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Japanese fleets have killed more than 300 minke whales in the Southern Ocean despite a court ruling and three-decade-old ban

Japan is likely to face international criticism at a whaling summit this week for killing whales in the Southern Ocean in defiance of a court ruling and a three-decade-old ban.

Japanese fleets killed more than 300 minke whales, many of them pregnant, when they resumed so-called scientific whaling in 2015-16 after a hiatus the year before because the international court of justice decided the hunts were not scientific and should cease.

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In a letter seen by the Guardian, European parliament president, Martin Schulz, warns EU chief, Jean Claude-Juncker, that inaction over a stalled review of the EU’s nature directives is jeopardising EU biodiversity targets

An impasse in Brussels over changes to the EU’s pioneering nature laws has pitted the president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, against the bloc’s chief, Jean Claude-Juncker, in private correspondence seen by the Guardian.

More than a thousand animal and plant species – and 500 types of wild bird – are protected by the EU’s nature laws.

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Some 73% of the British public polled by ComRes support onshore windfarms in contrast with government decisions to block them

Public support for onshore windfarms is far higher than widely believed, according to a new opinion poll, even in rural areas.

Wind turbines are also far more popular than fracking or nuclear power, contrasting with the UK government’s decision to block onshore windfarms but back shale gas exploration and new nuclear power plants.

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ROUGH LANDING: Although fears grow for the ExoMars lander, scientists say the mission has been a success. Here's what we know so far.

Results of annual report card based on data collected before bleaching killed a fifth of the reef’s coral, suggesting next year’s results will be even worse

The Great Barrier Reef has been given a D on a report card for its overall health by the federal and Queensland governments for the fifth year in a row.

The results of the annual report card were based on data collected before this year’s climate change-induced bleaching event that killed about a fifth of the reef’s coral, suggesting next year’s results will be even worse.

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The market operator seems happy to let the blame for the South Australia blackout fall on wind energy, but questions about its own role are warranted, particularly because it seems to have totally ignored a report prepared a decade ago that envisaged a similar scenario.

Frosterley, Weardale The footpaths were silent and deserted, but, at every turn, there were signs of the days when they echoed with the sounds of human labour

On a windless morning, when the sun had barely reached sufficient elevation to skim the dew on the grass, the footpaths around the old quarries were silent and deserted. And yet, at every turn, there were signs of days when this valley echoed with the sound of human voices and people’s labour.

I stood among the ruins of Harehope Gill lead mine, where only a single wall still stands, and tried to imagine it two centuries ago, when it was at its productive peak: the clop of hooves as ponies dragged squeaky-wheeled wagons laden with lead ore from the mine level tunnel; the thud of picks on rock; clanging shovels; rattle of broken stone tipped on to spoil heaps; and the shouts and curses of labouring miners. Now, just silence, except for the trickling of water.

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Queensland's 50% renewable target is a great idea and achievable, but its current plans will need radical change.

NSW says it has accepted an unsolicited offer from Australian Super and IFM investors to buy 50.4% of utility Ausgrid for just over $16bn.

Australians are becoming more aware of where their meat comes from, but it's still and ethical minefield. Vicki/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Australia has a long-standing history as a country that loves its meat. Meat production and processing in Australia occupies over half of the land mass, makes an important contribution to the Australian economy and employs over 53,000 people.

Meat also has deep cultural and social significance, as seen through Meat and Livestock Australia’s most recent campaigns.

Debates around eating meat are not new. But a new SBS documentary starting tonight, For the Love of Meat, examining where Australia’s beef, chicken and pork comes from, will spark more questions about if and how we should eat meat.

For the Love of Meat host Matthew Evans takes viewers on a tour of his pig farm. Ethical, or just a label?

In most cultures, including Australia, omnivory (eating a combination of meat and other foods) is the norm. Although it’s clear our preferences for different types of meat have changed over time, we are still one of the biggest meat-consuming countries in the world. But some recent statistics suggest Australians are choosing to eat less meat, particularly red meat.

One factor linked to this decline is increased concern about farm animal welfare. Our research group is interested in how consumers and producers think about farm animal welfare and how it relates to broader ideas of ethical food production.

Research tells us that people care about farm animal welfare, and a number of consumers are willing to pay more for meat that is produced in a “more humane” way. But much of this research assumes that there is a clear and shared understanding of what “good” animal welfare is.

