World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will be celebrated on 1 September to give people opportunity to reflection upon ‘the adoption of appropriate lifestyles’Pope Francis has established an annual day of global prayer “for the Care of Creation” to boost support for the environment, the Vatican said on Monday.

The Animas River in Colorado now glows orange after 3m gallons of toxins spilled in from a nearby gold mine, leaving the small community devastated as water-based tourism plummets and recovery looks to be a long way offIn the shadow of the jagged, 14,000-foot-plus San Juan mountain range sits the fertile valley where Jennifer James Wheeling grew up as part of a ranching family that has taken its lifeblood from the Animas River for decades. That water has been used to grow hay, sustain a grass-fed beef herd, and farm organically grown vegetables.This week the water glowed orange, filled with heavy metals and toxins that spewed from a gold mine near Silverton, Colorado, last Wednesday after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its contractor accidentally broke open a dam wall while investigating there. Continue reading...

Rare images of wild peregrine falcons chart their entire nesting cycle from brooding to hatching and finally fledging from their tower block home. Images by Luke Massey Continue reading...

Poachers were trying to sell the tiger’s skin, bones and teeth to police posing as buyers in Aceh provinceIndonesian police have arrested four men for allegedly killing a Sumatran tiger and trying to sell its body parts, an official said on Monday, in the latest case of the critically endangered animals being targeted.

Halogen and compact fluorescent bulbs will no longer be sold worldwide from September by retailer, which says LED technology has reached a tipping pointIkea will no longer sell halogen and ‘energy-saving’ compact fluorescent bulbs from September, when it switches all its lighting sold globally to super efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Algal blooms threaten the economies of the globe’s most tourist dependent nations, scuttle holidays plans and give some scientists more to worry aboutAuthorities across the Caribbean are releasing emergency funding to clean up piles of decaying seaweed so huge and pungent that tourists have cancelled summer beach holidays and lawmakers on Tobago have deemed it a “natural disaster”.The picture-perfect beaches and turquoise waters that people expect from the Caribbean are increasingly being fouled by mats of plant matter that attract biting sand fleas and smell like rotten eggs.

The headlines will hyperventilate about the (frightening) cost of curbing carbon emissions, so it’s best to be armed with some factsIt appears we are heading for another climate policy “debate” based on meaningless “scary” numbers. Here are three things to bear in mind when contemplating the hyperventilating headlines.

MPs return to Canberra after a six-week break, electing a new Speaker of the House of Representatives after the resignation of Bronwyn Bishop – and to mourn the loss of Liberal MP Don Randall. All the developments from Canberra, live6.10pm AESTThe capital A Absurd hearing of the intelligence committee is grinding on but we will part ways for now to seek solace in the evening before personing up for a big day tomorrow, Tuesday.Let’s wrap Monday.5.27pm AESTNow secretary Pezzullo is speaking about small ‘e’ evidence – the non-capitalised sense of evidence.I kid you not. Continue reading...

United Utilities advises homes around Preston, Chorley and Blackpool to carry on with precautions after small levels of cryptosporidium bug found in supplyHundreds of thousands of people in Lancashire have been warned to continue boiling tap water.United Utilities first issued the advice last Thursday, after tests at one of its water treatment plants discovered traces of the microscopic bug cryptosporidium, which can cause sickness and diarrhoea. Continue reading...

A project to connect two rivers will drown a large part of Panna national park in central India. Not only people, tigers will also be displaced

The world’s poorest populations need a low-carbon revolution to meet their needs and lift them out of povertyIt is the development conundrum of our era. Extremely poor people cannot lift themselves out of poverty without access to reliable energy. More than a billion people live without power today, denying them opportunities as wide-ranging as running a business, providing light for their children to study, or even cooking meals with ease.Ending poverty requires confronting climate change, which affects every nation and every person. The populations least able to adapt – those that are the most poor and vulnerable – will be hardest hit, rolling back decades of development work. Continue reading...

