Official forecast for 2015-16 bushfire season identifies most of Victoria and NSW as under heightened risk as El Niño dries areas outVast areas of eastern, southern and western Australia are set to experience worse than normal bushfire conditions this summer, with the developing El Niño expected to significantly exacerbate fire-prone weather.An official forecast of the 2015-16 bushfire season, compiled by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, has identified almost all of Victoria and New South Wales, including Sydney and Melbourne, as having “above normal” bushfire conditions. Continue reading...

Claxton, Norfolk The bat, micro-second by micro-second, sculpted the entire space of that room through bouncing ultra-sonic calls off all the objects presentIt is perhaps the strangest wildlife alarm ever to be heard in our house. It began when our daughter at 3am, outside our bedroom door and shrouded in her duvet (to stop it getting tangled in her hair, she later revealed), announced that there was a bat in her room.Sure enough, there was the improbable and rather forlorn vision of a medium-sized species, perhaps a brown long-eared or a Daubenton’s bat, circling the lamp-lit rectangle of space just above her bed. Its flight path was necessarily short and repetitive. In fact, it reminded me of one of those black ragged props, popular in low-budget vampire movies from the 1950s, that used to circle on wires before the victim’s blood was to be spilt. Continue reading...

President says massive areas of ice disappearing every year are not some far-off problem but ‘a leading indicator of what the entire planet faces’Shrinking Alaskan glaciers served as a vivid backdrop for Barack Obama’s latest push for action on climate change in Anchorage on Monday night as he warned that the equivalent of 75 blocks of ice the size of the national mall in Washington were melting from the state every year.

Writer Tom Switzer has attacked climate change activists as ‘watermelons’ who conceal their socialist agendas under their ‘green skin’. Appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program, Canadian author Naomi Klein said rightwingers needs to be more ‘scientifically honest’. Klein also said the world view of denialists would collapse if the science of human-induced climate change is true Continue reading...

Treatment of those held is ‘tantamount to torture … I find that more shocking than they fact they were going to check papers on the streets of Melbourne’Australians should take to the streets to protest over the treatment of refugees in Nauru that is “tantamount to torture” rather than just focus on the activities of the border force in Melbourne, Canadian author Naomi Klein has said.Related: All children should be removed from Nauru detention, Senate inquiry finds Continue reading...

An antidote to the recent rain is the August edition of Drought News from the European Commission. This details the continuous high temperatures that parts of Europe have been experiencing, along with up to 60% less rainfall.France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Czech Republic, northern Italy and northern Spain experienced exceptional conditions. Temperatures topped 30C for 30 days in these countries and 40 days in Spain. This combined with lack of rain had a serious effect on vegetation and river flows. Continue reading...

The president will trek across melting glaciers and visit threatened coastal communities but critics decry decision to allow Shell to drill for oil in ArcticBarack Obama will use a trek across Alaska’s melting glaciers and permafrost to showcase the fight against climate change during a three-day visit to the state starting on Monday. Continue reading...

Ahead of his trip to the Arctic, President Obama said ‘alarm bells are ringing’ about climate change. Here in Alaska, sirens have been sounding for decadesHow can we say no to drilling in the Arctic when we use oil every day? We use it for heating our houses, fueling our four-wheelers and cooking our meals. But saying no to oil does not mean we have to go back to old times.When I grew up in Point Hope, 50 years ago, we used dog sleds for transportation, seal oil for warmth, whale bones and sod for shelter. All these energy sources came from our land and our ocean through the animals to us.

The latest cull is not honest, scientific or even effective at containing bovine TB. It is simply a political move to appease countryside votersJoin me, dear urban dwelling, bunny-hugging Guardian reader, in setting aside your ethical and environmental concerns about killing our biggest surviving carnivorous wild animal, and follow this, the most rational case that can be made in favour of England’s badger cull.Small dairy farmers are struggling. Bovine TB is a genuine problem in West Country hotspots and although farmers receive compensation for slaughtered cattle, it doesn’t cover their costs. Cattle and badgers transmit the disease to each other, with the latter being just one “wildlife reservoir” of a poorly understood disease that is spread by everything from pigs to deer. An eight-year scientific study estimated that a rigorous badger cull could reduce the rate of increase in cattle TB by 12-16% over nine years. Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 4 September 1915The luxuriance of early autumn is seen in the open wood not less than in the orchard. Leaves of the horse chestnut and the sycamore litter the ground, but the beech and the oak are beautifully green. There is a great show of acorns this year; they will be very useful for the cottagers and young porkers. Most of the gleanings, or leasings, as some country folk call them, will probably be used for mixing with the strong bitter fruit of the oak. Of old they used, after gathering the corn, a long and slow process, to take aprons full across to a watermill worked by a stream - where the fishing is as good as ever; but the mill has gone, steam and steel have captured all: the millstone stands upright against a worn beam of the wall, and the water-rat comes up to stroke his whiskers on its edges. Bread from leased corn always had a fuller, sweeter flavour than you get now from the finely dressed flour. Only “pollard” for the June calf and “sharps” for the trough were taken out of the ground corn, then, worked up with barm, baked and kept on a dairy shelf, it cut as ripe and sweet as a russet apple. Now we rub or beat the grain out for the fowls, and they enjoy it finely until the more masterful ducks come up and simply hustle them about the yard. Geese and ducks have no respect for the proper amenities of farmyard life. Continue reading...

As Lock the Gate prepares to challenge approval to expand the Darling Downs project, campaigners say they are doing the government’s dirty workThe Queensland government is relying on “meanie greenies” to take the heat for standing up to a controversial coalmine expansion, according to a veteran activist.Lock the Gate will help fund a state land court challenge to the New Acland coal project, which has received draft environmental approval from the Palaszczuk Labor government despite its previously expressed reservations about a project run by a major Liberal party donor. Continue reading...

Fernando Funes Monzote’s theories of ‘agroecology’ bear fruit as he aims to inspire others to make the most of their landLike all homestead stories, Fernando Funes Monzote’s starts with an epic battle against harsh elements and long odds. Funes, a university-trained agronomist, settled on a badly eroded, brushy hillside outside Havana four years ago and began digging a well into the rocky soil. The other farmers nearby thought he was crazy, or worse – a dilettante with a fancy PhD whose talk of “agroecology” would soon crash into the realities of Cuban farming.Funes had no drill, so he and a helper had to break through layers of rock with picks and hand tools. Seven months later and 15 metres down, they struck a gushing spring of cool, clear water. “To me, it was a metaphor for agroecology,” said Funes, 44, referring to the environmentally minded farm management techniques he studied here and in the Netherlands. “A lot of hard work by hand, and persistence, but a result that is worth the effort.” Continue reading...

Helvellyn, Lake District This fresh running drinking water is always available, whether there has been rain or drought; it is an elixir from Mother Nature’s cooler, with or without ice (in winter)Of all the places in Lakeland where you can be guaranteed to find fresh running drinking water, Brownrigg Well is the highest. It graces Helvellyn (950m) 100m or so below the summit and has long assuaged the thirsts of shepherds and fell runners. Knowing its location means there is less need to carry bottled water uphill. Although called a “well”, this is not a place to retrieve water in a bucket, but a spring that flows from the hillside. Always available, whether there has been rain, as in recent weeks, or drought, it is an elixir from Mother Nature’s cooler, with or without ice (in winter). I can testify to this after tasting a bottle of the stuff brought down by friends.The late Ernie Brownrigg, who was the shepherd for Manchester Waterworks, once took me to task for suggesting the well was named after him. “Don’t listen to the ‘lees’ that folk tell you,” he said, twanging his galuses (braces) while playing dominoes in the King’s Head Inn at Thirlspot by the A591. “Don’t claim I was that Brownrigg. I don’t ken who it was.” Continue reading...

Authorities seek to widen a road that would cut wildlife corridors and put the future sustainability of three tiger reserves at risk

Vancouver is normally one of the world’s cleanest cities but this July its air resembled that in Beijing due to smoke and ash from forest fires over 200 kilometres away. Further fires along the western side of the US and Canada have caused numerous health warnings especially at night when smoke settled on valley communities. During August hot weather across southern Europe also led to forest fires in Spain, Portugal and Greece.Related: Pollutionwatch: The world's dirtiest cities Continue reading...

