Threatened species, pressure on Great Barrier Reef and climate change all worsened by full-blown land-clearing crisis

Environment department originally wrote to landowners asking them to show why planned clearing was not illegal, but later reversed courseAttempts by the federal government to stop potentially unlawful clearing in Queensland were reversed after political intervention, with a highly unusual apology letter sent to every landholder suspected of planning unlawful clearing at the direct request of the minister, documents obtained by the Guardian under FOI laws reveal.In December 2015 and January 2016, the federal department of environment took the exceptional step of asking 51 landholders with approval from the Queensland government to clear their land, to explain why the clearing wasn’t unlawful under federal environmental law. Continue reading...

Environment Agency issues 16 flood warnings and 35 flood alerts as country thaws outThe cold snap, in which the UK has been hit by hazardous conditions and freezing temperatures, is coming to an end. But high tides and easterly winds could mean flooding for several parts of Britain, particularly in the coastal areas in the south-west and north-east.Some areas will enjoy temperatures as warm as 10C (50F) on Sunday and Monday, although Scotland, parts of Northern Ireland and the north of England will remain cool for a few more days.

Demand from Chinese workers raises demand for skin and body parts of endangered speciesConservationists who have uncovered a growing illegal trade in jaguar fangs in South America are linking it to Chinese construction projects that could be threatening wildlife globally.Experts say major Chinese power plant, road and rail works in developing nations are key stimulants of illicit trade in the skins, bones and horns of endangered animals. Continue reading...

Last week’s brief but unnerving shortfall was a reminder, if any were needed, of the central importance of energy efficiencyCarry on cooking as normal, the energy minister said. This is how the market works, said industry experts, as the wholesale price of gas rocketed 200% in the wake of National Grid’s warning on Thursday that the country was facing a gas shortfall. In other words, don’t panic, nothing to see here.To an extent, they’re right. In the short term the UK was fine, despite huge demand fuelled by cold weather coinciding with a series of interruptions to supply. No domestic gas supplies were cut off and neither was National Grid forced to ask industrial users to stop using gas. Continue reading...

Campaigners want inquiry into overall strategy to examine how effective culling has beenThe government is to review the controversial badger cull as part of an inquiry into its strategy to clamp down on bovine TB.The review raises the possibility that experts conducting it will examine disputed evidence about the cull’s efficacy, potentially paving the way for a change in policy. Continue reading...

An earthly paradise is ravaged by inferno and flood, the earth itself rising to proclaim a horrifying and deadly new normalWhen people ask me where I live and I say, “Santa Barbara,” I wait for the inevitable reply, “Paradise,” and the quizzical look that says, how does one live there, rather than vacation. It’s as if I had replied, Disneyland.People who visit from colder climates have been complaining lately. Last year, when it finally rained after six years of drought, and we were practically on our knees with gratitude, a woman from New England remarked, “I didn’t come here for the rain.” I almost said, “Well, then, why don’t you go back home?” Another pestered a friend: when was her club in Montecito going to open? My friend replied, “I think it’s under eight feet of mud.” She wanted to add, “And they’re still looking for the bodies.” Continue reading...

Company sued Quebec township of 157 people after it created a no-drill zone, fearing for its water supplyA small municipality in the Canadian province of Quebec that was facing a million-dollar lawsuit from an oil and gas exploration company has won its court battle, bringing an end to a four-year ordeal that began when residents took steps to protect their water supply.“Reason and law prevailed today,” François Boulay, the mayor of Ristigouche Sud-Est, a township of 157 people on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, said in a statement. “We are relieved that our right to protect our drinking water is finally recognised.” Continue reading...

Caroline Lucas derides ‘fluffy communications strategy’ and ‘inadequate’ action on plasticsThe Conservative party’s rhetoric on the environment is a “fluffy communications strategy” when change on plastics could happen in half the time pledged, the co-leader of the Greens has said ahead of her party conference speech.Caroline Lucas will use her speech on Saturday in Bournemouth to call for petrol and diesel-only new cars to be phased out by 2030 and a deposit return scheme on drinks containers to be launched by the end of the year. Continue reading...

Inshriach, Aviemore Tracks revealed the badger and I had been cohabiting all this time. I just wasn’t looking hard enough

House lawmakers say Russia backed Dakota Access pipeline protesters and supported them on social media, but evidence is thinA powerful US congressional committee has alleged that Russia financed major environmental organizations and used social media to support opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline, fracking and fossil fuels.

If the trend continues, researchers warn, the migration of blacktip sharks could grind to a halt because of the rapidly warming oceanBlacktip sharks that journey down the Florida coast have declined in number so sharplythat researchers warn one of the largest migrations in US waters could grind to a halt because of the rapidly warming ocean. Continue reading...

Olive ridley sea turtles, a sparrowhawk and Europe’s highest sand dune are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Working people will end up with fewer resources and less collective power if the US supreme court undermines the power of unions with its decision on JanusThis week the US supreme court may have given the Koch Brothers yet another tool to help them achieve something they have been dreaming of for decades: weakening the power of public-sector unions.Oral arguments were held on Monday 26 February on Janus v AFSCME, a case that some have called the most important labor case of the century. The aim of the plaintiff’s case is to eliminate “fair share fees”, dividing public sector workers and limiting their power in numbers. If the supreme court finds in favor of the plaintiff, as they are widely expected to, public sector unions will no longer be able to collect fees automatically from the employees they represent, and these unions’ ability to operate will be dramatically undermined. Continue reading...