South Uist The shrew makes a swift-footed bustling sprint of a metre or so and then comes to an abrupt haltWhen my husband calls me to the window, I can’t work out what it is about the motionless dark brown object on the lawn that has attracted his attention. It’s only partly visible among the blades of grass and seems to be about the size of an unshelled walnut.I’m about to ask when the shrew, for that is what it turns out to be, bursts into action. It makes a swift-footed bustling sprint of a metre or so and then comes to an abrupt halt, snout down in the short grass, posterior raised in the air, as it seizes whatever prey it has found. Continue reading...

RWE Innogy announces support of Siemens Financial Services, Macquarie Capital and UK’s Green Investment BankConstruction of a £1.5bn windfarm off the Suffolk coast is to go ahead in November with the creation of nearly 800 jobs, after three new partners were found to back the project.

Fickle, unpredictable and not-quite-as-good-as-hoped for – it’s been a typical British summer and a typically topsy-turvy butterfly season.The year began brightly with large numbers of overwintering brimstones, but the next generation didn’t make its presence felt in midsummer. It is a bit of a mystery why so few peacocks emerged, because their caterpillars were plentiful on nettles: some may have gone straight into hibernation, but it’s likely that others fell victim to parasitic wasps and flies. Continue reading...

President Evo Morales reassured public that controversial project, which will use Russian technology and help from Argentina, will not harm environmentBolivia has announced plans to build a $300m nuclear complex, including a research reactor, with Russian technology and help from Argentina.President Evo Morales told reporters the center will include a cyclotron for radiopharmaeuticals, a multi-purpose gamma irradiation plant and a research reactor. Continue reading...

Environment ministers from all over the world attend one-day conference on deforestation and climate change in LondonDeforestation may have triggered the recent Ebola outbreak in west Africa, France’s environment minister Ségolène Royal told a London summit hosted by the Prince of Wales ahead of next month’s Cop21 conference.

Spanish NGOs, incensed at the controversial ‘sun tax’ that charges citizens for creating their own energy, have called for a new ‘vice-presidency’ on sustainability, reports El PaisThe five main green organisations operating in Spain have launched an environmental appeal to political parties in the run-up to December’s general elections.Friends of the Earth, Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace, SEO/BirdLife and WWF have stressed the urgent need for any new government to create a vice-presidency for sustainability, that would be able to coordinate and oversee cross-sector policy making. Continue reading...

In a country where only 40% of people have access to grid electricity, the government is looking to sunshine to power health centres and homesBefore solar panels were installed at Masaki village’s only health centre, doctors, nurses and midwives had to use dim flashlights or the glow from their cellphones to deliver babies and treat night-time emergencies.In one case in 2010, a man arrived late after a motorcycle accident and needed a wound stitching. As the nurse began the procedure by the light of her torch, she felt a cold slithering sensation against her legs. Continue reading...

A growing number of lawsuits in France have begun to expose the serious risk faced by those working on non-organic vineyardsWenny Tari knows a thing or two about wine. She and her husband Gabriel have been making it since 1982, when they inherited a vineyard in France’s picturesque Languedoc region in the south of the country.Their 40 hectare Chateau de Brau vineyard is home to more than 170,000 individual vines, including some of the world’s best known grape varieties such as merlot, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. They produce around 150,000 bottles of wine a year, 20,000 of which are exported to the UK. Continue reading...

Fish farms have divided critics. But problems around pollution and the use of wild fish as feed could be resolved by a new, self-contained approach to fish farming.

Cost for nuclear power station will be passed on to nearly 30 million customers, while critics warn it could rise to £45bnThe UK’s first new nuclear power station for a generation will cost electricity customers at least £4.4bn and the subsidy bill could reach £20bn, the government has revealed.The charges, which will be passed on to nearly 30 million customers, are a result of ministers’ decision to guarantee the new Hinkley Point C operators £92.50 for every unit of electricity – more than double the current market price. Continue reading...

Recall of affected cars by the end of 2016 would avoid more than 130 further early deaths, research showsNearly 60 people will die prematurely from the excess air pollution caused by Volkswagen cheating emissions tests in the US, according to a new study.The first peer-reviewed estimate of the public health impacts of VW’s rigging of tests for 482,000 diesel cars in the US found that if the company recalls all the affected cars by the end of 2016, more than 130 further early deaths could be avoided. Continue reading...

Watch the trailer for filmmakers Holly Morris and Anne Bogart’s documentary about the extraordinary survival story of the Ukrainian women who refused to leave their homes following the nuclear disaster in 1986. The film follows the community living and working within the exclusion zone, which also includes scientists, bureaucrats and illegal ‘stalkers’ Continue reading...