Fatbergs are the scourge of cities all over the world, and can grow to the length of a Boeing 747. Ian Wylie braves a London sewer to witness this filthy threat for himself – and uncovers some new ideas for defeating them

There are fewer than 5,000 of Australia’s favourite prehistoric death monsters left. So why has the Queensland government defunded a rehab centre for injured birds?

Threlkeld, Lake District The quarry walls here, below Blencathra, are of nutrient-rich microgranite, yielding a fertile soil for plant life to flourishIan Hartland opens up the regulator as his saddle-tank locomotive attacks the incline of the quarry’s narrow gauge railway. Children in the carriages behind reach out to touch the foliage that brushes the little train as it chuff-chuffs its way up a gradient only slightly less steep than that of the wickedly inclined Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, its wheels just occasionally slipping.A passenger resembling Ian, with a flat cap and a John Lennon moustache, snaps mobile phone photos of terraces lining the quarry walls, veritable hanging gardens with horsetail and eyebright. Mouse-ear hawkweed, that mini dandelion on a tall stem, is visible everywhere. Continue reading...

Government’s modelling of the cost of different post-2020 greenhouse emission targets reveal more ambitious cuts won’t cost much more than modest onesThe Abbott government has commissioned its own secret modelling of the economic cost of different long-term greenhouse emission targets to be debated by cabinet on Monday, and it is understood to show more ambitious goals would not cost much more than modest ones.The environment minister, Greg Hunt, went on the attack against Labor on Monday after the Daily Telegraph reprised 2013 modelling for the Climate Change Authority on the costs of cutting emissions by between 40% and 60% of 2005 levels by 2030. Continue reading...

New Zealander braves shark-infested waters to become the first woman to successfully swim the distance from northern California’s Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. It took Chambers 17 hours and 12 minutes after she dropped into the water at 11.15pm on FridayRead the full story here Continue reading...

The night parrot, one of the most elusive and mysterious birds in the world, was presumed extinct. Aside from two dead night parrots found over the past 25 years, it had not been captured since the 1890s. But following recent sightings, researchers in Queensland have finally captured and tagged the bird for the first time Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 10 August 1915The rain-soaked undergrowth, breast-high, in its full summer luxuriance, presented a tangle difficult to push through; willows and elders wept as I brushed against them; moisture gathering on the upper leaves of chestnut, oak, and sycamore pattered on the lower leaves, and fell in steady showers upon the sodden turf below. Trickles down branches and trunks joined and formed rivulets on the lichen-greened bales, swamping the yellow frog-hoppers sheltering from the rain. It was wetter in the wood than on the mere, where the still water was barely stirred by the soft but persistent downpour. A long-winged tern flew deliberately up and down, checking occasionally to sweep round and drop headlong into the water; then the young black-headed gulls, jealous of its skill and success, followed it screaming, but without quickening its pace it dodged them easily, and continued its piscatorial hunt. Swallows and martins in hundreds, with a few belated swifts, skimmed low above the reed-bed, where delicate gnats danced regardless of rain. A few grebes still carried downy infants on their backs, cradled between their uplifted wings, but most of the young are now well grown and able to fish for themselves; the parents of these bigger striped-necked youngsters, though keeping a watchful eye upon them, dived repeatedly to escape their persistent demands for food. Rising from a dive, they floated idly, preening their satin breasts, until the young birds, paddling swiftly, reached them; then down they went again, reappearing many yards away. Continue reading...

New research estimates that air pollution contributed to the deaths of as many as 9,400 Londoners in 2010; around 3,500 from particle pollution and up to 4,900 from nitrogen dioxide, which has been included in a health impact assessment for the first time.Related: Nearly 9,500 people die each year in London because of air pollution – study Continue reading...

Energy analyst says that for same price as Hinkley Point C, providing 3,200MW of capacity, almost 50,000MW of gas-fired power capacity could be builtHinkley Point, the planned £24.5bn nuclear power station in Somerset, is under intensifying criticism from the energy industry and the City, even as the government prepares to give the final go-ahead for the heavily subsidised project.The plant, due to open in 2023, will cost as much as the combined bill for Crossrail, the London 2012 Olympics and the revamped Terminal 2 at Heathrow, calculated Peter Atherton, energy analyst at investment bank Jefferies. He said that, for the same price as Hinkley Point C, which will provide 3,200MW of capacity, almost 50,000MW of gas-fired power capacity could be built. Continue reading...

