The Guardian

Invasive species could be worse than rabbits, cane toads, foxes, camels, wild dogs and feral cats combined, committee hears

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A Senate inquiry into the spread of fire ants in Australia has heard that the government program tasked with their elimination is an “absolute shambles” and that an independent eradication body is urgently needed.

The highly invasive insect is believed to have entered Australia in the 1990s and was discovered at Brisbane port in 2001. A program spanning state, territory and federal governments was created to eradicate red imported fire ants and it has received more than $1.2bn of federal and state funding. Of that, $593m covers 2023 to 2027.

Leaks are driving 30% of the climate crisis and MethaneSat will provide the first first near-comprehensive global view

A washing-machine-sized satellite is to “name and shame” the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry.

MethaneSat is scheduled to launch from California onboard a SpaceX rocket on Monday at 2pm local time (22:00 GMT). It will provide the first near-comprehensive global view of leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil and gas sector, and all of the data will be made public. It will provide high-resolution data over wider areas than existing satellites.

Permission granted for judicial review after Planning Inspectorate overturned local council’s decision to reject plan

Campaigners have been given permission to challenge plans for a new oilfield in an area of outstanding natural beauty – which they say threatens one of England’s “hidden rural treasures”.

The proposed oil-drilling operation is in Biscathorpe in the Lincolnshire Wolds, an important habitat for nature and wildlife that has been officially designated an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).

As part of the state-sponsored programme to restore arctic fox populations, Norway has been feeding the animals for nearly 20 years, helping boost numbers from as few as 40 in Norway, Finland, and Sweden, to about 550 across Scandinavia today. ‘Without these conservation measures, the arctic fox would surely have become extinct in Norway,’ said Bjørn Rangbru, a senior adviser on threatened species with the country’s environment agency

Exclusive: Ex-employees of Australian Agribusiness Group allege dozens of injuries occurred as blue gums cleared for agricultural use, claims which the company rejects

WARNING: contains images some viewers may find distressing

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Dozens of koalas have been killed or injured and left for dead during logging of blue gum plantations in South Australia, according to former employees of the harvesting company and a conservation organisation that tried to save the marsupials.

Ex-employees of the company managing the plantation estate Australian Agribusiness Group said they tried to save at least 40 injured koalas and saw about 20 that had been killed as plantations on Kangaroo Island were cleared for agricultural use.

City of Sydney lord mayor reveals testing of potentially contaminated mulch has cost $200,000 with remediation costs likely to be ‘substantial’

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Sydney’s lord mayor, Clover Moore, has accused the New South Wales government and the state’s environment watchdog of a “massive” and “costly” regulatory failure over the ongoing asbestos contamination crisis.

City of Sydney councillors gathered at an extraordinary general meeting on Monday to discuss how contaminated mulch came to be used across numerous city parks. Moore revealed testing alone had already cost the council more than $200,000.

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Four-metre shark euthanised after becoming beached on shore at Kingscliff on Tweed Coast

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A great white shark washed up on to a beach on the New South Wales north coast, shocking locals and attracting a crowd of beachgoers.

The 4m shark was seen swimming close to shore near Kingscliff beach on the Tweed Coast on Monday morning, with lifeguards tracking its progress until it was beached.

On a planet getting hotter and drier by the year, governments are wilfully ignoring a looming crisis

There’s a flaw in the plan. It’s not a small one: it is an Earth-sized hole in our calculations. To keep pace with the global demand for food, crop production needs to grow by at least 50% by 2050. In principle, if nothing else changes, this is feasible, thanks mostly to improvements in crop breeding and farming techniques. But everything else is going to change.

Even if we set aside all other issues – heat impacts, soil degradation, epidemic plant diseases accelerated by the loss of genetic diversity – there is one which, without help from any other cause, could prevent the world’s people from being fed. Water.

A mystery paralysis syndrome is afflicting lorikeet populations in south-east Queensland and northern NSW at a rate scientists say they have never seen

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Dr Tim Portas pulls the patient from a cardboard box, wraps him in a towel and touches a cotton bud on his eye to see if he can blink.

Patient number 1,433,093 is one of about 3,500 Rainbow lorikeets that have come into the RSPCA’s wildlife hospital near Brisbane since the beginning of the year with a mystery paralysis.

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The wildlife charity allegedly dropped a study highlighting farm pollution linked to the supply chain of its former supermarket partner

The wildlife charity WWF-UK shelved a report that warned how intensive chicken production is devastating the River Wye, the Observer can reveal.

Since 2018, the charity has received more than £6m in donations from the supermarket chain Tesco, which has faced action from campaigners over the decline of the Wye because many of the intensive poultry farms in the river’s catchment area are in its ­supply chain.