Officials close Morro Strand state beach for 72 hours after great white shark swims under Elinor Dempsey and bites 35cm hole in surfboardA surfer has escaped injury after a great white shark bit her board, off California’s central coast.Elinor Dempsey, 54, said she was surfing at Morro Strand state beach, just north of Morro Bay, at about 10am when a shark swam under her board and bit it, leaving a35cm-wide bite mark. Dempsey pushed her board towards the shark as she jumped off. Continue reading...

Industry minister, Miao Wei, says local government and companies involved would have to subsidise plans made to help improve pollution levelsLocal governments in China have submitted plans to relocate or upgrade almost 1,000 chemical plants in the wake of the massive explosions in Tianjin earlier this month that killed 147 people.The blast at a warehouse storing toxic chemicals was China’s worst industrial accident in recent years. There has been criticism it was located too close to densely populated residential areas. Continue reading...

A sensational and shocking film provides the first direct evidence linking ivory trafficking to terrorismWarlords of Ivory shows the results of a year-long investigation by National Geographic reporter Bryan Christy. It documents atrocities committed against people and wildlife, on an almost unimaginable scale, by an ivory trafficking network coordinated by two of Africa’s most notorious war criminals.

A Europe-wide project asks iPhone users to help monitor levels of pollution in major citiesTurn off Tinder and exit Instagram – scientists want you to turn your iPhones to research. Launching on Tuesday, the iSpex-EU project aims to recruit people from major cities across Europe, including Manchester and London, to take part in an initiative to monitor levels of air pollution.Run during the International Year of Light, a worldwide celebration of light and light-based technologies this year, the project aims to raise awareness of air pollution and contribute to scientific research by encouraging people to use their mobile phones to record levels of airborne particles and droplets known as atmospheric aerosols. Continue reading...

People love Bromptons: not just suited commuters but maître d’s and cinema ushers. What’s the big deal?Brompton M3L

Be wary of where your charcoal comes from – it may be produced under ‘dismal standards’ and with dwindling resourcesGas barbecues are cleaner than charcoal. But for those determined to stick with old-school pit mastery, the central message is: check your fuel.This edict is inspired by a recent report from forestry NGO Fern.org. It’s not the cheeriest summer reading title: “Playing with Fire: Human Misery, Environmental Destruction and Summer BBQs”. But it’s eye-opening. Small-scale charcoal production has the potential to be a lifeline in rural economies all over the world. Sadly that’s not happening. Continue reading...

An Arctic voyage through the awe-inspiring Northwest Passage shows that, with oil drilling in the far north on the way, rapid action is needed to protect the regionThe Northwest Passage is not an obvious choice for a holiday cruise. It is, after all, one of the most notorious ocean routes. Many hundreds of sailors died in opening up the seaway, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans via the Canadian Arctic, before it was conquered just over a century ago.But the Arctic today is changing. Global warming is altering it at a rate that is unmatched anywhere else on Earth, and a journey once considered grotesquely dangerous has become a voyage now feasible for the inquiring traveller. Today you can sail through the Northwest Passage, as I did last week, on a ship that offers hot-tubs, bars and restaurants, albeit with armed protection against polar bears and kit for keeping out the cold. Continue reading...

Government cuts to funding for solar panel installation are short-sightedIn terms of timing, last week’s government decision to slash subsidies that help families and small businesses install solar panels could not have been worse. This year promises to be the hottest on record. At the same time, international negotiations on the establishment of climate change controls are scheduled to reach their peak in Paris in a few months.The world is looking to developed nations to set an example on how to cut the carbon emissions that are triggering global temperature rises and the British government could once have played an authoritative role in these talks. Unfortunately, David Cameron’s administration has decided, over the last few months, to abandon nearly all its commitments to protecting the environment and to its pledges to create new green technologies that could wean us off our urge to burn fossil fuels. Continue reading...

The best shots from Robin McKie’s journey through the north-west passage. Read the full account here

US president Barack Obama defends the decision to allow the oil company Shell to drill in the Arctic Ocean. Speaking during his weekly televised address on Saturday, Obama says the US economy needs oil and gas until it can make the transition to renewable energy and should count on domestic fossil fuels rather than importing them. His message comes on the eve of a three-day climate change awareness tour of Alaska Continue reading...

