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Some of the world’s earliest life forms may have been captured in squiggles found in ancient rocks from Greenland.

My friend Chris Leyland, who has died of cancer aged 62, was that rare breed – a farmer for whom people mattered as much as the livestock in his care. In his native Northumberland, his most recent achievement was securing a future for the unique, 800-year-old Chillingham breed of wild cattle. Appointed park manager at Chillingham Castle in 2005, Chris used his farming expertise to double the herd numbers to more than a hundred today, by reversing decades of decay in their habitat.

But he will be best remembered by the Northumberland farming community as leader of a campaign that led to the creation of Bell View, a visionary approach to the housing and care of old people in Chris’s home town of Belford.

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George Purcell, 15, joins local outcry after charity buys historic farm’s land and sheep, but not its farmhouse or outbuildings

A teenage farmer has accused the National Trust of endangering farming for future generations by acquiring a piece of land in the Lake District, which has sparked an outcry in the area over fears it could end an agricultural tradition going back thousands of years.

Fifteen-year-old George Purcell, who began farming Herdwick sheep with his parents when he was 11, said the National Trust’s actions had put the future of farming in the Lake District in jeopardy.

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Barry Gardiner has warned the prime minister that any delay risks the UK being sidelined in influencing future action on climate change

Labour has warned Theresa May that the UK must hurry up and ratify the Paris climate deal before the year is out or risk being sidelined in influencing future action on global warming.

Writing to the new prime minister, Barry Gardiner said that the Brexit vote in June meant it was also vital that the UK demonstrated its continued commitment to international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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Ambitious Great Elephant Census finds nearly one-third of continent’s largest elephants were wiped out between 2007-14, largely due to poaching for ivory

Poaching has driven a huge decline in Africa’s savanna elephants with almost a third (30%) wiped out between 2007 and 2014, the first ever continent-wide survey of the species has found.

Around 144,000 animals were lost over a seven-year period in 15 African countries, declining at a rate of 8% a year. The population across those countries today stands at 352,271 elephants.

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More than 30% of the water sources on our planet are being over-exploited, in many cases to near exhaustion. World Water Week brings together experts and innovators from around the world to develop solutions for a sustainable water future

• This year World Water Week takes place in Stockholm, 28 Aug to 2 Sept, and takes the theme of Water for Sustainable Growth

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Joan Rose, a microbiologist who has won the world’s most prestigious water prize, is both depressed and optimistic at progress to make water fit to drink

• World Water Week - in pictures

In May 2000, around half of Walkerton’s 5,000 residents fell severely ill and seven people died when cow manure washed into a well. The extent of the water pollution in the small Canadian town was concealed from the public, people drank from their taps and the result was ruined lives.

For academic microbiologist Joan Rose, who has observed water pollution outbreaks around the world, it was the worst that she had ever experienced.

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Wet spring and sunny conditions pave the way for a spectacular display of colour, according to the Forestry Commission

Autumn could come as early as mid-September as a wet spring and sunny conditions pave the way for a spectacular display of colour, the Forestry Commission has said.

England’s wet spring saw rainfall 30% above average in the east and the south, data from the Met Office shows.

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Special review recommending steps needed to strengthen climate policies receives a mixed response

The Climate Change Authority has advised the Australian government to institute two emissions trading schemes and strengthen regulations in order to meet Australia’s 2030 emission reduction targets and to allow it to lift those targets in line with international climate change obligations.

The move is expected to put pressure on the new environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, to strengthen Australia’s climate policies but it has received a mixed response.

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Over the past 70 years, the bird has become a global staple, and could be the key fossil evidence for human-influenced epoch

The domestic chicken is set to play an epoch-defining role for humanity, as its bones could become the key fossil evidence for the dawn of the age in which humankind came to dominate the planet.

On Monday, an expert group announced that a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, should be declared. But the key to defining a geological age is finding global physical evidence of the transition that will be preserved for future geologists, and the chubby modern chicken eaten worldwide is a prime candidate.

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New study finds poaching has helped shrink population by 60% since 2002 – and eventually may be responsible for eradicating one of the largest creatures left

Forest-dwelling elephants are likely to face extinction far more quickly than previously assumed because their sluggish reproduction rate cannot keep pace with rampant poaching and habitat loss, a new study has found.

The first comprehensive research into forest elephant demographics found that even if poaching was curbed, it will take nearly 100 years for the species just to recover the losses suffered in the past decade. The forest elephant population has crashed by more than 60% since 2002, with the species now inhabiting less than a quarter of its potential range of the Congo basin in Africa.

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It may not be coal for Christmas for Adani, unless it gets its foot in the ground. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

The rejection by the Federal Court of the most serious remaining legal challenges to the proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin means it is finally time for the project’s proponent, Adani Mining, to put its money where its mouth has been.

For several years, Adani has been blaming its failure to proceed with the mine on legal obstacles. Most of these obstacles were cleared by 2015. A report in February cited a “top Adani Group executive” saying that operations should start in August 2016.

By the time of the final approval from the Queensland government in April, the group was talking about unspecified “secondary approvals” and saying “we hope that construction would start any time in 2017”.

This timetable was repeated after the most recent court decisions. While some court challenges to government approvals remain, it does not appear that any of these would prevent a start to construction, given that the approvals are now in place.

Coal price waning

At the same time, the incentives for an early start are stronger than they have been for some time. The price of thermal coal has risen by 30%, primarily as a result of action by the Chinese government to close uneconomic mines and support the profitability of those that remain.

Few analysts expect this rise to be sustained indefinitely. China has signalled its intention to limit its reliance on coal-fired electricity. This is both because of its contribution to global warming and because of the health effects of burning coal in urban areas, which causes tens of thousands of deaths every year.