Farmers are concerned that the reintroduced predator will kill livestock, but research from other countries shows these fears are unfoundedDepending on who you ask, the Eurasian lynx is either a benign woodland wonder or a sheep-stalking terror. In reality, any lynx can be either or none of these things. But research from other European countries to which they have returned tells us that a mooted reintroduction to Britain is unlikely to trouble farmers.The campaign to restore the 30kg cat to the UK gathered steam this week as the proposal was opened to stakeholder consultation. There is no suggestion the lynx will attack humans, but the National Farmers Union (NFU) was quick to release a statement laying out its objections. Continue reading...

Carnivorous birds, which help stem spread of disease by eating carcasses that would otherwise rot, targeted by poachersAfrica’s vultures are vanishing, according to a new report, posing a potential health risk to humans and livestock, since populations of other scavengers such as rats and jackals could rise as a result.The assessment, carried out by the conservation group BirdLife International, found that six of Africa’s 11 vulture species were at risk of extinction. Deliberate targeting by poachers is one of the reasons, as the birds, which circle the sites where they feed, can alert authorities to the carcasses of illegally killed animals. Continue reading...

Months of uncontrolled forest fires catapult Indonesia above China and US as biggest global climate polluter, as president vows to tackle toxic smogIndonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, arrived in South Sumatra on Thursday, pledging to tackle the raging forest fires that have engulfed the country and its neighbours in thick smog for almost three months.Related: Indonesia burning: forest fires predicted to be worst on record Continue reading...

Italian photographer Bruno D’Amicis has won the 2015 Fritz Pölking prize with his photography story ‘Fennec, little ghost of the dunes’. The award, named in honour of wildlife photographer Fritz Pölking, who died in 2007, is run by the Society of German Nature Photographers. It is one of the categories in the GDT’s European wildlife photographer of the year awards Continue reading...

A new documentary follows the unlikely rebel grandmothers who returned to their radioactive homes after the nuclear disasterOn 26 April 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactor No 4 blew up after a cooling test. The resulting nuclear fire lasted 10 days, spewing 400 times as much radiation as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.Today Chernobyl’s soil, water, and air are among the most highly contaminated on Earth. The reactor is at the centre of a 1,000-square-mile “exclusion zone”, a quarantined no-man’s land complete with border guards, passport control and radiation monitoring. Continue reading...

Settlements understood to resolve outstanding claims from 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that spewed 134m gallons of oil into the seaAll five Gulf of Mexico states have reached a settlement with the owner of the offshore drilling rig involved in the 2010 BP oil spill.A court filing from Transocean and attorneys for Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas said all of the states had entered a settlement agreement. Alabama’s governor announced that state’s settlement with Transocean last week. Continue reading...

‘Global wave of extinction lapping at UK shores’ as latest list of endangered species classifies birds alongside African elephant and lion

Pit left by fallen tree, lined with cobbles, shows hunter-gatherers’ sophisticated understanding of landscapeEvidence that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were environmentally aware home builders has emerged a mile from Stonehenge – together with a stone age version of the storage heater.Archaeologists have expressed astonishment at the 6,000-year-old discovery – the stone age equivalent of an eco home – in a heavily wooded spot 15 metres away from the busy A303 in Wiltshire. Continue reading...

As the northern hemisphere slides into winter the southern hemisphere is sliding into summer or, in the case of Australia, diving into summer. On 6 October, Melbourne hit 35°C, breaking records for the hottest start to this month, while Sydney and Adelaide have had a string of days over 30°C.But for Australians this record-breaking heat is starting to become familiar. A study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , shows that since 2000 hot record-breaking events on average have outnumbered cold record-breaking events by 12 to one. Climate simulations show this imbalance would not occur under natural climate variability, and that human-caused warming is behind the plethora of hot records. Continue reading...

It’s becoming tiresome hearing government ministers justify their cuts to renewable energy subsidies on the basis that industries must “stand on their own two feet” (Energy minister ‘open-minded’ about UK solar subsidy cuts, 20 October). Energy minister Andrea Leadsom’s assertion that “I don’t think anyone here would advocate an industry that only survives because of a subsidy paid by the billpayer” may sound vaguely reasonable if a) we didn’t have the tricky little problem of climate change to contend with, and b) other energy industries weren’t also subsidised. Your article rightly highlights the enormous subsidies for nuclear, but doesn’t mention those also being given to the fossil fuel industry.According to the IMF, the UK will spend approximately £26bn on fossil fuel subsidies this year, factoring in new World Health Organisation estimates on harm to health from pollution exposure. By comparison, Department of Energy and Climate Change figures show the cost of supporting renewables in 2014-15 was £3.5bn, expected to rise to £4.3bn in 2015-16. Put another way, every UK citizen pays £412 in fossil fuel subsidies, and just £55 for renewables. How are we ever to wean ourselves off fossil fuels when government policy is so skewed in their favour?

Green MEPs describe newly minted test procedure, which will allow car manufactures to emit more than twice legal limit of NOx, as scandalousCarmakers have won delays to a more stringent “real driving emissions” test, which will allow them to belch out more than twice the legal limit of deadly nitrogen oxides (NOx) from 2019 and up to 50% more from 2021.The introduction of the tests has been delayed by a year by the European commission. Continue reading...

There are widespread forest fires in Indonesia almost every year during the dry season, but this year’s are proving particularly devastating, destroying vast tracts of jungle and blanketing neighbouring countries in toxic smog Continue reading...

Treasury unexpectedly axes incentive for building new renewable energy sources, on top of previously announced subsidy cutsThe government plans to cut tax reliefs for community energy schemes to build new renewable power capacity such as solar and wind in a move that will deal a further blow to the UK’s embattled renewables sector, green campaigners have warned.The Treasury is to remove tax reliefs of 30% or more for community energy schemes that reduced the risk for investors and encouraged private capital to help build new energy capacity. Continue reading...

Nine countries warn European commission not to weaken birds and habitats directives in favour of cutting red tape for business - but UK is not among themAn alliance of nine European governments, led by Germany and including France, Spain, Italy and Poland, have written to the European commission to warn it not to dismantle nature protection laws.But conservationists have questioned why Britain is not part of the effort to publicly defend the habitats and birds directives ahead of a review by the commission aimed at cutting red tape for business. Continue reading...

Breaking open a locked cabinet belonging to Maxwell Knight, naturalist and spy, yields not Top Secret documents but a passionate scientific plea ...As excitement over Spectre reaches fever-pitch, the last written works of the real-life M have been discovered in a filing cabinet. They too contain a haunting, terrible truth, not about a sinister organisation but the depredations of industry on the world of nature.The observations contained in a newly-discovered and unpublished manuscript, The Frightened Face of Nature, are the work of one of MI5’s most intriguing and talented employees, Major Charles Henry Maxwell Knight, generally considered to be the original for Ian Fleming’s M. Knight’s life as a second world war spycatcher saw him inter alia penetrate British fascist movements, foil a plot to stop the Americans from entering the war and debilitate Britain’s burgeoning “fifth column” Nazi sympathisers. Continue reading...

Conservationist whose work led to a ban on pesticides such as DDT, and so helped populations of birds of prey to recoverNorman Moore, who has died aged 92, was a gentle giant in the field of wildlife and conservation policies. He emerged into the public arena during the 1960s as leader of a team that highlighted the devastating effects that organochlorine pesticides were having on British wildlife. The revelation eventually led to a ban on pesticides such as DDT, followed by a slow but dramatic recovery in the populations of many animals at the top of the food chain, in particular birds such as peregrines, eagles, red kites and sparrowhawks.Moore’s team made its findings at the Nature Conservancy’s Monks Wood research laboratory near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, where, from 1960, he was head of the toxic chemicals and wildlife division. The team found that dramatic declines in numbers among birds of prey were primarily a result of egg-shell thinning caused by pesticides, and that species were under threat of extermination because their eggs were structurally too weak to survive in the nest. Continue reading...

Pies, coffee, beer and ice cream – pretty much anything can be pumpkin-flavored at this time of year making the seasonal squash a multimillion-dollar businessWith Halloween just days away, pumpkins are out in full force – sitting on your neighbor’s stoop, decorating your co-worker’s desk or giving your local coffee shop that autumn-y feel.Orange really is the new black – and not just when it comes to decorations. Continue reading...

With the oil giant vouching for the science of climate change 25 years ago, there is no way we would have wasted decades in fruitless argumentLike all proper scandals, the #Exxonknew revelations have begun to spin off new dramas and lines of inquiry. Presidential candidates have begun to call for Department of Justice investigations, and company spokesmen have begun to dig themselves deeper into the inevitable holes as they try to excuse the inexcusable.(Worst idea: attack Pulitzer prize-winning reporters as “anti-oil and gas activists”) Continue reading...

You could just boil less water in an ordinary kettle. But most of us don’t, because we’re awfulThe Wahl EcoLogyk kettle (£59.99, ethicalsuperstore.com) is a bicameral water heater with a plunger-controlled partition. Regulating fluid transfer between reservoirs ensures only the necessary volume is boiled. Continue reading...