President accused of undermining own agenda with decision to allow hunt for oil in Arctic, as he prepares for three-day tour to showcase effects of climate changeBarack Obama has been forced to defend his decision to allow the hunt for oil in the last great wilderness of the Arctic, on the eve of an historic visit to Alaska intended to spur the fight against climate change.Related: Extreme Arctic sea ice melt forces thousands of walruses ashore in Alaska Continue reading...

Conservationist Saba Douglas-Hamilton grew up close to crocodiles. Her family now help to look after elephants in Kenya and star in a new BBC series, This Wild LifeMost British parents worry about their children crossing the road safely. Saba Douglas-Hamilton worries about snakes and scorpions.The 45-year-old wildlife filmmaker lives with her husband, Frank Pope, 42, and their daughters Selkie, six, and four-year-old twins, Luna and Mayian, in Kenya’s Samburu national reserve. It has no paved roads, is sparsely populated by nomadic herders, the long grasses teem with snakes, and crocodiles wait in the shallow river. For the family, this wild patch of Africa is paradise. The upcoming 10-part BBC series This Wild Life follows their daily dramas as they raise their young children while running an eco-lodge and conservation charity.Saba is no stranger to this kind of life. Her own childhood, living in the wild, war-torn corners of Africa, was a crash course in survival. She and her younger sister, Dudu, spent days in the back of a Jeep tracking elephants with their Scottish father, zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, and Italian mother, Oria. They washed in crocodile-infested rivers while their dad kept watch, and slept under the stars with nothing but a mosquito net. They had family holidays in Lamu on the Kenyan coast, where they fished for Nile perch and rode horses bareback. Continue reading...

Bosley Cloud, Cheshire As folklore has it, witches used juices squeezed from the flowers to turn themselves into hares; the Victorians believed fairies slept in the bellsToday the sky is washed-out blue silk with pearl-grey ribbons trailing. The scent of dying leaves mingles with honeysuckle as the sun rises; buttery light spreads over patchwork fields, illuminating snapshot moments: a circle of cows, a squabble of hens, donkeys and even alpacas the colour of mushroom caps and conkers.I am walking the lower slopes of Bosley Cloud – the name is derived from the Old English clud, meaning a rock; it lies on the Cheshire-Staffordshire border near Congleton, a few miles from the Peak District national park. Notices nailed to trees tell of sheepdog trials. At the farm there are logs, small hay bales and free-range eggs for sale. The plaintive song of a robin comes from the allotment, I hear it among the neat rows of beans, peas and shaggy-headed dahlias, but can’t see it. Above, there is the twittering babble of swallows gathering on telegraph wires. Hedgerows glisten with silvery spiders’ webs, scarlet rosehips and clots of blackberries. Somewhere in the distance a gun goes off and a flock of wood pigeons take flight. Continue reading...

City links: Car-free Paris, skyscrapers in a Mumbai slum, floating food forests in New York and Nairobi’s smart bus system feature in this week’s best city storiesThe best city stories from around the web this week see Paris gearing up to get rid of cars (for one day only), vacant homes spreading across Tokyo’s satellite cities, a floating food forest in New York and a skycraper made of shipping containers in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum.We’d love to hear your responses to these stories, and any others you’ve read recently, both on Guardian Cities and elsewhere. Just share your thoughts in the comments below. Continue reading...

Newcastle is the seventh council in Australia to announce it will shun fossil fuels, reports the Sydney Morning HeraldNewcastle city council in Australia has voted to exit holdings in the big four banks if they continue to fund fossil fuel projects. About 80% of the Australian city of Newcastle council’s $270m investment portfolio is held in the big four banks, mostly through term deposits. Those investments are spread evenly across the big four.

Damp basements, cracked walls and wallpapers dotted with mould patches – life in the town built on marshland is getting sticky, reports De StandaardWith street names such as Gijzelaarsweg (Hostage Way), Politiek Gevangenenlaan (Political Prisoners’ Avenue) and Helden Plein (Heroes’ Square), the Ghent suburb of Malem is a place of highs and lows. Especially a place of lows. Malem is one of the lowest-lying areas of the province: a marshy area west of Ghent, picturesque, but inexorably embraced by the Leie (or Lys) river.

