The Guardian

Exclusive: Officials explore restricting incentive to allocate greater funds to farms with less money and more nature

The richest farmers will not be able to apply for post-Brexit nature funding under plans for England being considered by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Farming groups and climate experts have warned that such a plan would “leave farmers in the cold” and make it more difficult for the UK to reach net zero by 2050.

What’s happening to our native wildlife across the country is just as horrific as what we witnessed in that video – it’s just occurring behind closed doors

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We’ve all seen the distressing footage of an American influencer taking a wombat joey away from its mother. The joey hisses and stirs, while the distraught mother circles the woman until she eventually drops it back to the side of the road.

The tourist calls herself both a conservationist and an ecologist. But most of us can recognise that this is not the behaviour of someone who values our native wildlife.

The Loess plateau was the most eroded place on Earth until China took action and reversed decades of damage from grazing and farming

It was one of China’s most ambitious environmental endeavours ever.

The Loess plateau, an area spanning more than 245,000 sq miles (640,000 sq km) across three provinces and parts of four others, supports about 100 million people. By the end of the 20th century, however, this land, once fertile and productive, was considered the most eroded place on Earth, according to a documentary by the ecologist John D Liu.

Cuttings of tree captured by John Constable being planted on restored Devon floodplain

Captured by John Constable in one of his most celebrated paintings, the black poplar tree was once as common as oak and beech in Britain.

Now the rarest and most threatened native species in the country, the National Trust is creating a living gene bank of the black poplar to ensure Constable’s The Hay Wain does not become a tribute to an extinct breed.

Montana-based hunting influencer flies out of Australia on Friday after home affairs minister said he couldn’t ‘wait to see the back of this individual’

A US hunting influencer who caused outrage in Australia after from its mother has left the country after the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said immigration authorities were checking if she had breached the conditions of her visa.

A government source told Guardian Australia that Montana-based Sam Jones had left the country on Friday morning.

Automotive body says current policy is leading to job losses and has become a ‘driver of de-industrialisation’

Fresh incentives to boost a flatlining electric car market are urgently needed, according to the UK automotive industry, whose leaders called on the government to act fast and “revisit the mandate” for zero emission vehicles (ZEV).

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said its research showed growth in consumer demand for EVs was lower than expected, with only one in eight new buyers planning to switch in the next three years, putting jobs at risk.

Noaa, my former employer, is an integral part of our daily lives, tracking hurricanes, supporting safe flights and helping farmers

Across the United States, from rural communities to coastal cities, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) is an integral part of our daily lives, safeguarding communities and fostering economic vitality.

Whether it is tracking the path of hurricanes, managing our nation’s fisheries, providing critical information to air traffic controllers and airlines, or helping farmers plan for weather extremes, Noaa’s science, services and products have a significant impact on every American.

Exclusive: Research shows drop in produce prices as households consume more imported and ultra-processed food

Farmers’ incomes have remained stagnant since the 1970s despite improvements in productivity and a fall in the workforce, research has found.

This has been driven by falling prices for farm produce; as the UK has become more reliant on imports, supermarkets have taken over grocery shopping, and households are eating more ultra-processed food, according to the report by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission.

Put up pictures of lemurs, penguins and wolves, and introduce tomorrow’s environmentalists to the amazing nature in our world

Has it ever struck you as interesting the amount of dinosaur products that are marketed to boys and unicorn products to girls?

I recently visited the wonderful Horniman Museum in south London, only to discover that it had been taken over by something called Dinosaur rEvolution. Hertfordshire zoo offers a World of Dinosaurs, there is the “roarsome” theatre show Dinosaur World: Live, a dinosaur-themed park in Norfolk called ROARR!, Dinosaur World in Torquay, Dinosaur Park near Swansea, Dino Park in Dumfries – the list is as long as the neck of a brontosaurus.

Company says new solar agreements will now mean 80% of Boyne smelter’s energy needs are covered by renewable sources

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Mining company Rio Tinto will buy solar power and battery storage capacity for its Gladstone aluminium operations in a deal environmentalists have hailed as a “major step” forward.

The company has signed 20-year agreements with Edify Energy to buy 90% of the power and battery storage capacity generated by the Smoky Creek and Guthrie’s Gap solar stations, located in central Queensland, Rio Tinto said.

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Video footage, described as ‘callous’ and ‘pretty dreadful’, showed Sam Jones grabbing the joey from its mother at night

A US hunting influencer who shared video of herself snatching a baby wombat away from its mother is being investigated for a potential breach of her Australian visa.

