The Guardian

White-faced darters transported to South Solway Mosses as hotter summers dry out its bog pool breeding sites

With its chalk-white face and bright flame-coloured markings, the white-faced darter dragonfly is a distinctive sight as it flutters around England’s peat bogs.

The rare dragonfly, which breeds in mossy pools, is at threat of local extinction, but now conservationists are trying to end its population crash by introducing it into a remote corner of Cumbria.

The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch a year-long exploration of the ‘silent majority’ of people who want to fight climate change

The Guardian US is launching a year-long collaborative reporting project that seeks to explore a pivotal but little-known fact about the climate crisis: the overwhelming majority of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger action.

The 89 Percent Project is a partnership between the Guardian US, Covering Climate Now, Agence France-Presse and dozens of other newsrooms across the globe. The collaboration builds on a slate of recent scientific studies finding that between 80-89% of the world’s population want stronger climate action. This overwhelming global majority, however, does not realize that they are a majority; most think their fellow citizens don’t agree. Experts agree breaking this “spiral of silence” could be pivotal to spurring critical climate action.

Researchers find 89% of people around the world want more to be done, but mistakenly assume their peers do not

• Activate climate’s ‘silent majority’ to supercharge action, experts say
• The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89 Percent Project—and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read more

How much of a $450 (£339) pot would you give to a charity that cuts carbon emissions by investing in renewable energy, and how much would you keep for yourself? That was the question posed in a recent academic experiment. The answers mattered: real money was handed out as a result to some randomly chosen participants.

The average person gave away about half the money and kept the rest. But what if you had been told beforehand that the vast majority of other people think climate action is really important? Might you have given more to the charity?

Making concerned people aware their views are far from alone could unlock the change so urgently needed

• ‘Spiral of silence’: climate action is very popular, so why don’t people realise it?
• The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89 Percent Project—and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read more

A huge 89% majority of the world’s people want stronger action to fight the climate crisis but feel they are trapped in a self-fulfilling “spiral of silence” because they mistakenly believe they are in a minority, research suggests.

Making people aware that their pro-climate view is, in fact, by far the majority could unlock a social tipping point and push leaders into the climate action so urgently needed, experts say.

Young people rode a wave of hope and power when hundreds of thousands protested with them in 2019. Then, momentum was lost

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On a stinking hot November day, seven years ago, Grace Vegesana and a handful of other young climate activists set up a small stage in a large square in Sydney’s CBD – and waited. Inspired by the first school striker for climate, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the high school students decided to organise their own rally.

Vegesana expected a hundred people to show up. Five thousand came. “It was like, oh my God, we’ve unleashed some kind of beast, people want more,” she recalls. In the months afterwards crowds doubled and then tripled.

Potential danger to humans and wildlife from harmful pesticide discovered in fish at 10 times safety limit

Residues of the insecticide DDT have been found to persist at “alarming rates” in trout even after 70 years, potentially posing a significant danger to humans and wildlife that eat the fish, research has found.

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, known as DDT, was used on forested land in New Brunswick, Canada, from 1952 to 1968. The researchers found traces of it remained in brook trout in some lakes, often at levels 10 times higher than the recommended safety threshold for wildlife.

Burying our heads in the sand won’t stop the climate crisis or pandemics. We’re taking action to preserve government tools

United States science has propelled the country into its current position as a powerhouse of biomedical advancements, technological innovation and scientific research. The data US government agencies produce is a crown jewel – it helps us track how the climate is changing, visualize air pollution in our communities, identify challenges to our health and provide a panoply of other essential uses. Climate change, pandemics and novel risks are coming for all of us – whether we bury our heads in the sand or not – and government data is critical to our understanding of the risks these challenges bring and how to address them.

Much of this data remains out of sight to those who don’t use it, even though they benefit us all. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has brazenly attacked our scientific establishment through agency firings, censorship and funding cuts, and it has explicitly targeted data the American taxpayers have paid for. They’re stealing from us and putting our health and wellbeing in danger – so now we must advocate for these federal resources.

Organizers team up with pro-democracy groups for flurry of actions to demand right to free, healthy lives

Hundreds of marches, pickets and cleanup events are taking place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day on Tuesday, as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and its “war on the planet”.

A fortnight after the “Hands Off” mobilization brought millions to the streets, national and grassroots organizers are teaming up with pro-democracy groups for “All Out on Earth Day” – a wave of actions to demand the right to live free, healthy lives.

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari led a successful legal battle to protect the Marañon River in the Peruvian Amazon

• Prize recognises seven activists fighting corporate power

An Indigenous campaigner and women’s leader from the Peruvian Amazon has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful legal campaign that led to the river where her people, the Kukama, live being granted legal personhood.