Death of 77-year-old raises concerns about dangers posed by an estimated 1m boar across Italy, though experts point out such attacks are rareA 77-year-old Sicilian man has been mauled to death by wild boar in an area popular with foreign tourists, prompting concerns about the dangers posed by an estimated 1m boar roaming across Italy.Salvatore Rinaudo was in the Cefalù countryside, close to the Sicilian capital, Palermo, with his wife and dogs when he was attacked on Saturday. Rinaudo died at the scene while his wife, Rosa, sustained multiple injuries after trying to help him. Continue reading...

Kayakers rescued the unidentified victim, who was swimming on Saturday with a group, when a gator attacked and bit her arm off just above the elbowA woman is recovering after being attacked by an alligator that bit off her arm while she swam in a river in central Florida.The unidentified victim was swimming in Wekiva River on Saturday with a group. Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission spokeswoman Karen Parker said the victim left to swim somewhere more secluded and was attacked. The gator bit her arm off just above the elbow. Parker said doctors were not able to reattach it because too much time had passed. Continue reading...

On Saturday, Kim Chambers became the first woman to finish what’s called the world’s most difficult swim, from Farallon Islands to San FranciscoEarly on Saturday evening, the New Zealander Kim Chambers became the first woman to swim through shark-infested waters from the Farallon Islands to San Francisco.Related: Duxbury, Massachusetts and the great white hope of the New England seaside Continue reading...

Climate Institute survey reveals overwhelming support for wind and solar energy as the Abbott government seeks to limit support for bothAustralians are deeply worried the Abbott government is underestimating the importance of climate change, new polling shows, as cabinet debates crucial long-term targets for greenhouse gas reductions.The annual polling by the Climate Institute thinktank reveals Australians overwhelmingly support wind and solar energy – as the Coalition seeks to limit support for both – and see it as inevitable that coal-fired power stations will have to be phased out and replaced. Continue reading...

A summer stay on the Atlantic coast means peace, quiet, lobster rolls and any amount of delicious speculation about the deadliest denizens of the deepMy wife’s family owns a summer house in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Evidently, I married well: Duxbury is everything a New England summer resort could be. It is historic, peaceful and beautiful, the beach is one long stretch of sand and surf, and the lobster rolls are tremendous.Related: Jaws, 40 years on: ‘One of the truly great and lasting classics of American cinema’ Continue reading...

Nasa’s Oceans Melting Greenland study will deploy 200 robot probes to measure the full extent of Arctic climate changeAn urgent attempt to study the rate at which Greenland’s mighty ice sheets are melting has been launched by Nasa. The aim of the six-year project, called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG), is to understand how fast the world’s warming seas are now eroding the edges of the island’s vast icecaps. Warming air temperatures are already causing considerable glacier loss there, but the factors involving the sea that laps the bases of its great ice masses, and which is also heating up, are less well understood.Greenland contains vast reservoirs of ice which, if completely melted, would raise world sea levels by more than six metres. However, some influences on its current dramatic melting are poorly understood. Hence the decision to launch OMG, an acronym that the project leader, Joshua Willis, admits he “barely squeezed past the censors”. Continue reading...

Deforestation rates fell in 2012 but they are on the increase again. Stay engagedPeak deforestation angst didn’t actually coincide with peak deforestation. While the wearing of “Save the Rainforest” T-shirts was de rigueur in the late 80s, the worst destruction came in 2004, a year when we (as in humankind) chopped down 27,000km2 of Amazon rainforest. By that point there wasn’t much left to play with: the Brazilian Amazon region (the largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world) had shrunk from four million kilometres (close to half the size of continental Europe) to just 18% of that size.Brazil is still home to 40% of global rainforest, despite so much of it being destroyed to supply a range of products from toothpaste and face creams (tallow from cattle) to leather for football boots. It was in the 80s that agronomists first recognised that agricultural markets were behind runaway deforestation. In 2009, the Greenpeace report Slaughter of the Amazon showed the international leather and beef trades as the primary drivers of deforestation in the region. Continue reading...

