The Guardian

Seeing a wild, swooping kestrel hunt its prey near my Melbourne home was exhilarating. I could taste its freedom

The nankeen kestrel hovered over a patch of saltmarsh, eyes down, wings slowly flapping. After a minute or so, it flew off, displaying gorgeous black and brown plumage, before returning to hover and watch. It dropped suddenly, like a stone flung by a god, then took its prize – a cricket or grasshopper – to a fence post to be eaten in seconds.

The sight of this bird of prey, late in my second week of Melbourne’s hard lockdown, opened something inside me. Like millions of others, I was stuck in the city under curfew, unable to venture more than five kilometres from my home. I yearned for the bush, to be in a place free of cars or houses, where I didn’t have to hear other people’s conversations as we marched up and down the same few paths on our measly hour of daily allotted exercise. That wild, swooping kestrel was exhilarating. I could taste its freedom.

Peak employer body warns Australia faces ‘costly increase in climate-related impacts and risks’ even in best-case scenario

The Morrison government should spend $3.3bn over 10 years on renewable energy and $500m over two years on capital grants to improve energy efficiency and management, according to the Australian Industry Group.

The peak employer body made the calls in its pre-budget submission, released on Monday, which also proposes it bring forward income tax cuts, cut business tax, extend the coronavirus supplement on jobseeker and make a further round of $750 payments to households.

Energy minister Angus Taylor says emissions have reduced as expected but restrictions are unsustainable

Coronavirus restrictions have caused Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to fall to their lowest level since 1998, the latest official data shows.

National emissions in the June quarter 2020 were estimated to be 8% – or about 10m tonnes of carbon dioxide – lower than a year earlier.

At the heart of a new climate emergency bill lies a simple idea to cut through Westminster groupthink: a citizens’ assembly

The timing is impeccable. In the midst of political ferment across the world, and with anxiety about the coming winter hardening into dread, Extinction Rebellion is back. Over the weekend it has made its presence felt in towns and cities around the country; now, in the wake of several of its organisers being arrested, its activists and supporters are preparing to arrive on Tuesday at Parliament Square, outside the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, and in the centre of Manchester.

As usual, those involved will presumably be portrayed as eccentric and dangerous merchants of despair. But whatever the sense of millenarian doom that sometimes hangs over its actions, plenty of the people at the heart of the movement are admirably practical, and focused on overcoming the daunting political challenges that climate change still presents. And in among the protests, there will be an example of what this means in practice: the climate and ecological emergency bill, partly conceived by people with close links to XR, and due to be formally launched on Wednesday.

Species decline is being reversed in UK forests, highlands and rivers. But rewilding should start in our houses and gardens

This summer beavers have been granted “permanent right to remain” in their river home in east Devon, the first legalised reintroduction of an extinct British mammal. White storks reintroduced on the Knepp estate in West Sussex as part of another rewilding initiative have raised chicks and taken to the skies. Meanwhile, a major grant will bring European bison to woodland in Kent.

All this is exciting news for rewilding. But if we stand any chance of saving nature, maybe we also need to reverse species decline on our own doorsteps as much as we do in the countryside. Charity begins at home, they say. And perhaps rewilding does too. Ecocide isn’t just being committed in the countryside but also in our own homes, the result of our irrational hostility towards nature in domestic spaces.

Researchers to tell UN that loss of biodiversity enables rapid spread of new diseases from animals to humans

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Scientists are to warn world leaders that increasing numbers of deadly new pandemics will afflict the planet if levels of deforestation and biodiversity loss continue at their current catastrophic rates.

A UN summit on biodiversity, scheduled to be held in New York next month, will be told by conservationists and biologists there is now clear evidence of a strong link between environmental destruction and the increased emergence of deadly new diseases such as Covid-19.

As sunny weather brings snakes out of hibernation, Melbourne snake-catcher warns, ‘If you see a snake, don’t go near it’

While the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the national economy and plunged many into unemployment, there’s one little industry expecting to boom – snake catching.

Melbourne’s Raymond Hoser has been catching snakes professionally since the 1970s and says he’s about to be busier than ever.

Climate protests including ‘funeral march’ due to take place across UK, with focus on airports

Climate demonstrations are due to take place across the UK this weekend, as the environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion launches its latest “uprising”.