The computing power for AI models requires immense – and increasing – amounts of natural resources. Legislation is required to prevent environmental crisis

One of the most pernicious myths about digital technology is that it is somehow weightless or immaterial. Remember all that early talk about the “paperless” office and “frictionless” transactions? And of course, while our personal electronic devices do use some electricity, compared with the washing machine or the dishwasher, it’s trivial.

Belief in this comforting story, however, might not survive an encounter with Kate Crawford’s seminal book, Atlas of AI, or the striking Anatomy of an AI System graphic she composed with Vladan Joler. And it certainly wouldn’t survive a visit to a datacentre – one of those enormous metallic sheds housing tens or even hundreds of thousands of servers humming away, consuming massive amounts of electricity and needing lots of water for their cooling systems.

US ski industry is losing billions as average season has become five to seven days shorter in past half century

If you have been enjoying lushly covered mountains by skiing or snowboarding this winter then such an experience could soon become a receding memory, with a new study finding that an era of reliably bountiful snow has already passed due to the climate crisis.

The US ski industry has lost more than $5bn over the past two decades due to human-caused global heating, the new research has calculated, due to the increasingly sparse nature of snowfall on mountain ranges. Previous studies have shown that in many locations precipitation is now coming in the form of rain, rather than snow, due to warming temperatures.

Michael Gove said UK needed coal to make steel, but business department papers drafted around same time say it will not

Previously unseen documents have emerged that appear to contradict the government’s case for a new coalmine in Cumbria.

When Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, approved plans to build the Woodhouse Colliery near Whitehaven in December 2022, he said the UK would need the coal in order to carry on making steel.

Campaigners say decision against Danish Crown, Europe’s largest pork producer, sends resounding message

Europe’s largest pork producer misled customers with its “climate-controlled pork” campaign, Denmark’s high court has ruled in the country’s first climate lawsuit.

Campaigners argued that Danish Crown greenwashed its meat with round, pink stickers on its packaging that said pigs were “climate-controlled”, along with a marketing campaign that claimed its pork was “more climate-friendly than you think”.

Authorities asked to step in to protect Black-a-Tor Copse, an ancient temperate rainforest in Devon at risk from overgrazing

There are acorns galore and tiny oaks sprouting from tussocky grass beside the gnarled ancient trees of Black-a-Tor Copse on the northern slopes of Dartmoor national park.

But each tiny sapling grows no higher than a sheep’s chin and there it stays, its new shoots and tender leaves repeatedly shorn each spring by the livestock roaming through this national nature reserve.

Two ranches also allege biosolids with ‘forever chemicals’ ruined crops, polluted drinking water and left their properties worthless

A Texas county has launched a first-of-its-kind criminal investigation into waste management giant Synagro over PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge it is selling to Texas farmers as a cheap alternative to fertilizer.

Two small Texas ranches at the center of that case have also filed a federal lawsuit against Synagro, alleging the company knew its sludge was contaminated but still sold it. Sludge spread on a nearby field sickened the farmers, killed livestock, polluted drinking water, contaminated beef later sold to the public and left their properties worthless, the complaint alleges.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Refusal by Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish leaders to approve candidates means whole recruitment process may have to be rerun

Ministers in Westminster have been accused of trying to blunt the teeth of the UK’s net zero watchdog by appointing a Tory loyalist to the post of chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

The leaders of the devolved governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have refused to approve any of the six shortlisted candidates, saying they are all too close to the Conservatives and lack diversity.

Campaigners and human rights experts point to crackdown on climate and Gaza protests

The Conservatives have been accused by human rights experts of hypocrisy after cracking down on climate and Gaza protests while celebrating and endorsing farmers’ protests in Wales.

Rishi Sunak joined a protest of farmers in Wales last Friday, after they had obstructed a road while campaigning against the Labour government’s new farming subsidies scheme. But this week he vowed to crack down on protests, referring to them as “mob rule”. On Wednesday, the Welsh Conservative leader, Andrew Davies, along with many of his colleagues greeted and posed for photographs with farmers who formed a large group outside the Senedd and blocked a main road with tractors.

Calls for inquiry after regulator failed to declare hospitality with those it holds to account over sewage spills

The water regulator for England and Wales has been accused of a cover-up after failing to declare dinners its chairman had with water company executives at a private members’ club as hospitality.

The Guardian revealed earlier this month that the Ofwat chairman, Iain Coucher, went for dinner with the water company chairs at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, an exclusive private members’ club, to discuss how to quell public anger over bill rises and sewage spills. But there was no sign of these dinners on his official hospitality logs that were revealed under freedom of information requests from the Liberal Democrats.