Female bear and at least one cub appeared to have been involved in fatal attack on Montana manA man has been killed by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone national park, according to the US national parks service.The Montana man’s body was found on Friday afternoon in a popular off-trail area near Lake Village. Continue reading...

If grouse shooting estates are run with benefits for all wildlife, including hen harriers, surely they have nothing to fear from limited inspectionCapitalism and wildlife make uncomfortable bedfellows. On one hand, our countryside needs to be exploited efficiently to generate money and to create rural jobs. At the same time, there is an equally pressing necessity to protect the rare or threatened species that enliven the nation’s natural habitat.This dichotomy is sharply illustrated by the increasingly bitter row that has erupted between landowners who are intensifying the use of moorland for grouse shooting and conservationists who argue that this process is driving one of our most beautiful birds of prey, the hen harrier, to extinction in England. According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, there are now only a handful of breeding pairs of hen harriers in England, although the country has enough habitat to sustain several hundred pairs. Illegal persecution, particularly on land managed for intensive grouse shooting, is blamed for this alarming trend. Landowners, for their part, reject the charge and maintain that hen harriers fare worse in open moorland or on RSPB-controlled land than they do on land near grouse shooting estates. In turn, this charge is vigorously denied by conservationists. Continue reading...

Last week, smallholders took direct action over supermarkets’ failure to pay them a fair price. Here, a dairy farmer warns that their demise will deprive the country of skills that we can ill afford to loseConservationists tell us about the extinction of wildlife, but there is another more insidious extinction going on right now – the disappearance of traditional dairy farmers, who have supplied our nation’s milk for generations. As each demoralised farmer quietly gives up and goes out of milk – and there are nearly two a day being forced out right now – a precious and irreplaceable part of our national heritage is lost forever. The Prince of Wales is absolutely right to be highlighting the plight of small family farms in general and dairy farms in particular.These farmers form the backbone of the rural economy. By their very existence, they play a crucial role in maintaining our countryside. They are the stewards of our landscapes, field boundaries and hedgerows, the guardians of the fertility of the soils, the pastures, biodiversity and the ancient green lanes for herding the cattle in to be milked. As each farm disappears, the skills of the stockmen are also lost and will be difficult or impossible to replace. These are all priceless elements of our natural and cultural capital. Continue reading...

The shooting season blasts off this week – and Britain’s gamekeepers have launched a new challenge to conservationists over managing the country’s wildlifeOn a grouse moor in the Peak District National Park thin white sticks protrude, marking the sites of small boxes containing medicated grit. Swallowed by the grouse to help their digestion, the grit is an ingenious way of getting the birds to take a course of antibiotics. But this year, it seems, the drugs don’t work.“Normally, I’d expect to see hundreds of grouse,” said Tim Melling, senior conservation officer with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as he walked on the moor last Friday. “It should be peak time just before the 12th of August. It definitely doesn’t look like being a good year.” Continue reading...

Georgia Aquarium argues introducing new belugas into the captive population in the US would diversify the gene pool, but NOAA Fisheries denied their requestThe Georgia Aquarium is locked in a legal battle with a federal agency over the denial of its request to bring 18 beluga whales from Russia for display in aquariums in the US.Related: SeaWorld sees profits plunge 84% as customers desert controversial park Continue reading...

