Around The Web

Mayor Sadiq Khan confirms that four of 20 outdoor fountains will be in the West End, Liverpool Street station and Southwark

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has revealed the locations of the first four drinking fountains to be installed in the capital under a new pilot scheme in an effort to combat single-use plastic.

The first fountain was installed last week in Carnaby Street in the West End, while in the coming weeks two will be set up in Liverpool Street station and another in Flat Iron Square in Southwark.

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With seven coalmines and a gas company surrounding their cattle property, a Queensland family is battling to stay put

It’s a hot summer’s afternoon at Riverside station, 50km north of the purpose-built mining town Moranbah in the central Queensland highlands. Jeanette and Allan Williams are drinking tea and eating Christmas cake around the kitchen table with three of their six children. Holly and twins Claire and Charles have returned to live and work on the family’s 80,000-hectare cattle enterprise. Running more than 16,000 Brahman cattle, the family breeds and fattens their stock on prime cattle country that grows brigalow trees and buffel grass.

The homestead, which sits on top of the world’s highest-quality coal deposits, has been under threat for more than 15 years. A proposed underground mine at the family’s adjoining property, Red Hill, is likely to cut through to Riverside and under the house.

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This week the last male northern white rhino died in Kenya. With his passing, the prospects of survival for the sub-species are almost non-existent as there are only two remaining females.

Measurements show the entire bulk of Europe's most active volcano is edging eastwards, Scientists say.

A new study investigates how early a warning can be issued for major earthquakes.

Rescuers manage to return just six surviving pilot whales to deeper waters in Western Australia.

Australians throw away a lot of plastic, often after only one use. Here’s how to give it up

It’s almost everywhere you look – and it’s undeniably destroying our planet.

Over the past half a century, plastic has infiltrated modern life to such an extent that our oceans may have more of the stuff than fish by 2050.

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Historian Grace Karskens on reconnecting the early history of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River with the landscape.

Some say the Coalition’s marine management plans are too compromised; others say some protection is better than none. But how did it come to this?

• Jessica Meeuwig: The government’s marine park plans are diabolical for ocean protection

For those in Australia’s marine science and conservation community, a dream of having a network of marine parks around the continent has been 20 years in the making.

The story is one of heartbreak, near misses and painful compromise and, in the view of some, a false dichotomy of sacrifice between science and economic and political interests.

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More than 130 whales have died after being washed up on a beach in Western Australia. Veterinarians and volunteers are racing to save more than a dozen other short-finned pilot whales. Authorities have warned people to stay away from the beach in Hamelin Bay as the dead and dying animals could attract sharks 

• More than 130 whales die in mass stranding in Western Australia

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Women’s movement demand an end to unrestricted oil drilling and mining on indigenous lands and action on violence against land defenders in first meeting with president Lenin Moreno

Amazon indigenous women leaders have told Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno to limit oil drilling and mining in their territories and combat the sexual violence and death threats they claim accompany the industries.

The delegation of women dressed in traditional tunics and with intricately painted faces were granted a meeting with Moreno after nearly 100 of them camped in Quito’s central plaza in front of the Carondelet government palace for five days, earlier this month.

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The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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A thirsty wolf, an albatross chick and a family of capybaras are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Birds are not just diverse, vivid and extraordinary. They can also save our souls – let’s protect them

For most of my life, I didn’t pay attention to birds. Only in my 40s did I become a person whose heart lifts whenever he hears a grosbeak singing or a towhee calling, and who hurries out to see a golden plover that’s been reported in the neighbourhood, just because it’s a beautiful bird, with truly golden plumage, and has flown all the way from Alaska. When someone asks me why birds are so important to me, all I can do is sigh and shake my head, as if I’ve been asked to explain why I love my brothers. And yet the question is a fair one: why do birds matter?

My answer might begin with the vast scale of the avian domain. If you could see every bird in the world, you’d see the whole world. Things with feathers can be found in every corner of every ocean and in land habitats so bleak that they’re habitats for nothing else. Grey gulls raise their chicks in Chile’s Atacama desert, one of the driest places on Earth.

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Unsustainable exploitation of the natural world threatens food and water security of billions of people, major UN-backed biodiversity study reveals

Human destruction of nature is rapidly eroding the world’s capacity to provide food, water and security to billions of people, according to the most comprehensive biodiversity study in more than a decade.

Such is the rate of decline that the risks posed by biodiversity loss should be considered on the same scale as those of climate change, noted the authors of the UN-backed report, which was released in Medellin, Colombia on Friday.

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EU’s subsidy system, that benefits big farming rather than sustainability, needs to change to prevent ongoing collapse in birds and insect numbers, warn green groups

Europe’s crisis of collapsing bird and insect numbers will worsen further over the next decade because the EU is in a “state of denial” over destructive farming practices, environmental groups are warning.

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If even oil companies accept human-caused global warming, why doesn’t everybody?

In a California court case this week, Judge William Alsup asked the two sides to provide him a climate science tutorial.

The plaintiffs are the coastal cities of San Francisco and Oakland. They’re suing five major oil companies (Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips and BP) to pay for the cities’ costs to cope with the sea level rise caused by global warming. Chevron’s lawyer presented the science for the defense, and most notably, began by explicitly accepting the expert consensus on human-caused global warming, saying:

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RN Drive's summary of the biggest stories of the week, plus some you may have missed.

There's a new theory to explain why whales beach themselves in large numbers

‘His blubber shook like Jell-o,’ says researcher of the attack on newborn orca by unrelated 32-year-old male

Scientists in the Canadian province of British Columbia have documented what is believed to be the first reported case of an orca whale killing an infant of the same species.

“We knew right away that this was a remarkable event,” said Jared Towers, a Cetacean researcher with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, of the encounter he and two colleagues witnessed in December 2016.

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