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Readers give their views on strengthening protection of the environment

Calls for a new Geneva convention to protect wildlife and nature reserves in conflict zones are welcome (Make environmental damage a war crime, say scientists, 25 July). But we should go further. Humanity is waging a veritable war on wildlife and nature every day. We are destroying habitats, changing the climate and persecuting animals that encroach on farmland that was once their home. The pursuit of wildlife for “trophies” to adorn our walls and with which to pose is the cruellest wildlife crime of all. Scientists have warned that “sport” hunting of lions is leading to a loss of genetic diversity that puts their survival at risk. The combined rate of deaths from poaching and trophy hunting is now greater than the birth rate of elephants. Permits are granted to hunters to shoot species that are extinct in the wild and of which just small numbers remain in private collections.

The late Polly Higgins, the acclaimed environmental lawyer, called for ecocide to be considered a crime on a par with genocide. If we are serious about protecting wildlife, world leaders should implement her recommendation. We must also take steps towards abolishing trophy hunting, a “sport” that is as senseless as it is damaging to wildlife. We can begin by banning the import of hunting trophies into Britain, and by calling on Cites at its conference next month to close the loophole that presently allows trophy hunters to shoot endangered species.
John Cooper QC, Rosalind Coward Author, Greenpeace UK board member 2003-11, Eduardo Gonçalves President, Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting

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Air conditioning is used to avoid greenhouse effect but cooling buildings adds to carbon emissions

Leading architects and engineers are calling for all-glass skyscrapers to be banned because they are too difficult and expensive to cool.

“If you’re building a greenhouse in a climate emergency, it’s a pretty odd thing to do to say the least,” said Simon Sturgis, an adviser to the government and the Greater London Authority, as well as chairman of the Royal Institute of British Architects sustainability group. “If you’re using standard glass facades you need a lot of energy to cool them down, and using a lot of energy equates to a lot of carbon emissions.”

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Images of otters, pygmy shrews and owls by amateur conservationist may help turn ex-colliery into nature reserve

Roland Ascroft’s first attempt to become a citizen scientist was nearly his last. The 63-year-old conservationist volunteered to take part in a wildlife monitoring project in 2015 and began by placing a camera trap in the woods opposite his house at New Brancepeth, near Durham. For three weeks he checked every day to see if the device had been triggered by animals moving in front of it, but found nothing had set it off.

“I was about to give up when I moved my camera trap for one last attempt – and found next morning that I had photographed a roe deer in the early morning,” says Ascroft. “I was hooked.”

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Photographer Brook Mitchell revisited families in drought affected areas in NSW a year after his first visit to see how they were faring

• ‘It’s dire’: farmers battle their worst drought in 100 years – photo essay

Ten months on from when the entire state was declared in drought, patchy rainfall has provided some relief. Yet 96% of New South Wales remains drought affected, with 14.7% of the state classified as being in intense drought. For those in the worst affected areas the situation remains dire. Towns including Dubbo, Tamworth, Armidale, Cobar and Walgett are at real risk of running dry.

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CSIRO says dramatic climate events are compounding the effects of underlying global heating

Extreme climate events such as heatwaves, floods and drought damaged 45% of the marine ecosystems along Australia’s coast in a seven-year period, CSIRO research shows.

More than 8,000km of Australia’s coast was affected by extreme climate events from 2011 to 2017, and in some cases they caused irreversible changes to marine habitats.

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• Some tourists panicked by Sin City swarms
• State entomologist says wet weather behind migration

Millions of grasshoppers have descended on Las Vegas, causing alarming images and videos to spread on social media and prompting some tourists to panic.

“It was crazy,” one tourist, Diana Rodriquez, told the TV station KLAS. “We didn’t even want to walk through there. Everybody was going crazy. We were wondering, like, what’s going on.”

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‘All-in’ model would mean charge added to plastic, glass, aluminium and steel containers

Almost three-quarters of Britons would support a nationwide deposit return system for plastic and glass drinks bottles and aluminium cans, a survey has found.

The results follow the announcement last week during a speech at London’s Kew Gardens by Michael Gove, then environment secretary, in which he expressed support for a comprehensive deposit return system. In his speech, Gove suggested that “an ‘all-in’ model will give consumers the greatest possible incentive to recycle”.

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Wellcome Trust chair warns Boris Johnson that Britain will lose out if it "amputates" the EU.

If you like running and you care about the environment, you'll want to know about plogging

More than 1,400 art works featuring the endangered black-throated finch have been sent to Australian politicians in protest against the Carmichael coalmine in Queensland. The campaign, called the Black Finch Project, was instigated by New Zealand-born artist Charlotte Watson, and is intended to highlight the ‘collective grief’ about the plight of the bird, whose habitat is directly threatened by the mine works. Here, some of the contributing artists and members of the public explain why they contributed

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

BHP this week upped the ante on climate change responsibility. Andrew Mackenzie, the company's CEO, said in a landmark speech in London that he wanted to ‘reduce the impact of BHP’s products’. This would extend to the carbon emissions of the company's customers, such as steelmakers.

Saltwater solution for drought towns battling brackish drinking water; Families leave the land after generations amid succession struggles; Torrita locals fight for just eight seconds of your time to slow traffic down through their town.

US grid operator PJM will not implement a carbon pricing mechanism in its regional wholesale power market unless jurisdictions independently decide to charge for emissions, though it will continue to explore potential design options for such a programme, officials said Friday.

A recent deal struck by California and four automakers on higher vehicle GHG standards in the next decade could operate alongside proposed weaker federal benchmarks, but the long-term outcome may still depend on a future court decision, a legal source told Carbon Pulse.

The Arctic Circle is suffering from an unprecedented number of wildfires in the latest sign of a climate crisis. With some blazes the size of 100,000 football pitches, vast areas in Siberia, Alaska and Greenland are engulfed in flames. The World Meteorological Organisation has said these fires emitted as much carbon dioxide in a month as the whole of Sweden does in a year

• The world is literally on fire – so why is it business as usual for politicians?

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A global CO2 tax of $200 per tonne would only reduce GHGs from oil production by 4% over the next century, as the price would not be high enough to make a large dent in existing and undiscovered reserves, according to new research.

EU’s lending arm financed oil, gas and coal projects in 2018 with more than €2.4bn

The European Investment Bank has vowed to end its multibillion euro financing for fossil fuel projects by the end of next year in order to align its strategy with climate targets.

The EU’s lending arm has drafted plans, seen by the Guardian, which propose cutting support for energy infrastructure projects which rely on oil, gas or coal by barring companies from applying for loans beyond the end of 2020.

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This week: a swimming adder, feeding polar bears and stranded whales

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The two-metre long femur is thought to have belonged to a sauropod from the late Jurassic era.