Ahead of the shotguns booming out for the ‘Glorious’ Twelfth, this striking collection underlines the plight of these beautiful hawks and the campaign to save themBetween 1837 and 1840 on the Glengarry estate in Inverness-shire, gamekeepers’ tally books show them to have killed 63 hen harriers, 63 goshawks, 98 peregrines, 27 white-tailed sea eagles, 15 golden eagles, 18 ospreys, six gyrfalcons, 11 hobbies, 275 kites, 285 buzzards, 462 kestrels, 78 merlins and 35 horned owls, as well as 198 wildcats, 246 pine martens and hundreds of assorted other mustelids and corvids.Today, you read these notorious records doubly amazed: that wildlife slaughter on this scale should have been permissible – and that it should have been possible. Sixty-three goshawks on a single estate? Sixty-three hen harriers? Eighteen ospreys? Six gyrfalcons? Such abundance now seems fabulous, for the avian predator populations of upland Britain have never really recovered from the massacres they underwent in the 19th century. The 1954 Protection of Birds Act outlawed the killing of any bird of prey except the sparrowhawk (protection for which followed in 1962), but illegal persecution has, atrociously, persisted – especially on and around grouse moors. Raptors are still regularly shot and poisoned, and their nest sites wrecked. Successful prosecutions for these crimes are rare. Continue reading...

Smart meters for boilers are the future, according to their advocates. But for the Stowe household in Suffolk, the latest eco device was a disasterLast year, npower installed the latest smart central heating thermostat in Bill Stowe’s home, but he claims that rather than saving him money its botched installation caused a catalogue of problems and warns other households to think carefully before going ahead.Stowe, who lives with his wife and daughter in Harwich, Suffolk, was offered the £250 Nest smart heating controller for free when he signed up to a special npower gas and electricity tariff last December. But he claims that problems resulting from the installation left him without hot water for six weeks and even put his home at risk of fire. Continue reading...

Hallam Moors, South Yorkshire The pole had gone. Its footing had been among a group of boulders at the top of the climb, but the hole was now empty, as though a tooth had been pulledThe rough track up from Redmires to Stanage Pole used to be dismal, so deeply rutted that even off-road vehicles were forced out onto the moor alongside. Now it is closed to motorised traffic and the surface repaired. Its folkloric status as Roman is debated, but this is undoubtedly an old road, used for centuries by travellers crossing the moors. It linked Sheffield to the villages of northern Derbyshire and beyond the western moors ringing the horizon to Manchester. There are still worn flags or “pitchings” in a few places, laid in the eighteenth century as horse-drawn carts were replacing pack animals. On the crest of the moor is a tall wooden pole to help the weary and confused navigate in driving rain or blowing snow.Or at least, there used to be. As I toiled uphill, something was nagging at me, but only when the wide views of the Derbyshire moors opened out did I realise what it was. The pole had gone. Its footing had been among a group of boulders at the top of the climb, but the hole was now empty, as though a tooth had been pulled. Someone had laid a small posy of sunflowers on top of the rocks, which I took as an act of remembrance for a familiar landmark. Continue reading...

Ian knows a guy who knows the nephew of the lady who polishes senator David Leyonhjelm’s many, many guns. This is what she told him about wind power Continue reading...

Shell joins BP in corporate exodus from membership of the conservative, free-market lobbying group, which continues to deny the science of climate changeRoyal Dutch Shell have announced they will end their membership of the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) because of its continuing denial of the science of climate change.In a statement released on Friday, a Shell spokesman said: “Alec advocates for specific economic growth initiatives, but its stance on climate change is clearly inconsistent with our own.”

For all the talk of healthcare, immigration, benefits and war, a conspicuous silence reigned over some of the issues most sensitive to conservative votersPimps, prostitutes, messages from God, border walls and a child who is “a total superstar”. The questions of the first Republican primary debate ranged far and wide on Thursday night, but for all the talk of healthcare, immigration, benefits and war, a conspicuous silence reigned over some of the issues most sensitive to conservative voters. Continue reading...

Shell says it won’t release money owed into the long-delayed fund until further governing structures are in place to oversee clean-up processThe long-delayed $1bn clean-up of heavily oil-contaminated Ogoniland in the Niger delta has moved closer with Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari setting up a restoration fund four years after a damning UN report advised the government and oil industry to act urgently.But a spokesman for Shell, which discovered oil in Ogoniland in 1957 and exploited it until it was forced out because of pollution in 1993, said money would not be released until the Nigerian government went further, establishing a satisfactory governing structure and appointing commissioners to oversee the clean-up process. Continue reading...