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, 57, from the village of Shapajila on the Marañon River, led the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana (HKK) women’s association, supported by lawyers from Peru’s Legal Defence Institute, in a campaign to protect the river. After three years, judges in Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazon region, ruled in March 2024 that the Marañon had the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination, respecting an Indigenous worldview that regards a river as a living entity.

Seven winners of environmental prize include Amazonian river campaigner and Tunisian who fought against organised waste trafficking

• Indigenous river campaigner from Peru honoured

Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency.

Safeguard mechanism revamp leads to overall emissions fall but 70% of coal and gas facilities covered by scheme increased direct pollution

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Australia’s biggest industrial climate polluter – Chevron’s Gorgon gas export plant in Western Australia – received the equivalent of millions of dollars in carbon credits from the federal government last year, despite increasing its emissions.

The revelation in government data last week has sparked calls for changes to the safeguard mechanism, the government policy applied to the country’s 219 largest industrial climate polluting facilities.

Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email

Cuts to science, environmental and safety agencies are a rejection of hard-won knowledge gained from studying the disaster that occurred 15 years ago

Last month, I joined nearly 500 former and current employees of National Geographic, where I was executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years, urging the institution to take a public stance against the Trump administration’s reckless attacks on science. Our letter pointed out that the programs being dismantled are “imperative for the success of our country’s economy and are the foundation of our progress and wellbeing. They make us safer, stronger and more prosperous.” We warned that gutting them is a recipe for disaster.

In the face of this danger, none of us can remain silent.

Terry Garcia was National Geographic’s executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years. He also served as the assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy administrator of Noaa, as well as its general counsel

Lack of investment and vision has dogged UK industry, while China has literally forged ahead

The fate of incoming Labour business and industry secretaries seems to be to launch emergency rescue packages for industries that would otherwise face imminent closure.

Witness Jonathan Reynolds at last Saturday’s extraordinary parliamentary recall arguing for the legal right to take over the running of British Steel from its Chinese owner, Jingye, in order to save up to 3,500 jobs and Britain’s strategic capacity to make steel. And witness Tony Benn, in 1974, offering a financial lifeline to 3,000 workers forming a cooperative to save motorcycle manufacture at the failed BSA plant in Meriden, near Coventry.

The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power

• Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futures

Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

If green policy is going to survive the backlash, it needs a new pitch – cleaner air, cheaper bills and healthier cities

For a decade, green activists in Britain have been congratulating themselves on their luck. Unlike in many countries in Europe, where motorists, farmers and rightwing groups have been driving anti-climate action, the UK has long enjoyed a comfortable political consensus on the subject. But conditions for a greenlash are assembling.

Most Britons still say they support climate efforts, but the price of decarbonising may at last be about to hit our wallets. Meanwhile, the Conservative party has come a long way since it sported a little green oak tree as its logo. Last month, Kemi Badenoch declared a full culture war against net zero, which she said couldn’t be achieved “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

Bases in Norfolk, Devon and Hampshire face MoD investigation over possible leaching of dangerous PFAS into environment

Three UK military bases have been marked for investigation over fears they may be leaking toxic “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources and important environmental sites.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will investigate RAF Marham in Norfolk, RM Chivenor in Devon and AAC Middle Wallop in Hampshire after concerns they may be leaching toxic PFAS chemicals into their surroundings. The sites were identified using a new PFAS risk screening tool developed by the Environment Agency (EA) designed to locate and prioritise pollution threats.

Dolphin-watching tour witnesses four adult bottlenose dolphins kill a common dolphin calf in Cardigan Bay

They had been hoping for a nice day out on the bay. Instead, dolphin-watching tourists in Wales were confronted with the shocking and grisly sight of four adult bottlenose dolphins pursuing and killing a common dolphin calf.

The trip, in Cardigan Bay, was operated by Dolphin Spotting Boat Trips and the Sea Watch Foundation (SWF), a charity that monitors the dolphins in the bay to inform and advise on their conservation status and protection.

Prof Shane Ahyong discovered ‘brutish’ mantis shrimp so unusual it needed its own new genus

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When Prof Shane Ahyong was seven, his mum came home with a bag of prawns from the fish shop – but one of those things was not like the others.

“It just looked different,” said Ahyong.

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Weeks of fires amid warm and dry spell have decimated ecosystems and threatened endangered species, say experts

Britain’s national parks have warned of a “catastrophic” risk from wildfires this Easter after one of the driest early spring seasons on record.

Park rangers from the South Downs to the Highlands said the prolonged warm weather and breezy conditions had left large areas extremely dry despite recent rain.

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