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Roadsides are a haven for rare species, but council mowing is a threat. New schemes offer hope

Orchid-spotters have long-known that the best site in the UK to take in a display of pyramidal orchids is a roadside verge in Warwickshire, yet the role verges play in conservation isn’t widely appreciated. There are almost 251,000 acres of rural road verges across the country that are home to 703 species of wild plants – 87 of which are facing extinction.

Britain has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s as land has been turned over to grow food crops. Rural roadside verges and small, family-owned farms remain the only places left for species such as the crested cow-wheat, spiked rampion and man orchid to thrive. These roadside verges represent the last stronghold of British wildflowers yet they are being mown down by local councils because of budgetary pressures and a lack of guidance, conservationists have warned.

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Peace and quiet is an increasingly scarce commodity in the modern world

Silence is golden – or at least it should be. But according to the Noise Abatement Society (NAS), it’s increasingly rare. “Peace is a precious commodity,” says Poppy Szkiler, of Quiet Mark, part of the NAS.

Anti-noise campaigners suggest we have a “sliding baseline” in terms of our expectation of quiet time. This ecological term refers to an incremental lowering of standards as each generation progresses.

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With the Danes rebuffing Russia, and Canada laying further claim to the Northwest Passage, rising access to north pole reserves risks flashpoints

Kristian Jensen, Denmark’s foreign minister, gave a precise response last week to a request by Russia for the nations to enter bilateral talks over the ownership of the north pole. He flatly rejected the move. “We need to apply the international rules,” he told reporters.

The Russian request and the swift Danish response are intriguing. The United Nations is currently assessing Russian, Danish and Canadian claims to own sizeable chunks of the Arctic seabed. The Russian move was generally viewed as an attempt to strike a deal that would cut out Canada, while Denmark appears to believe its case is strong enough to exclude such manoeuvres.

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Licences for gamekeepers to kill the protected bird of prey will open the floodgates to illegal hunting, warn conservationists

Tim Boxall points at a shape in the field bordering the seven-acre wooded pen where he keeps 1,500 pheasants. “Here you are,” he says. “Look! There’s one over here.” He bends down and prises the remains of a pheasant from the long grass. “That’s a buzzard kill, you can tell by the way it’s been eaten.”

Boxall is a gamekeeper, raising 10,000 pheasants a year to be killed in commercial shoots on the land he rents in Gloucestershire. This year, however, the pheasants have something other than Boxall’s clients to fear: the buzzard.

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The ongoing violence in Syria, the Rio Paralympics, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, New York fashion week – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

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New Forest The heather is studded with yellow tormentil, and mixed with dwarf gorse so tight to the turf that it’s knee-high to a grasshopper

A grey minibus pulls up behind me as I’m changing into my walking shoes. Five young people get out and hitch their packs. ”We’ll be there at five,” says the driver, and goes. They set off along the concrete perimeter road of the old airfield, with a two and a half hour walk ahead of them. I cut through some trees and, by the time I’m on the same road, they’re a speck in the distance.

It’s been too dry, and a little early yet, for autumn fungi to show, but a whitish dome in the grass under the trees suggests it will not be long before they do. It’s hot, the car thermometer registers 26°, and I’m hoping to find shade in the Inclosure.

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US scientists find possible new coral species and rare Dumbo octopus on expedition to previously unexplored extinct volcano off Hawaii

Scientists believe they have identified a new species of coral and found a rare Dumbo octopus during an expedition 3,000ft (900m) down in the Pacific Ocean.

Diving in a submersible to the previously unexplored Cook seamount, an extinct volcano at the bottom of the sea 100 miles south-west of Hawaii’s Big Island, the three-person team was hoping to examine the rich variety of marine life that collects around the nutrient-rich volcanic waters.

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‘I'd much rather be growing things than killing things,’ says Geoff Williams on the eve of a deer hunt. ‘I'd love to come down here and just walk around in the scrub, but I spend too many hours chasing these other bloody animals.’

A team of Australian scientists have won a prize to develop a portable 'electronic nose' that may be able to accurately and quickly identify trafficked animals and body parts in the field to assist in law enforcement.

As wildlife poaching pushes animals such as rhinos and elephants toward extinction, representatives from a record number of nations will gather in South Africa next week for a critical wildlife conference.

Environmental groups criticise plan that will allow hunters to shoot up to 47 of an estimated 68 wolves living in wilderness

Norway is planning to cull more than two-thirds of its remaining wolves in a step that environmental groups say will be disastrous for the dwindling members of the species in the wild.

There are estimated to be about 68 wolves remaining in the wilderness areas of Norway, concentrated in the south-east of the country, but under controversial plans approved on Friday as many as 47 of these will be shot.

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Engineer Naveen Rabelli has completed a 6,000 mile journey from India to the UK in a solar-powered tuk-tuk.

My father, Peter Cubbage, who has died aged 91, was a leading gas forensic research scientist. He led a team that was responsible, among other things, for pioneering the flame-release chamber, a safety innovation used in offshore oil rigs and pipelines, which was compared to the miners’ Davy lamp for its significance.

He was appointed by the crown in 1988 to write the report into what happened during the first two seconds of the Piper Alpha rig explosion.

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The Central Everglades Planning Project, hailed as a ‘huge victory’, will redirect water to undernourished Florida wetlands affected by manmade developments

US lawmakers have voiced hopes that the ailing Everglades will start to recover after the Senate overwhelmingly approved a nearly $2bn measure to combat the toxic algae blooms that have devastated Florida’s waterways.

The Central Everglades Planning Project, touted by proponents as landmark legislation, passed the Senate on Thursday as part of a broader $10bn water resources bill by a vote of 95-3. The series of engineering projects are designed to collect water around Lake Okeechobee and channel it south to nourish the Everglades wetlands, America’s largest tropical wilderness, rather than have it run off into the ocean.

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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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Campaigners hope the operation, that sees plain clothes police on bikes pull over drivers that pass too close, will be taken up across the country

When Mark Hodson gets on his bike in the morning, like many cyclists in the UK, he has come to expect a few close calls. Perhaps drivers will whizz past him too close, or someone will even try a ‘punishment pass’.

Luckily, Hodson is a West Midlands Police traffic officer, albeit in plain clothes, and just yards up the road a colleague in a police car is waiting to pull over drivers that give him less than 1.5m space when overtaking (a distance that increases for faster speeds and larger vehicles).

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A whale shark, Masai Mara migration and wild boar on a seaside visit are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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A BBC team finds rare Java hawks for sale, as environmentalists say more must be done to tackle Indonesia's illegal bird trade.

Flash flooding is a far greater threat to homes, railways and roads than river or coastal floods but is completely excluded from government plans to deal with increased rainfall

Flash flooding, which struck a swathe of southern and eastern England on Friday, is a greater threat to homes, roads and railways than river or coastal flooding. Yet it was completely excluded from the government’s National Flood Resilience Review, published last week.

Worse, the risk of flash flooding is rising, as climate change leads to more intense, more frequent rainstorms: the Met Office has shown that extremely wet days have become more common. On Friday, half a month’s rain was dumped in one day.

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Inexpensive over-the-counter product could help millions of people avoid worst health effects of breathing toxic air, say scientists

An inhaler that protects the lungs against air pollution has been developed by scientists and could help the many millions of people affected by toxic air to avoid its worst effects.

The inhaler delivers a molecule, first found in bacteria in the Egyptian desert, which stabilises water on the surface of the lung cells to form a protective layer. It is expected to be available as an inexpensive, over-the-counter product.

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