Head of giant insurer, and chair of the shadowy Bilderberg group, talks about selling off fossil fuel investments, China’s stock market crash and BrexitHenri de Castries might just be the most powerful man in the world. He is chief executive and chairman of one of the world’s biggest insurers, Axa, and a member of France’s illustrious noble house of Castries. But De Castries is also chairman of the Bilderberg group, a collection of political and business leaders from Europe and North America that meets in private every year to debate “megatrends and major issues facing the world” – or which is secretly running the world if you are a conspiracy theorist.With this in mind, De Castries’s penchant for making dramatic comparisons is worth taking seriously. The charismatic Axa boss compares investing in fossil fuels to investing in asbestos-related companies in the 50s or 60s, the rise of the internet to the advent of electricity at the end of the 19th century and, perhaps most alarmingly, the recent fall in Chinese share prices with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Continue reading...

South Africa says that if hunters cannot take home trophies the $5oom industry will suffer, affecting jobs, development and conservationSome African countries that allow hunting have criticised a decision by a number of international airlines to ban the transport of parts of animals killed in hunts.South Africa’s environment ministry said it was disappointed at Delta Air Lines’s announcement this week that it will no longer accept lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo trophies. Continue reading...

Annual swan upping census on the Thames finds numbers down and marker blames rise in air rifle attacks and random shootings by vandalsAir rifle attacks and random shootings by vandals have been blamed for a sharp drop in the number of swans recorded during the annual swan upping census on the Thames.The rise in shootings was said to be the most serious factor causing swan numbers to drop by a third on last year, according to the Queen’s swan marker, David Barber. Continue reading...

A leopard ‘selfie’, fighting zebras and an elephant in the loo feature in this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Know-it-all scientists with their pro-science, pro-reason bias have nothing on the gut instincts of global warming deniers

Did you know you could get billions of dollars from the US government to be in the oil business? Or the coal industry? Or fracking? In this satirical infomercial, famous American government grant guru Matthew Lesko shows how you too can get billions of dollars from the government to destroy the environment!• Seriously, fossil fuel companies are racking in billions from subsidies. Learn more here

Many hydroelectric dams produce modest amounts of power yet do enormous damage to rivers and fish. Why not free our rivers from these ageing structures and build solar farms in the drained reservoirs? Yale Environment 360 reportsHydroelectric power is often touted as clean energy, but this claim is true only in the narrow sense of not causing air pollution. In many places, such as the US East Coast, hydroelectric dams have damaged the ecological integrity of nearly every major river and have decimated runs of migratory fish.Related: Balkan dam boom threatens Europe’s last wild waterways Continue reading...

Retail outlets across Europe are taking glyphosate – the main ingredient of Monsanto’s Roundup – off their shelves, despite government officials declaring it safe to useMonsanto is far from happy. The main ingredient of its highly profitable weedkiller, Roundup, often used in conjunction with GM crops, has been declared a “probable carcinogenic”.As well as being profitable for Monsanto, glyphosate is one of the most widely adopted weedkillers in the world by gardeners and farmers alike. Use of it by UK farmers, for example, has soared by 400% in the last 20 years. Continue reading...

We now need to take on environmental issues even more urgently in response to the Tories’ ideological assault on green policiesLabour didn’t do enough to communicate our policies on the environment in the last Parliament. We failed to capitalise on commitments we had made to protect nature and decarbonise the UK economy. We needlessly gave the Green Party and even the Liberal Democrats a free run at showing that they understood the importance of the environment.I know the environment matters to so many people in the UK. Continue reading...

As a former secretary of India’s ministry of power, I know India’s challenges. Australian coal doesn’t make economic sense for us – but renewables doAdani’s huge Carmichael coal mine – the biggest in Australian history – has been overturned by the federal court, causing much consternation for coal advocates, chief among them Australian prime minister Tony Abbott.He contends that Carmichael is critical for the human welfare of tens of millions of Indians and will provide power for 100 million people in India who currently have none. Continue reading...