We know a lot about how animal production scientists think about animal welfare: health, pain relief and how production animals are affected by interactions with people and their environment.

We know less about how livestock producers think about animal welfare: they generally care about the welfare of their animals because welfare is closely linked to productivity and their livelihoods, in addition to wanting to treat their animals well.

However for most consumers, price and taste are key drivers for purchases. Our ongoing research suggests consumers think about animal welfare in a much broader way than scientists and producers.

For the general public, high animal welfare standards are closely linked to ideas of food quality – taste, nutritional value and food safety. Recent research by others showed that the “humane” label alone was enough for people to rate one sample of meat as “tastier” than another, when in fact the two had been produced in exactly the same way.

For those who wish to purchase and consume meat and other animal products produced in ways that align with their values, current labelling and regulations present a minefield. “Humane” and “ethical” are very broad terms that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and are not explicitly regulated; various private certification regimes exist but rely on diverse measures.

Standards were recently adopted for “free-range” eggs, but several groups argue that this does not go far enough and thus does not reflect what the community expects free-range to be.

Other terms in widespread use which potentially confuse consumers include sow stall free (which refers to the housing for pregnant sows before they have piglets, not the housing system for piglets and sows together), grass-fed, grain-fed, green, and sustainable, to name just a few.

Many types of ‘ethical’ meat choices

Sustainability and the impact of meat production on the environment have also become key reasons to reduce meat consumption. We have met people who call themselves “kangatarians”; eating kangaroo meat because they feel that its consumption has less negative impact on the environment. Others only consume wild-caught meat, mainly from feral species such as deer and goat.

We have also had other participants in our research who view hunting for their own meat as “ethical” consumption in order to have direct connection with the source of their meat and to know that it has been killed “humanely”.

Even when an animal has a good life, meat-eaters obviously must accept the idea of animal death in order for them to eat meat. For some, the dissonance this creates leads them to reduce or cease eating meat. Omnivores use a number of strategies to reduce this discomfort. For some, the idea of only consuming meat from an animal that, in their view, had a good life and a good death may also be a way of reducing their own discomfort.

We need more open discussion

We encourage more open conversations about meat production and consumption, and hope that the new documentary can contribute to this.

But it is also important to recognise that most conventional producers argue that they already produce safe, nutritious and affordable meat and other animal products in humane and sustainable ways.

We need more reflection and discussion about our shared values surrounding animal consumption and production practices, and to resist simple, and potentially elitist, solutions that ignore the complexities of this debate.

For the Love of Meat begins Thursday October 20 on SBS.

Heather Bray's salary is partly funded (50%) by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP130100419) which includes contributions from industry partners Coles Group Ltd, Elders Limited, Richard Gunner’s Fine Meats Pty Ltd, and the South Australian Research and Development Institute. She received scholarships from the Pig Research and Development Corporation (now Australian Pork Limited) between 1991 and 1997. The University of Adelaide is a partner in the Animal Welfare Science Centre.

Rachel A. Ankeny receives funding from the Australian Research Council for grants relating to food consumption and production, including a Linkage Project (LP130100419) which includes contributions from industry partners Coles Group Ltd, Elders Limited, Richard Gunner's Fine Meats Pty Ltd, and the South Australian Research and Development Institute.

Tesla announces new self-driving software and hardware suite that it says will deliver a safety level "substantially greater than that of a human driver."

Desutsche Bank says falling solar PV module prices in US – down potentially 40% in just two quarters – could spark 2017 "gold rush."

Berkeley Lab study shows greater potential than many other recent assessments.

Stopping the thermal coal juggernaut in time is one of the keys to keeping the world to its Paris targets.

Big growth in EV adoption will create complexity for grid operators and other electricity market stakeholders.

An endangered eastern black rhino has been born at Blank Park zoo in Des Moines, Iowa. The combined captive and wild population of black rhinos is less than 1,000, making the birth very significant. The calf was standing and walking within an hour of its birth and attempted to feed within two hours, both signs of a healthy baby rhino

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The latest Great Barrier Reef Report Card details positive news and identifies areas where more effort is needed, it also assesses the reported results of Reef Water Quality Protection Plan actions up to June 2015.

New Zealand utility Vector using Tesla Powerpack for major push into Australia battery storage market, targeting off-grid and business customer markets.

Echidnas may not seem the most active of animals. Waddling around, they spend much of their time dozing and hiding. But in research published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, we show that echidnas dig huge amounts of soil, and play a crucial role in Australia’s ecosystems.

By attaching miniature GPSs and accelerometers to echidnas in Western Australia, we found that these mammals move on average 200 cubic metres of soil each year. For the 12 echidnas we studied, this is the equivalent of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Attaching tiny tracking devices to echidnas is harder than it sounds. Zoology gets small

Short-beaked echidnas are one of few surviving species of monotreme; unique mammals that reproduce by laying eggs. As well as a strange anatomy, they have an unusually low body temperature and metabolism.

We were interested in how the echidna’s unusual limbs influenced their walking and digging, and how this in turn was related to patterns of activity and their potential ecosystem impact.

So we attached tiny custom-made accelerometers to the spines of wild echidnas at Dryandra Woodland, in Western Australia. We also attached GPS units to monitor their location, and radio-transmitters so we could find them again.

The miniaturisation of electronic devices has changed the way we study wildlife. We can get details about wild animals’ behaviour in their natural habitat that we couldn’t previously. This is now revealing more information not only about the biology of these species, but the roles they play in ecosystems.

Echidna fitted with an accelerometer and GPS unit, and a radio-tracking transmitter Christine Cooper

The accelerometers were about the size of a wrist-watch, hand-soldered with a microscope and tiny soldering iron. These let us determine exactly when and for how long echidnas were resting, walking and digging.

Our biggest challenge was getting to the echidnas again so we could remove their tracking devices. Echidnas spend much of their time sheltering in inaccessible caves, rocky crevices and hollow logs and are mostly active at night, especially during summer. We studied echidnas during the hot West Australian summer, when temperatures rose to 45℃, and during spring when it was 25℃ cooler.

Tracking an echidna to a rock cave at Dryandra Woodland William Parkinson Walk like an echidna

Our data revealed that echidnas take shorter and slower strides compared with similar-sized mammals. Unlike most other mammals, they take more strides rather than increasing the length of their strides to walk faster. This reflects the anatomy of the limbs, which are adapted to digging rather than rapid movement and as a consequence, echidnas cannot walk very fast, with a maximum speed of 2.3 kilometres per hour, and have a characteristic waddling gait.

But their covering of sharp spines offers good protection from predators. Indeed you don’t need to be able to run quickly if nothing can eat you. This armour of spines and the echidna’s ability to dig rapidly into the ground or roll into a tight, spikey ball is one reason that echidnas have not suffered the same dramatic decrease of many other Australian mammals.

Echidnas are also not as vulnerable to the ravages of introduced predators that are often the final straw for native mammals already threatened by increasing aridity, land clearing, altered fire regimes and competition with introduced herbivores.

Removing the accelerometer and GPS from an echidna to download the data and re-charge the batteries. Kellie McMaster

When echidnas were active, they spent most of the time digging and looking for food. Compared to many other animals, echidnas have longer activity times, presumably due to the time required to find their food of ants and termites; echidnas eat about 40,000 individual ants and termites a day.

Echidnas spend a similar amount of time foraging in both spring and summer, but during spring they move more slowly and are more likely to ramble, at a leisurely 1 kilometre per hour, from their rest sites to foraging areas. But in summer, they sprint at their top speed directly to and from feeding sites, presumably to minimise activity during hot weather.

The importance of digging

The considerable time that echidnas spend digging and the area over which they dig means that they act as important “bioturbators”. They turn over the soil which reduces compaction, improves soil mixing and water penetration, incorporates leaf litter and other organic matter into the soil, and reduces run-off and erosion.

Therefore, bioturbators such as echidnas are “ecosystem engineers”. They play a crucial role in the environment as their digging can make for better soils, and in turn influence plant growth and species diversity.

Echidna digging for termites, Dryandra Woodland Christine Cooper

Echidnas are particularly important ecosystem engineers in Australian landscapes, as many of the other native mammals that once performed this function are rare or have become extinct, and so are no longer doing this essential role. Echidnas have one of the widest distributions of any native Australian mammal.

Their persistence in almost all Australian habitats means that their extensive digging is a critical component of maintaining ecosystem function throughout the Australian continent.

Christine Cooper receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Christofer Clemente received funding from Australian Research Council, DECRA fellowship.

The eggs of a mosquito capable of transmitting tropical diseases, including the Zika virus, are found for the first time in the UK.