Bugs are a greener alternative source of protein, but US consumers are still grossed out by eating crickets. Will companies be able to make insect farming viable?Chapul, Exo and Jungle – three protein bars making their way to supermarket shelves – have one thing in common: crickets. All three include cricket flour, which is touted by their manufacturers as an environmentally friendly alternative to milk or soy protein. Continue reading...

Third region in England gets a go-ahead despite protests and controversial results of pilot culls in Gloucestershire and SomersetThe government will extend the badger cull to Dorset as part of a drive to limit tuberculosis in cattle, it was announced on Friday. The announcement follows controversial pilots in Gloucestershire and Somerset running over the past two years, with Natural England issuing licences to companies that permit six weeks of continuous culling in the three areas until January.

Thai vets conduct health checks on 14 orangutans before their repatriation to Indonesia. Most of the animals have been confiscated from the entertainment business in Phuket; others were recovered from smugglers. The orangutans are being examined to ensure they are free of diseases and are expected to return to Indonesia in September Continue reading...

South West Water confirms sewage was pumped into sea off Polzeath beach in Cornwall, where PM and his wife have holidayed every year since 2010David Cameron, chillaxing with his wife Samantha in Cornwall, presumably thought he was safe from a shower of excrement – at least until PMQs begins again in September. But the unlucky PM chose the wrong moment to bodyboard with his wife Samantha, as the surf was riven with diluted sewage.South West Water confirmed to the Times that sewage was pumped into the sea on Sunday morning and on Wednesday afternoon off Polzeath beach, where the Camerons have holidayed every year since 2010. The couple were photographed bodyboarding for about an hour on Monday and Tuesday. Continue reading...

California Democrats’ push to curb emissions and promote clean energy would alter how the state does business and change the way residents liveWith only a few days left in the current session of the California legislature, an aggressive political and public relations fight between the oil industry and top lawmakers over climate change legislation is moving into a final round.At stake is the passage of far-reaching environmental bills that would fundamentally alter the way the state does business and deals with planet-warming pollution – but would likely also change the way everyday Californians travel, live and consume. Continue reading...

Black-capped kingfishers, yellow-vented bulbuls and toucans of Panama feature in this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

At a 10-year commemoration for hurricane Katrina, we catch up with leaders from the business, NGO and political worlds to ask what they think of environmental organisations taking money from big oil to help rebuild Louisiana. And if that fails to grab you, we ask Harry Shearer to weigh in, too Continue reading...

Environmentalist and Guardian writer George Monbiot butchers and cooks a squirrel on the BBC’s Newsnight on Thursday. Monbiot, who lives in Powys, Wales, prompted fierce debate on social media after he revealed he had cooked and eaten a squirrel after finding it dead but still warm at the roadside. He decided to demonstrate the process in the Newsnight studio with presenter James O’Brien, to promote discussion about eating roadkill and the ethics of meat productionWatch the full video on Newsnight

Fermyn Woods, Northamptonshire I have it all to myself, and in two hours of exploring long open rides and twisting enclosed trails I see no other humanThe moniker Fermyn Woods applies to a scatter of woods. I am in the biggest chunk, covering three square kilometres of land, but a clear kilometre away from the renowned Fermyn Wood, the bit that draws crowds to its playground and purple emperor butterflies.In today’s wood, the names tell of a mottled history – Harry’s Park Wood, Meadow Leys, Old Dry Bushes. Clearly this was not always hazel coppice, and ash and oak high forest, with patches of conifer plantation: in the past, livestock roamed meadows and park woodland. Continue reading...

If Tony Abbott wants to focus on jobs, he has to abandon his obsession with coal – a capital intensive industry that creates fewer jobs than the horse industryThe prime minister has repeatedly said that the next election should be about jobs. He has attempted to kick-start a new “economy versus environment” strategy in relation to a coal mining. According to the ABS a huge 0.3% of Australians are currently employed in coal mining. If the coal industry trebled in size tomorrow it still wouldn’t be enough to create jobs for the extra 101,900 people who have become unemployed since Tony Abbott became prime minister.Anyone who has ever seen an open cut coal mine will understand why they don’t create a lot of jobs. Work that was once done by men with picks and shovels is now done by explosives and enormous machines. Economists call such industries “capital intensive” which is another way of saying “doesn’t create many jobs”. Continue reading...