Dung is vital to life on Earth. The mass extinction of large mammals – and our squeamishness at our own bodily functions – is an environmental tragedyIt’s a logical result of extinction, so one wonders why no one bothered to do the sum before: what happened to the world when it lost the cumulative billions of tonnes of faeces produced by mammoths, sloths and whales? A new study from the University of Vermont has shown that the planet has suffered twofold from the removal of this biomass. Not only from the lack of diversity created by the extinctions of ancient megafauna and modern, human-induced depletions of many species – from seabirds to elephants, and whales – but from what they once did for our planet by spreading their poo around, redistributing nutrients and fertilising new growth.“The past was a world of giants,” the new paper rhapsodises, evoking an Edenic world – albeit one full of poo. Dr Joe Roman, co-author of the study, says: “This once was a world that had 10 times more whales, 20 times more anadromous fish like salmon, double the number of seabirds, and 10 times more large herbivores like giant sloths and mastodons and mammoths … this broken global cycle may weaken ecosystem health, fisheries and agriculture.” Continue reading...

Campaigners condemn UK moves to vote down legally binding EU curbs on agricultural emissions, warning they could cause 3,000 more deaths a yearThe UK government’s opposition to binding cuts in pollution from farms could lead to 3,000 more deaths in the UK, according to research cited by the environmental NGO ClientEarth.An advisory paper sent to MEPs by the UK’s environment department and seen by the Guardian, recommends voting down proposals in Strasbourg today for legally binding curbs on emissions of ammonia, methane and particulates from the agricultural sector. Cumulatively, they are thought to be responsible for an annual 400,000 deaths in Europe. Continue reading...

At least 80 world leaders, including Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, David Cameron and Narendra Modi, will join talks aiming to forge a new global climate dealAt least 80 world leaders, including Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, David Cameron and Narendra Modi, will attend a summit tasked with agreeing a global climate pact in Paris in December.Diplomats endorsed the outlines of the proposed deal in Bonn on Friday after five days of fraught negotiation that highlighted just how much work remains to be done in Paris. Continue reading...

Are you more or less concerned about climate change than you were? And what are you doing to cut your emissions? Share your thoughts with us before the Paris climate talks next monthWorld leaders will meet in Paris next month for the latest climate summit, where they will discuss a possible new global agreement to tackle global warming. But what, if anything, are ordinary people doing about their own carbon emissions?Current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions run out in 2020, so in Paris governments from more than 190 nations will need to decide what happens for the decade after that at least, and potentially beyond. Continue reading...

Frank Bainimarama says: ‘The Australian government, in particular, seems intent on putting its own immediate economic interests first’The prime minister of Fiji has delivered a blistering broadside at his Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, over the “climate change deniers” in his government who are helping doom Australia’s “unlucky island neighbours”.

Nineteen people have died and half a million have fallen ill in two months as haze from thousands of fires chokes south-east AsiaThe death toll from acrid haze blanketing parts of Indonesia has climbed to 19, a minister said Wednesday, almost double the previous figure as the crisis from widespread forest fires worsens.

River Severn, Shrewsbury A missile of glistening skin and fin, the salmon is propelled by instinct upstreamThe clocks have gone back for the winter and the salmon are leaping forward. It’s a fine October day: high cloud in a blue sky, a brassy glow in the trees. A couple of days of rain in the Welsh hills is now pouring over the weir. I join a small group of people holding phones and cameras, gathered at the railings of the weir, watching the water with rapt attention.The river crosses the weir in two steps. It licks smoothly over the lip, down a slope with a rough surface that makes dancing spiders of foam, then riffles taut and quick across a shelf to plunge into roiling white-water before resuming composure downstream. Continue reading...

Australian campaigners to bring court case in a bid to prevent whaling season from going aheadEnvironmental campaigners in Australia have mounted a fresh attempt to prevent Japan from killing hundreds of whales in the Antarctic this winter, as officials in Tokyo indicated they would ignore an international ban on the country’s “scientific” expeditions imposed last year.

PM tells Adelaide radio that he was sceptical Australia would ever build nuclear power stations, but a larger role in nuclear fuel industry was worth exploringAustralia should “look closely” at expanding its role in the global nuclear energy industry, including leasing fuel rods to other countries and then storing the waste afterwards, Malcolm Turnbull has said.But the prime minister said he was “sceptical” about whether Australia would ever build its own nuclear power stations to provide electricity to domestic customers, given the country had plentiful access to coal, gas, wind and solar sources. Continue reading...

Report says rising heat stress could threaten labour capacity across region, with Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia worst hitRising temperatures and humidity due to climate change are likely to increase the number of days with unsafe “heat stress”, putting south-east Asia at great risk of significant drops in productivity, a research firm said on Wednesday.Related: Extreme heatwaves could push Gulf climate beyond human endurance, study shows Continue reading...