The Guardian

Project aims to release hundreds into lochs and streams after centuries of habitat loss and exploitation

The medicinal leech is one of nature’s least loved hunters. Armed with three strong interlocking jaws and with a taste for blood, they will swim hungrily towards humans, deer or cattle that wander into their ponds to bathe, fish or drink.

Yet this small predator is the focus of an unlikely reintroduction programme by conservationists working in a small laboratory deep in the Scottish Highlands, at a wildlife park best known for its polar bears, wildcats and wolves.

More than 50 people dead in Tigray and Amhara regions while UN warns of ‘crisis-level hunger or worse’ in Somalia

The regions of Tigray and Amhara in northern Ethiopia have continued to experience severe drought conditions with more than 50 people dead, as well as 4,000 cattle.

While northern Ethiopia suffers from droughts, the southern and eastern parts of the country, along with Kenya and Somalia, have been hit by flooding. Somalia suffered the worst of the flooding, with 50 people reported dead. According to the Somali disaster management agency almost 700,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.

European Environment Agency says half of deaths could have been avoided by cutting pollution to recommended limits

Dirty air killed more than half a million people in the EU in 2021, estimates show, and about half of the deaths could have been avoided by cutting pollution to the limits recommended by doctors.

The researchers from the European Environment Agency attributed 253,000 early deaths to concentrations of fine particulates known as PM2.5 that breached the World Health Organization’s maximum guideline limits of 5µg/m3. A further 52,000 deaths came from excessive levels of nitrogen dioxide and 22,000 deaths from short-term exposure to excessive levels of ozone.

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

Letter says government pushing ahead with new fossil fuel projects while criminalising activists who raise alarm

Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and Ben Okri have joined the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and leading climate scientists to highlight what they describe as a “collective act of madness” that is driving “the destruction of life on Earth”.

A letter signed by more than 100 actors, authors, scientists and academics says the UK government is ignoring the scientific reality of the climate and ecological crisis, pushing ahead with new fossil fuel developments and criminalising peaceful protesters who raise the alarm.

Yes, the fallen foliage can be messy. But the trees know just what they’re doing – and they won’t thank you for interfering

It’s a 66m-year-old decision. Some trees got there much quicker; some took a little longer. But most of the broad-leaved trees that we know and love – the magnolias, plane trees, elms, beech, walnuts, limes, oaks, maples and horse chestnuts – made a calculated decision to drop their leaves come autumn. Large, soft leaves are hard to protect in the winter weather, so the trees evolved to lose them, but not their valuable resources.

Leaf fall is a precision art for a deciduous tree – it’s a salvage operation on the greatest scale as the tree works quickly to bank the resources hidden inside the pigments of the leaves. The greens of chlorophyll go first, then the yellows of the xanthonoids, and then the orange carotenoids, until all that is left is brown – at which point the tree lets its foliage go.

‘Bog oak’ study finds more than 400 well preserved yews, which could help solve mystery of historic rapid sea level rise

The flat landscape of the East Anglian Fens is known for its vast arable fields and absence of trees. But just over 4,000 years ago, these lowlands were dominated by dense woods of ancient yew trees.

A study of hundreds of tree trunks inadvertently dug up by fenland farmers has found that this woodland abruptly disappeared 4,200 years ago, probably because a rapid rise in the North Sea flooded the low-lying region with saltwater.

RSPB says figures distorted by failure to examine raptors caught in avian flu outbreak for signs of shooting or poisoning

Confirmed incidents of the illegal persecution of birds of prey have fallen to their lowest levels for more than a decade, according to the latest RSPB Birdcrime report.

But the conservation charity warned that the reduction in incidents to 61 in 2022 is distorted by a failure to examine dead raptors caught in the avian flu outbreak for signs of illegal killing.

Pollution caused twice as many premature deaths as previously thought, with updated understanding of dangers of PM2.5

Coal-fired power plants killed at least 460,000 Americans during the past two decades, causing twice as many premature deaths as previously thought, new research has found.

Cars, factories, fire smoke and electricity plants emit tiny toxic air pollutants known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5, which elevate the risk of an array of life-shortening medical conditions including asthma, heart disease, low birth weight and some cancers.

Global conferences such as the upcoming Cop28 may seem like staid and ritualistic affairs. But they matter

Stare at a climate map of the world that we expect to inhabit 50 years from now and you see a band of extreme heat encircling the planet’s midriff. Climate modelling from 2020 suggests that within half a century about 30% of the world’s projected population – unless they are forced to move – will live in places with an average temperature above 29C. This is unbearably hot. Currently, no more than 1% of Earth’s land surface is this hot, and those are mainly uninhabited parts of the Sahara.

The scenario is as dramatic as it is because the regions of the world affected most severely by global heating – above all, sub-Saharan Africa – are those expected to experience the most rapid population growth in coming decades.

