Experts identify areas where coral reefs are flourishing against the odds despite overfishing and environmental pressureSurprising “bright spots” where coral reefs are flourishing against the odds despite overfishing and environmental pressure have given new hope to conservationists.

Supermarket promises to redistribute unsold edible food to charities from 2017 as it urges rivals to join fight against wasteTesco has revealed that the amount of food waste generated by the supermarket giant increased to 59,400 tonnes last year – the equivalent of nearly 119 million meals.Tesco is the only major supermarket to publish its food waste data, and the increase came despite numerous initiatives designed to tackle the problem. The figure represents a 4% increase on 2015 with its beers, wines and spirits aisles and bakeries blamed for the rise. The amount wasted was the equivalent of one in every 100 food products sold by Tesco during the last financial year. Continue reading...

Millions of diamondback moths have migrated from their eastern European breeding grounds to descend on English crops. But are they really a ‘biblical plague’?As if Brexit and football violence weren’t enough to make us miserable about Europe, it seems that the UK is now experiencing an invasion of “Euro-moths”. Tens of millions of small but potentially lethal diamondback moths are crossing the North Sea, come to devastate our cabbages and cauliflowers.The first signs of the invasion came last Saturday night, when observers reported a two-mile long cloud of moths near the Herefordshire market town of Leominster. As one witness reported: “It was like driving through rain.” Continue reading...

Figures show the numbers of licenced diesels rose by 29% from 2012-15, despite warnings over their contribution to illegal levels of air pollutionDiesel vehicles have taken a record share of the market on London roads in recent years, despite warnings blaming them for contributing to the capital’s illegal levels of air pollution.Sadiq Khan, the new mayor of London, has been lobbying for a diesel scrappage scheme, a policy that was backed by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, as a way of tackling the illegal high nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels caused by diesels.

President François Hollande calls on other European countries to follow France’s lead by the end of the yearPresident François Hollande on Wednesday finalised ratification of the Paris climate accord reached in December 2015, making France the first industrialised country to do so.

Ineos company emails reveal huge amounts of treated wastewater are likely to be disposed of in the seaA UK shale gas company is considering dumping waste water from fracking in the sea, emails from the company show.Ineos, which owns the Grangemouth refinery and holds 21 shale licences, many in the north-west, North Yorkshire and the east Midlands, has said it wants to become the biggest player in the UK’s nascent shale gas industry. Continue reading...

New sediment data suggests the dinosaurs were rapidly done in, strengthening asteroid impact theory

Green groups warn of UK’s opposition to EU bans on harmful pesticides and promises by the Leave campaign to cut nature protection lawsBrexit would be bad for Britain’s bees, according to campaigners, who point to the UK government’s opposition to EU bans on harmful pesticides and the desire of figures in the Leave camp to cut nature protections.Bees and other pollinators are vital to producing food but have been harmed by loss of habitat, disease and pesticides. The EU banned three neonicotinoid pesticides in 2013 in the face of strong opposition from UK ministers. Continue reading...

Parliament approves radical proposal of accelerated emissions cuts and carbon offsetting to achieve climate goal 20 years earlier than plannedNorway’s parliament has approved a radical goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2030, two decades earlier than planned.On Tuesday night MPs voted for an accelerated programme of CO2 cuts and carbon trading to offset emissions from sectors such as Norway’s oil and gas industries, which are unlikely to be phased out in the near future. Continue reading...

Exceptionally high numbers of the diamondback moth, that attacks crops such as cabbages and cauliflowers, have been recorded arriving in the UKExperts have warned of a potential explosion in numbers of an invasive “super-pest” moth that attacks crops such as cabbages and cauliflowers.

Renowned biologist E.O. Wilson wants to set aside half of the planet as protected areas for nature. But is this possible? And, if so, how would it work?

The 2016 Great British Bee Count has reached the halfway point with more than 189,000 bees recorded so far. The annual count, which runs until 30 June, aims to help people learn more about bees, a key pollinator species that faces multiple threats. Here are some of the species spotted so far

May was the fifth record warm month this year, upping the odds that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, reports Climate CentralThe streak continues: May was record warm for the globe, according to NASA data released Monday.It’s now even more likely that 2016 will be the hottest year ever recorded, despite the demise of one of the strongest El Niños on record. Continue reading...