The same is true of the Indian market, for which Adani’s exports are supposed to be destined. India’s coal imports have grown rapidly but are now being squeezed on both the supply and demand sides of the market.

On the supply side, the publicly owned monopoly Coal India is expanding production and private firms are being allowed access to coal reserves.

On the demand side, coal-fired electricity is facing increasingly stiff competition from renewables, most notably solar PV.

Adani Enterprises, from which Adani Mining was spun off last year, is among the major investors in renewables. And, a little later than in China, the Indian government and people are waking up to the disastrous health effects of burning coal. Several “ultra mega power projects” (massive coal-fired power plants) were cancelled recently. More are likely to follow.

So the long-term trend for coal demand and coal prices can only be down from the current peak, itself far below the A$120 per tonne that prevailed when the Galilee Basin project was first put forward in 2010. It follows that there is no time to lose in developing the Carmichael mine, if it is ever to be profitable.

Woes for Galilee coal

But before construction can begin, Adani needs to undertake substantial engineering design work, hire contractors and secure billions of dollars in financing. There is no sign that this is happening.

The engineering team from Worsley Parsons and the construction group from Korean steelmaker Posco (also a supposed equity partner) were sacked in 2015. A A$2 billion announcement of work for Downer EDI seems to have vanished into thin air.

The situation with finance is even worse. A long list of banks and other funding sources have announced they won’t finance the project, or have pulled out of announced and existing finance arrangements.

The list includes the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (formerly a big lender to Adani), NAB, the Queensland Treasury and global banks, including Standard Chartered (another former big lender), Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays, as well as BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale. The US and Korean Export-Import banks and the State Bank of India have been touted as possible sources, but appear to have backed away.

It gets worse. The Carmichael mine is part of a larger plan to develop five megamines in the Galilee Basin. The economics of the rail line and port expansion needed to transport coal from Carmichael depend on the assumption that the costs will be shared across these mines.

But these projects are in far worse straits than Adani’s. GVK, the Indian conglomerate that owns the Alpha, Kevin’s Corner and Alpha West deposits, is in deep financial trouble. Its Australian partners, Aurizon (the privatised Queensland Rail) and Hancock Prospecting (owned by Gina Rinehart), have written off their investments. GVK’s March 2016 financial statements did not even mention the Galilee Basin assets.

GVK looks healthy compared to the other major owner of Galilee Basin assets, Clive Palmer. In a desperate attempt to stave off the bankruptcy of his Queensland Nickel corporation, he tried to offload the coal deposits owned by his Waratah Coal company onto Adani, and use the mooted sale proceeds to secure credit from Aurizon. Neither party was interested.

Until now, Adani has blamed the endless delays in its project on legal challenges. But the time for excuses has run out. Adani should admit that this economically and environmentally disastrous project will never go ahead, and focus its attention completely on the renewable energy technologies in which it is already a major player.

John Quiggin is a Member of the Climate Change Authority. He has appeared as an expert witness on behalf of the Environmental Defenders Office, but not in any cases related to the Galilee Basin.

What is environmental water’s role in the wet times? How are we thinking of managing our holdings over the months to come? Read our latest update.

We are very pleased to advise that both the Expert Scientific Panel and Bioregional Advisory Panel reports that were provided to the then Minister for the Environment, the Hon Greg Hunt MP have been released.

Environmental water managers work in anticipation of, and around, whatever nature delivers. Read this statement to find out how we manage our water during wet conditions.

At best, just 2,500 Indochinese leopards survive today across Southeast Asia. They have been eradicated from 93% of their historic habitat by snares, poachers, deforestation and declines in prey. Can conservationists stop the bleeding before its too late?

Conservationists have long known that it’s hard – and in some cases – nearly impossible to survive as a tiger in Southeast Asia. Burning forests, high human populations and unflagging demand for tiger blood, tiger skin and crushed tiger bone means the big cats have to tread a daily gauntlet of snares, guns and desperate poachers. Now, conservationists are discovering, belatedly, that the same is largely true for leopards.

A sobering new study in Biological Conservation has found that the Indochinese leopard – a distinct subspecies – may be down to less than 1,000 individuals. And in the best-case scenario only 2,500 animals survive – less than the population of Farmsfield village in Nottinghamshire.

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A pink cockatoo, thought to be the oldest bird of its kind in captivity, has died at a US zoo.

Geodynamics makes announcement as solar researchers speak out against cuts to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency

Renewable energy projects in Australia are already being suspended as a result of the two major parties’ plans to effectively abolish the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena).

In an announcement this week to the Australian Stock Exchange, Geodynamics announced it was suspending two large biogas projects in Goulburn, New South Wales, and Mindarra, Western Australia. It told investors it was doing so because of uncertainty surrounding the possibility of getting grant funding for the projects in the future.

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Kit Hill, Tamar Valley Patches of sunlight enhance emerald regrowth in hay and silage fields, and the luminous glow of stubble and uncut corn

Harvesting of cereals is fast these days, hardly noticed by passersby. Close to home, stubble is glimpsed through gateways off narrow lanes encompassed by rank hedge banks overgrown with honeysuckle. Loaders and trailers race to gather the big round straw bales before rain, and there remain some uncut fields of later, spring-sown, barley.

The rare sight of stooks (cut for thatching) prompt boyhood reminiscences: Jack, my husband, drove the Fordson Major, pulling the binder with his father sitting on the back, and our neighbour, Jeff from Yorkshire, was tasked with catching tossed up sheaves and handing them, butt side out, to the expert rick builder for layering around the central vent.

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ACT energy minister says Australian Energy Market Operator's conservative estimates on battery storage value highlights institutional barriers to low-carbon shift.