This weekend’s events will include a “funeral march” in Lewes, East Sussex, to “mark the death and destruction wrought by humans on our natural world”. The march, described as a Procession for the Planet, will include mourners dressed in black and a jazz band.

Coalition accused of ‘breach of faith’ as it seeks to introduce almost exact replica of failed Abbott government legislation

Conservation groups will launch an advertising campaign aimed at building support for stronger national environment laws in response to what they say is a “breach of faith” by the Morrison government.

Groups including Birdlife Australia, WWF and the Australian Conservation Foundation will begin a “Before it’s gone” campaign on Sunday with radio, print, TV and billboard advertisements featuring high-profile species including the koala and greater glider.

The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including red wasps and giant redwoods

XR plans protests next week as activists call on MPs to back a climate emergency bill

Extinction Rebellion plann to block streets in London, Manchester and Cardiff next week as they call on MPs to back a climate emergency bill and hold a national citizens’ assembly on the crisis.

On Tuesday, five XR groups will block roads leading to parliament as they descend on Westminster to demand MPs back what they call the climate and ecological emergency bill, which they say would speed up the UK’s progress on reducing its carbon emissions.

We don’t want them in our parks and nice places because they behave like the wild animals they are

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Exclusive: Queensland supreme court says company engaged in ‘unconscionable conduct’

Adani has quietly begun planning to rebrand its Abbot Point coal terminal – removing all reference to Adani in its company name and branding – as financiers continue to abandon the business and a Queensland court orders it to pay $106.8m in damages.

The Queensland supreme court this week ordered Adani to pay four terminal users damages for “unconscionable conduct” in a judgement that was scathing of Adani’s actions to advantage its own financial interests over other coal companies.

Ben Blanche was named the overall winner of the Australian Geographic nature photographer of the year competition for his photo, Border Fire Mt Barney. The judges said: ‘In the wave of flames snaking across the mountain we see the true scale of the fire, and for every burning tree that we see, we imagine the shrubs, the vines, the insects, the marsupials and the birds that we can’t.’

West Mathewson was attacked without warning by lions during one of their regular walks

A South African conservationist has been killed by lions he hand-reared. West Mathewson, 69, was walking two white lionesses on Wednesday when one of the animals attacked and killed him without warning, his family said on Thursday.

The incident took place on the premises of the family-owned Lion Tree Top Lodge, in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province.

State Minerals Council pushing for plants despite Minerals Council of Australia goal of net-zero emissions

A New South Wales mining industry push for 21 new coal projects to be approved to boost an economic recovery from coronavirus would add seven years’ worth of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere if they were all developed, according to analysis.

The NSW Minerals Council identified the unapproved coal projects, at various stages of environmental assessment and development, saying they would create about 10,000 jobs and generate billions in royalties.

Since 2016 residents in Southall have questioned whether the gases released from the redevelopment of an old gasworks site could be damaging their health. We followed them for a year as they grow their campaign group, question the authorities and demand to know if the increased air pollution from the site could have put them at greater risk during the coronavirus pandemic

• Londoners claim toxic air from gasworks damaging their health
  

Southall residents link redeveloped site to poor health, but developer says it complies with regulations

Residents in Southall are calling on the government to urgently investigate the health impact of the redevelopment of an old gasworks in light of research suggesting the mainly south Asian community is highly susceptible to air pollution.

For a year the Guardian has followed the Clean Air for Southall and Hayes (Cash) campaign as they demanded answers from Ealing council, statutory bodies and scientists as to whether a “petrol-like” odour which they say emanated from the site is causing symptoms such as breathing problems, nausea and mental confusion – and serious diseases. They want to know what will be done to eliminate future risks over the 25-year regeneration project.

Campaigners call for penalties to rise to £1,000 after FOI data reveals lack of punitive action

Most councils issue less than one fine a week to litterers, according to data obtained via freedom of information rules, with one in six issuing no fines at all across a year.

Enforcement varied widely, with a handful of the councils in England and Wales issuing more than 100 a week.

Three-night event aims to track creatures’ climate-driven spread into new parts of UK

People are being invited to help track the spread of a moth that often hides its hindwings of dazzling fuchsia beneath a dowdy brown “overcoat”.

The dark crimson underwing has enjoyed an “amazing” August, according to experts, appearing in many new locations, including the first ever recorded sighting in Wales.