At least 200,000 of the nearly 2m trophies collected from animal hunts were endangered species, according to report revealing the scale of the industryAround 1.7m animal “trophies” have been exported across borders by hunters in the last decade, with at least 200,000 of them endangered species, according to a new report.US hunters are by far the largest killers of trophy animals, including half of all the 11,000 lions shot in the last decade, the report found. The issue came to global attention in July 2015, after a US dentist paid more than $50,000 to kill a lion called Cecil, who was being tracked by conservation scientists. Continue reading...

2020 target of 42% cut reached earlier than expected, but climate campaigners sceptical about government’s roleScotland’s climate emissions have broken through a landmark reductions target six years early after a warm winter helped drive down energy use.The Scottish climate change secretary, Roseanna Cunningham, said she was delighted that the country’s emissions had fallen by nearly 46% between 1990 and 2014, surpassing the government’s 2020 target of a 42% cut far earlier than expected. Continue reading...

Environment minister George Eustice tells MPs’ committee that the government supports a ban on polluting plastic microbeads in cosmeticsThe UK government now fully backs a legal ban on polluting plastic microbeads in cosmetics and toiletries, environment minister George Eustice said on Tuesday.A ban across the EU could be passed as early as 2017, he said, to stop the tiny particles entering the seas and harming wildlife. Continue reading...

BP’s call for a ‘meaningful carbon price’ is the latest example of wrongly trying to apply economic theories and tools to the environmentBP’s Statistical Review of World Energy is a standard industry reference document. It’s a useful indicator of trends, if occasionally the victim of politics. Continue reading...

Campaigners accuse the government of sitting on a potentially explosive report from its official advisers on the impact of fracking for shale gasPressure is growing on the UK government to release a report into the impacts of shale gas fracking, which campaigners have accused ministers of suppressing.The Committee on Climate Change, which advises parliament on meeting the UK’s carbon targets, submitted the report in March. It covers the expected impact of exploiting the UK’s onshore oil and gas resources on nationally set greenhouse gas targets. Continue reading...

Rarely seen and barely studied, the kakarratul, or northern marsupial mole, spends most of its life burrowing through sand dunesA little golden creature darted across a dirt track in the Gibson desert, just in front of the four-wheel drive.Pintupi woman Yalti Napaltjari, travelling with a group of Aboriginal rangers from the Kiwirrkurra Indigenous protected area, gave a yell and jumped out. Continue reading...

RSPB campaign urges gardeners to do one thing to help wildlife this summer after survey reveals rise and fall of familiar speciesGardeners are being urged to do more to help hedgehogs this summer after new figures showed that fewer people than ever are seeing the once-familiar species.Results from the from the RSPB’s citizen science survey showed that only 25% of people see hedgehogs in their garden at least once a month, around three percentage points less than last year and than in 2014. Continue reading...

Exclusive: scientists find no trace of the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that was the only mammal endemic to Great Barrier ReefHuman-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location.It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change. Continue reading...

Long-distance flights enable aerial hunters to feed their young whatever the weatherFor Britain’s breeding birds – especially those migrants that spend only a short time here before heading back to their winter home in Africa – June is a crucial month.Plentiful sunshine – June is usually the sunniest month of the year in England and Wales, thanks to the long hours of daylight – provide the vast amounts of insects and invertebrates that these birds require to feed their young. Continue reading...

Research shows the legal sale in 2008 catastrophically backfired – but two African nations want to repeat the stockpile sell-offA huge legal sale of ivory intended to cut elephant poaching instead catastrophically backfired by dramatically increasing elephant deaths, according to new research.

In open letter charities say environmental evidence should lead Welsh government to stop plan that would cut through wetlandTen leading environmental charities have claimed a proposed section of motorway that would cut through wildlife-rich wetland represents “ecological destruction on an unprecedented scale”.The charities have written an open letter to the Welsh government calling for it to scrap £1bn plans to build a 14-mile stretch of motorway through the Gwent Levels near Newport in south Wales. Continue reading...

Lobbying from the petroleum industry may have convinced Republicans to denounce a carbon tax

Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed trade groups, lobbyists and thinktanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of climate denial’Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coalmining company, has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations, analysis by the Guardian reveals.The funding spanned trade associations, corporate lobby groups, and industry front groups as well as conservative thinktanks and was exposed in court filings last month. Continue reading...

New research is first to establish the link and builds on other evidence that children are particularly vulnerable to even low levels of pollutionA major new study has linked air pollution to increased mental illness in children, even at low levels of pollution.The new research found that relatively small increases in air pollution were associated with a significant increase in treated psychiatric problems. It is the first study to establish the link but is consistent with a growing body of evidence that air pollution can affect mental and cognitive health and that children are particularly vulnerable to poor air quality. Continue reading...

The Stiperstones, Shropshire We might have been walking towards a future devoid of the riveting, other-worldly call of the curlewA few Sundays ago, Mary Colwell-Hector and I were walking with a bunch of ornithologists and conservationists along the Stiperstones ridge. The scent of gorse drifted on warm air. Sunlight moved over the heather and farmland finding sheep, meadows and cattle. But our talk was more of what wasn’t there. We should have been seeing curlew, returned from the coast to breed here in the Shropshire-Powys borderlands.The British Trust for Ornithology estimates that 68,000 breeding pairs remain in the UK – about 46% of the 1994 figure. “But where are they? They’re not here, and they’re not in Wales or Ireland,” said Mary, the former producer of Shared Planet, who is walking 500 miles through Ireland and England to highlight fears about the decline of these distinctive waders. Continue reading...

It can be easy to tune out when you think a problem is too big to solve, but there are five things that need to happen now to save the reefWe’ve been hearing a lot lately about the state of the Great Barrier Reef and the major threat it faces. Sometimes it feels overwhelming – reefs are dying and it seems nothing can be done.Actually there is much that can be done, from the Australian government really putting our money where its mouth is, to understanding that science must be at the basis of all action. Continue reading...

Election 2016: Labor unveils broadband pledge as Coalition promises more money for the Great Barrier ReefLet’s start today with a game: how would you rather spend $1bn?

Amid a series of reports detailing the poor state of the reef, Malcolm Turnbull is promising improved water quality and clean energy for the regionMalcolm Turnbull has promised that a re-elected Coalition government will protect the Great Barrier Reef by tackling its two biggest challenges – climate change and water quality.The prime minister will pledge to set up a new $1bn reef fund with $1bn – taken from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s $10bn special account – to invest in projects that will improve water quality, reduce emissions and provide clean energy in the reef catchment region. Continue reading...

The 19th century glassblower’s intricate sculptures of marine life are a window on the ocean 150 years ago, says ecology professor Drew HarvellIn the 1860s, when the Bohemian glassblower Leopold Blaschka began sculpting models of underwater creatures, the Industrial Revolution, population growth and climate change had yet to take their toll on marine biodiversity. Over three decades, using techniques that still baffle experts, Leopold and his son, Rudolf, handmade about 10,000 marine sculptures, each one rendered in minute detail: impossibly delicate anemones, livid orange cuttlefish – creatures at once alien and unnervingly lifelike.In a world before scuba diving, underwater photography or ocean life surveys, the Blaschkas’ models proved an invaluable educational resource, with universities worldwide purchasing collections of glass specimens. One of the largest, with 570 models, belongs to Cornell University in the US, where until recently it was all but forgotten, stowed in a warehouse in a state of disrepair. As a young professor in the 1990s, Dr Drew Harvell began cataloguing the collection, discovering a “time capsule” of 19th-century marine biology. “There’s value in the entire collection,” she says. “It’s what you could see 150 years ago, frozen in time.” Continue reading...

The death of Wei Zei, a student seeking cancer cures online, raises questions about the responsibility of tech companies for the health data they provideChina’s equivalent of Google is under fire. Search engine Baidu has been criticised following the death of 21-year-old student Wei Zai, who used the search engine to research esoteric treatments for his cancer.After Wei Zai’s death, the state-run People’s Daily attacked Baidu, claiming it was ranking search results in exchange for money. “There have been hospitals making profits at the cost of killing patients who were directed by false advertisements paid at a higher rank in search results,” the article claimed, adding, “profit considerations shall not be placed over social responsibility”. Continue reading...

Every hour 10,000 people are born. Fortunately a new crop of eco innovations will help tackle the pressures on our planetThe regularity with which I’m contacted by population worriers – people who think it’s pointless discussing green energy, climate change and ethical pensions when the elephant in the room is actually the new human in the room – is impressive. They say that the planet needs fewer people. End of.The numbers are indeed eye catching. Today there are 7 billion humans alive (twice the number who were alive in 1965) – and each hour we add 10,000 more. By 2050, UN demographers predict, there will be at least 9 billion of us putting a strain on life-sustaining resources. Continue reading...

The shipping industry burns fossil fuels on a grand scale, and scarcely even tries to reduce its emissionsA seafaring adage goes: “If the winds are shifting, adjust your sails.” But even with the disturbing winds of climate change, the shipping industry, with its combustion of fossil fuels (accounting for 2.4% of global emissions), remains outside binding emissions-reduction agreements.There have been some eco efforts, but the Carbon War Room points out that ship owners feel little need to green their fleets, as those hiring the vessels pay the fuel costs. When the price of bunker fuel (the sludgiest oil left over from refining) drops, as it has, eco resolve disappears. Continue reading...

Bubbles was in her early 50s and had lived at the park in San Diego for nearly 30 yearsBubbles, a female pilot whale at SeaWorld in San Diego that was believed to have been the oldest animal of her species in a zoological park, has died.In an online statement, SeaWorld Entertainment Inc said Bubbles was in her early to mid 50s and had been at the park for nearly 30 years. Continue reading...

As the economy grows weaker, the fight over a massive titanium mine near the village of Xolobeni is a symbol of the struggle between traditional industry and a sustainable futureThe dunes appear endless. Behind them lie rolling grassy hills, banana trees, sweet potato fields and thatched huts. There are horses, goats and dogs, but no roads, no towns, and the only constant sound is the crash of the breakers from the Indian Ocean.This is Xolobeni, a remote village on the eastern shore of South Africa and the focus of a bitter dispute over a massive titanium mining project. The outcome will have far-reaching consequences for South Africa – redefining the place of the country’s most famous industry in a rapidly changing nation hit by weak economic growth and deep social problems – and also for the continent. Continue reading...

Digital tracking of creatures from tiny birds to whales offers up new data on the epic trips some species make, and their role in ecology and economicsAristotle thought the mysterious silver eel emerged from the earth fully formed. The young Sigmund Freud could not understand how it reproduced, and modern biologists puzzled for years over whether it ever returned to the Sargasso Sea, where it was known to breed.Last year a team of Canadian scientists found conclusive proof of that extraordinary journey. They strapped tracking devices to 38 eels and followed as they migrated more than 900 miles at a depth of nearly a mile to the Sargasso, in the Atlantic near Bermuda. This year French researchers used geolocators to watch them descending European rivers and passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, heading for the same spot. Continue reading...

Change in government’s energy policy blamed for job losses just as solar power eclipses coal in electricity generationThe solar power industry says it has seen the loss of more than half its 35,000 jobs due to recent changes in government energy policy, just at a time when solar power has eclipsed coal as a major generator of Britain’s electricity.Experts believe ministers had cut subsidies too far and too fast, praising the “seismic”, record-breaking growth of solar in recent years. Continue reading...

Among elite mountain climbers, summiting Everest sans oxygen has become the latest challenge in an already grueling journeyAnother climbing season has finished on Mount Everest, with the inevitable tales of tragedy and triumph.Since 2000, an average of seven people a year have died on Everest. The past two years were especially grim: 19 people were killed by an earthquake-triggered avalanche in 2015, and 16 died in 2014. Continue reading...

The UK spends more than £2bn on cut flowers per year, but around 90% are imported. Now a new breed of growers are determined to grab more of that market, by persuading the public that local and seasonal are the ways to goGeorgie Newbery sometimes has to dodge a hunting barn owl when she rises at 5am to harvest flowers on her seven-acre plot near Wincanton in Somerset. Picking sweet rocket, foxgloves and cornflowers as dawn light streaks over the fields may sound idyllic, but grabbing a cup of tea on a late-May afternoon after despatching her exclusively British-grown posies and bouquets, Newbery laughs at the thought. “If you imagine it’s all standing around in a flower garden with a Roberts radio and a robin singing, you couldn’t be more wrong,” she says, possibly a little tartly.Related: Is crowdfunding the future of horticulture? Continue reading...

South Uist The plant’s uses are many, but the sight of a sunlit field full of daisies is perhaps what we should value mostDaisies are one of our best known and most widely distributed wildflowers, and maybe this is why we sometimes pass them by with barely a second glance. This morning, though, they have stopped me in my tracks and brought a smile to my face.They line the edge of the path, spangle the open grassland, and have so thoroughly covered one fenced pasture that almost all signs of grass have vanished beneath a blanket of white. In the warm sunshine each and every one turns a bright and open face skywards, a response that gave them their name “day’s eye”. Continue reading...

Comedian says she put out an announcement because of the need to protect oceans and the reef, and cannot understand what the fuss is all aboutThe US talkshow queen Ellen DeGeneres is bewildered her call to protect the Great Barrier Reef has sparked a backlash in Australia.DeGeneres made headlines earlier in the week with the release of a video public service announcement as part of the Remember the Reef campaign. Continue reading...

Dale Vince agrees to pay ex-wife Kathleen Wyatt £300,000 after she lodged £1.9m claim more than 20 years after their divorceThe Green energy tycoon Dale Vince has called for a time limit on divorce cash claims after agreeing to pay his ex-wife £300,000 in a financial settlement.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox Continue reading...

A poll of environmental professionals showed most think the UK benefits from EU air pollution rulesThe UK’s air pollution crisis would get worse if the country votes to leave the European Union, according to a new poll of environment professionals.The UK already has levels of air pollution above legal EU limits in many cities, resulting in 40,000 early deaths a year, while ministers are currently lobbying in Brussels against lower air pollution limits. Continue reading...

Tibetan antelopes, tussling Indian rat snakes and Europe’s last primeval forest are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Stretch of water in Ross Sea is ideal place to study marine life and climate change, say scientistsA major diplomatic effort is under way to persuade Russia to agree to a conservation zone in the Ross Sea, a stretch of water in Antarctica that is home to large populations of whales and penguins as well as dozens of species of fish.The Ross Sea is one of the world’s most important ecosystems, a largely untouched marine area which scientists say is the ideal place to study life in the Antarctic and the effects of climate change.

Multiple award-winning Makoko Floating School was a beacon of hope in this Lagos slum until its collapse this week. Now some fear the whole area and its 300,000 residents are at renewed risk of being cleared out for redevelopmentLike most Lagos residents, I was familiar with Makoko Floating School. Its steep, three-storey triangular roof was visible from the Third Mainland Bridge, which cuts dramatically across the Makoko lagoon, the city’s vast waterworld slum. Designed by the Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi, the Floating School was the winner of multiple awards for architecture and urbanism, attracting great international attention and acclaim.But I had never actually been up close until yesterday, when I approached in a rickety wooden canoe piloted by a young man in a burgundy T-shirt and grungy shorts. Continue reading...

Manmade global warming greatly increased the risk of extreme rain affecting the French capital, analysis showsThe Paris floods, that saw extreme rainfall swell the river Seine to its highest level in decades, were made almost twice as likely because of the manmade emissions driving global warming, scientists have found.A three-day period of heavy rain at the end of May saw tens of thousands of people evacuated across France, and the capital’s normally busy river closed to traffic because the water levels were so high under bridges. As artworks in the Louvre were moved to safety and Paris’s cobbled walkways were submerged, the French president, François Hollande, blamed the floods on climate change. Continue reading...