The footage, with scenes described as “callous” by the RSPCA and “pretty dreadful” by the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, showed the Montana-based influencer Sam Jones grabbing the wombat joey at night as it was walking with its mother.

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Activists horrified as EPA reverses pollution laws and reviews landmark finding that gases harm public health

Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.

Blood tests on migratory chicks fed plastics by their parents show neurodegeneration, as well as cell rupture and stomach lining decay

Ingesting plastic is leaving seabird chicks with brain damage “akin to Alzheimer’s disease”, according to a new study – adding to growing evidence of the devastating impact of plastic pollution on marine wildlife.

Analysis of young sable shearwaters, a migratory bird that travels between Australia’s Lord Howe Island and Japan, has found that plastic waste is causing damage to seabird chicks not apparent to the naked eye, including decay of the stomach lining, cell rupture and neurodegeneration.

Pepper, a nine-month-old sea lion, has mesmerised her carers by performing intricate rhythmic gymnastics-style circles through the waters at Point Defiance zoo and aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. Noelle Tremonti, a biologist at the aquarium, says the strips help the pup learn how to interact with kelp, which grow in abundance in the animal's natural environment, and how to explore her environment using her mouth. Pepper was the first sea lion born at the facility's its 120-year history

• ‘A ribbon dancer’: captive baby sea lion performs acrobatics with artificial kelp

As Scottish energy firms race to meet challenges of storing power, critics fear plans will affect delicate hydrology of loch

Brian Shaw stood at the edge of Loch Ness and pointed to a band of glistening pebbles and damp sand skirting the shore. It seemed as if the tide had gone out.

Overnight, Foyers, a small pumped-storage power station, had recharged itself, drawing up millions of litres of water into a reservoir high up on a hill behind it, ready for release through its turbines to boost the UK’s electricity supply. That led to the surface of Loch Ness, the largest body of freshwater in the UK, falling by 14cm in a matter of hours.

Injecting pollutants into the atmosphere to reflect the sun would be extremely dangerous, but the UK is funding field trials

Some years ago in the pages of the Guardian, we sounded the alarm about the increasing attention being paid to solar geoengineering – a barking mad scheme to cancel global heating by putting pollutants in the atmosphere that dim the sun by reflecting some sunlight back to space.

In one widely touted proposition, fleets of aircraft would continually inject sulphur compounds into the upper atmosphere, simulating the effects of a massive array of volcanoes erupting continuously. In essence, we have broken the climate by releasing gigatonnes of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide, and solar geoengineering proposes to “fix” it by breaking a very different part of the climate system.

Raymond T Pierrehumbert FRS is professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford. He is an author of the 2015 US National Academy of Sciences report on climate intervention

Michael E Mann ForMemRS is presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

Campaigners say introduction of feasibility test in England and Wales over bathing status is ‘snub to communities’

Rivers are unlikely to be granted the protections of bathing water status under the government’s changes to the system, campaigners have said.

River activists have reacted with fury as details of the reforms were revealed on Wednesday.

If you don’t believe the scientists, will you believe the insurance companies?

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My homeplace has experienced four natural disasters in eight years. But I’d never seen the like of this bird before, vibrantly green and startlingly beautiful

We were midway through our cyclone preparation when my mother broke her leg. She stepped into her bedroom to retrieve something, tripped and fell, and that was that. My mother is 74 and hardy, so this sudden break took us by surprise. Once I got her home, leg in brace, we’d lost significant time, and my household was down to one functional human: me.

This is the fourth natural disaster I’ve experienced in the last eight years. One-in-100-year floods (2017), unprecedented bushfires (2019), one-in-1,000-year floods (2022) and now Cyclone Alfred. Cyclones are a new threat. I’ve lived in my homeplace, in northern New South Wales, for almost 50 years and we’ve never had a cyclone cross land in our vicinity. We were, as they say, in uncharted waters.

Research shows apex predators are increasing in numbers and excreting important nutrients into Top End waterways

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The growing saltwater crocodile population in the Northern Territory has led to the creatures gorging on nine times more prey than they did 50 years ago, with the apex predators contributing important nutrients to Top End waterways, new research suggests.

Saltwater crocodile populations have increased exponentially in recent decades, from less than 3,000 in 1971, when a ban on hunting was introduced, to more than 100,000 animals today.

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