Campaigners say Southern Water outflows into protected wildlife site are an ‘assault on the environment’

Raw sewage has been discharged into Chichester harbour for more than 1,200 hours in the past month, in what campaigners described as “an assault on the environment”.

The protected harbour in West Sussex, which is a designated area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), has been subjected to the discharges since 24 October.

None of the organic products sampled contained the chemicals, which present a dangerous health threat to babies, researchers say

Nearly 40% of conventional baby food products analyzed in a new US study were found to contain toxic pesticides, while none of the organic products sampled in the survey contained the chemicals.

The research, conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit, looked at 73 products and found at least one pesticide in 22 of them. Many products showed more than one pesticide, and the substances present a dangerous health threat to babies, researchers said.

A slower paced life with less work and more community focus – if enough people share the dream, we can make it happen

Faced with the now undeniable impacts of climate crisis created by humans, political leaders in wealthier countries incline towards one of two competing responses. They either question the urgency and feasibility of meeting net zero targets and generally procrastinate (the rightwing tendency); or they proclaim their faith in the powers of magical green technologies to protect the planet while prolonging and extending our present affluent ways of living (a position more favoured on the left and centre).

Common to both approaches is a wrongheaded presumption that we can carry on growing while managing to hold off the floods and fires of growth-driven capitalism. Both also take it for granted that the consumerist lifestyle is essential to the wellbeing of rich societies and the ideal to which less developed economies should aspire.

Study finds impact of heat on millions of people went unrecorded, highlighting limitations many African countries face

A record-breaking heatwave in Madagascar in October would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused global heating, a study has shown.

The extreme temperatures affected millions of very poor people but the damage to their lives was not recorded by officials or the media. Many governments in Africa lack the capabilities to record climate impacts. The scientists behind the report said this lack of information made implementing measures to avoid deaths very difficult.

NSW Minerals Council says that campaign aims to educate the public – but its claims of responsible, low-emissions coal mining don’t stack up

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“Because in New South Wales, we mine responsibly. For today and tomorrow,” comes the proud declaration at the end of an advert from the state’s mining lobby.

The advertisement from the NSW Minerals Council, seen on streaming services including SBS, features four people wearing the logos of the majority Chinese-owned company Yancoal.

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OBR analysis suggests higher energy prices and interest rates could reduce proportion of new cars sold that are electric from 67% to 38%

Britain has downgraded its forecasts for the takeup of electric cars over the next seven years as higher financing costs and rising energy prices threaten to cut the incentive for drivers to replace combustion engines.

The latest forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), released alongside the chancellor’s autumn statement, said that just 38% of new vehicles sold in the UK in 2027 would be electric, down from the 67% it predicted in March.

French economist says class inequality must be at centre of climate response and calls for progressive carbon taxes

• Who are the polluter elite and how can we tackle carbon inequality?

Questions of social and economic class must be at the centre of our response to the climate crisis, to address the huge inequalities between the carbon footprints of the rich and poor and prevent a backlash against climate policies, the economist Thomas Piketty has said.

Regulations will be needed to outlaw goods and services that have unnecessarily high greenhouse gas emissions, such as private jets, outsized vehicles, and flights over short distances, he said in an interview with the Guardian.

Saving the industry means saddling consumers with ever more debt. The fumes of 2007 are in the air

During lockdown in 2020, the local council in my neighbourhood of Levenshulme – a suburb of red-brick terraces in Manchester – proposed a low-traffic neighbourhood scheme. The plan generated substantial backlash among a segment of the community, leading to all kinds of rows and questionable behaviour on Facebook and elsewhere.

A central claim of the objectors was that people such as me who generally supported the measures were middle-class hippies intent on disrupting ordinary, working-class people who needed their cars in their day-to-day lives. At times, it seemed to touch on conspiracy theory. Supporters were cast as canny “gentrifiers”, who saw the planters being proposed to block traffic flow as an opportunity to increase the value of their properties.

Lesley Hughes was one of the first scientists to warn that global heating could lead to species extinctions. Now one of Australia’s most influential climate science advocates, Hughes speaks with Guardian Australia about the importance of hope in the face of a crisis. ► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

This video is part of Weight of the World: a climate scientist's burden. The series features three pioneering Australian climate change scientists – Graeme Pearman, Lesley Hughes and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The series tells the story of how the three scientists made their discoveries, how they came under attack for their science and the personal toll it has taken on them. And importantly, how they stay hopeful.

• See the other pieces in our series Weight of the world: a climate scientist’s burden

• ‘Where did I go wrong?’ The scientist who tried to raise the climate alarm

• Podcast: The climate scientists who saw the crisis coming – Weight of the world, part 1

• If I was feeling hopeless about the climate, what of the scientists? So I asked them | Graham Readfearn

Staff at Chester zoo filmed the moment an endangered rhino gave birth to a female calf. The eastern black rhino was born on 12 November, unusually in daylight hours. The zoo said the species is listed as critically endangered, with fewer than 600 of the rhinos remaining in the wild across Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda