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Many birds get injured or killed as thousands take to the terraces to fly kites to celebrate Makar Sankranti on 14 January, marking the arrival of spring

Kites will fill the skies in many parts of India on Wednesday for the festival of Makar Sankranti or Uttarayan, celebrating the onset of spring, but conservationists will be fearing the worst as they brace for another year of avian fatalities.

The Jivdaya Charitable Trust (JCT), an animal welfare NGO, attended to 2,394 injured birds in Ahmedabad, the heartland of the kite flying festival, in the Indian state of Gujarat around this time last year. Of these, 490 died.

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China’s Hebei Province has some of the worst air pollution in the country and the area’s vast steel industry is a key focus of government efforts to improve air quality. Lu Guang’s stark images capture the industrial landscapes of some of Hebei’s most polluted cities

• Audio slideshow: Lu Guang’s The Polluted Landscape

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An overabundance of wild horses in the American west is driving us to the brink of an environmental disaster – and the most sensible solution may be adding them to the menu

In 2013, in the wake of the horsemeat scandal that gripped Europe, a number of envelope-pushing, high-end restaurants decided to try to introduce horsemeat to the modern American palate. The result was disastrous.

Philadelphia chef Peter McAndrews, owner of upscale Italian restaurant Monsu, was sent graphic images of horses being slaughtered and even received bomb threats after he announced he would serve horsemeat in his dining room. He publicly declared that the intimidation tactics from horse advocates that had convinced other restaurants not to serve horse would not change his menu. But a visit from the FDA to all five of his restaurants did. The agency’s inspectors advised that he “stay away from it,” he told Eater Philadelphia. “I felt like I had the FBI of the food world on me.”

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The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the assessment of the Southern Highlands Shale Forest and Woodland of the Sydney Basin Bioregion ecological community. The public consultation period will be open until 24 February...

New research is first to identify which reserves must not be burned to keep global temperature rise under 2C, including over 90% of US and Australian coal and almost all Canadian tar sands

• George Monbiot: Why leaving fossil fuels in the ground is good for everyone

Vast amounts of oil in the Middle East, coal in the US, Australia and China and many other fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground to prevent dangerous climate change, according to the first analysis to identify which existing reserves cannot be burned.

The new work reveals the profound geopolitical and economic implications of tackling global warming for both countries and major companies that are reliant on fossil fuel wealth. It shows trillions of dollars of known and extractable coal, oil and gas, including most Canadian tar sands, all Arctic oil and gas and much potential shale gas, cannot be exploited if the global temperature rise is to be kept under the 2C safety limit agreed by the world’s nations. Currently, the world is heading for a catastrophic 5C of warming and the deadline to seal a global climate deal comes in December at a crunch UN summit in Paris.

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The Minister has extended the timeframes for the following ecological communities: Eucalypt woodlands of the Western Australian Wheatbelt; Banksia dominated woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain bioregion; and Natural Temperate Grassland of the South Eastern Highlands and New England Tablelands.

Australia’s National Greenhouse Accounts are made up of a series of comprehensive reports and databases that estimate, and account for, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. These publications fulfil Australia’s international and domestic...

Australia’s National Greenhouse Accounts are made up of a series of comprehensive reports and databases that estimate, and account for, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. These publications fulfil Australia’s international and domestic...

Release of a consultation paper on Handling of Early Collected Carbon Tax Charges held by Landfill Operators on 22 December 2014. Comments close Thursday 12 February 2015.

Release of a consultation paper on Handling of Early Collected Carbon Tax Charges held by Landfill Operators on 22 December 2014. Comments close Thursday 12 February 2015.

An online survey for the independent review of Commonwealth Marine Reserves opens today. The survey builds on the call for submissions that is already underway.

The Minister has approved the inclusion of Shale Sandstone Transition Forest of the Sydney Basin Bioregion and Hunter Valley Weeping Myall (Acacia pendula) Woodland, both in the critically endangered category.

The Australian, state and territory governments today released the Packaging Impacts Decision Regulation Impact Statement.

Land-sharing model of conservation is helping large predators thrive in the wild – and even the British countryside could support big carnivores, study finds

The forests – and suburbs – of Europe are echoing with the growls, howls and silent padding of large predators according to a new study which shows that brown bears, wolves and lynx are thriving on a crowded continent.

Despite fears that large carnivores are doomed to extinction because of rising human populations and overconsumption, a study published in Science has found that large predator populations are stable or rising in Europe.

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Proposal to declare an approved Wildlife Trade Operation for the incidental harvest of smooth hammerhead sharks. Call for comments open from 19 December 2014 until 21 January 2015

The successful projects from the 20 Million Trees Programme Competitive Grants Round One 2014-2015 have now been announced.

A Request for Tender process for the Service Provider component of the 20 Million Trees Programme is currently open and will close 2pm (AEDT) 6 February 2015.

EU decision to increase allowed catches in most areas good news for British fishermen, but conservationists are dismayed

Britain’s fishermen will be allowed to increase their catch of cod and other key fish species next year after late-night wrangling between EU ministers in Brussels resulted in a new set of fishing quotas that flout scientific advice.

The quota for cod catches for 2015 will increase by 5% on last year, though scientific advice suggested that it should be cut by 20%.

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Next year the Belo Monte dam will flood vast swathes of Amazon rainforest. Indian tribes living on the river have lost their fight to halt the project – now they await the floods that threaten their entire way of life

By the Great Bend of the Xingu river in the depths of Amazonia, the Juruna tribe is being drowned by what seems at first sight to be a flood of TV game-show prizes.

There’s a shiny new motorboat moored by the old canoe, the latest four-wheel drive parked beside a chicken coop, satellite dishes outside every home and wide-screen plasma TVs inside.

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