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The fourth annual BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition aims to celebrate the diversity of life on Earth, and encourages people to protect and conserve it. Thousands of entries were received for the competition held by the California Academy of Sciences, and here are the winners

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The Mexican government is to use US Navy-trained dolphins to locate and herd endangered vaquitas.

Cardigan, Wales I saw the cob and pen paddling in golden light, between them a single, black-billed ball of grey down

The bell-beat of mute swans’ wings came with a grey dawn in early March. A pair of swans touched down in the river Teifi’s tidal reaches upstream of Cardigan town bridge. On wind-ruffled waters they kept proximity, gliding around in search of food, accompanied at respectful distance by small flocks of teal and unruly gangs of mallard drakes.

The old shipwright from the small boatyard most days ventured out of his workshop to sit on the slipway, talk to the swans, feed them by hand. They would respond with sonorous high grunts that belied their name. Occasionally the huge cob, neck outstretched, tore off downriver, wings flailing, to warn off some presumptuous intruder. This was his territory and no other’s.

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To avoid global warming becoming an unstoppable runaway process, Australia needs to be carbon neutral from mid-century. There’s just over thirty years for our electricity generation to be reconfigured away from fossil fuels and towards clean renewable sources.

To avoid global warming becoming an unstoppable runaway process, Australia needs to be carbon neutral from mid-century. There’s just over thirty years for our electricity generation to be reconfigured away from fossil fuels and towards clean renewable sources.

With farmland, industry, backyards and hobby farms as well as a city nearby, where do foxes choose to go? And will they choose to take a bait?

How toxic is the modern Australian city?

The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double.

On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo.

• The National Geographic Photo Ark exhibition is open at Melbourne Zoo from 1 July until 1 October

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India is touted as a rapid adopter of renewable energy, but its energy challenges are complex.

Yellow-footed rock wallabies bounce back in South Australia's northern pastoral region; we're cooking sausages in Cloncurry; making lunch at Helen Springs Station; and whipping up a duck-egg pavlova.

Green co-leader Caroline Lucas says she hopes to build a cross-party coalition to stop bottle wastage, while other correspondents offer their thoughts on protecting the environment

The Guardian’s coverage of the global plastic bottle crisis (Surge in plastic bottle use sparks global alert, 29 June) has been powerful and compelling. Like so many of the environmental challenges we face, this issue has been largely ignored in the mainstream, which has led us to the extraordinary situation where we have one million bottles being bought every minute globally. Britain’s contribution to this problem is significant. We use a staggering 38.5m plastic bottles each day, accounting for roughly 40% of the litter found in our environment along with cans. We’ve all read in horror the stories of whales’ stomachs filled with plastic waste, and we’ve all seen bottles littering our local communities.

The government must take responsibility for this growing crisis. One easy step forward would be to introduce a bottle deposit scheme. Such systems were commonplace in the UK until the 1980s, and are used in 11 other European countries. The concept is simple: you pay a small deposit on bottles and take them back to the shop you bought them from after use for recycling. The Scottish government has taken a major step towards introducing such a scheme – now the Tories must follow suit. We should also be ensuring that it’s easier for people to refill water bottles in shops and other businesses. This week has shown that the government is far more pliant towards the will of parliament than previously, and I’m hoping to build a cross-party coalition on this issue in the coming weeks so that Britain becomes a world leader in tackling plastic bottle pollution.
Caroline Lucas MP
Co-leader, Green party of England and Wales

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Europe’s consumption of products such as beef, soy and palm oil could increase its contribution to global deforestation by more than a quarter by 2030, analysis shows

Europe’s contribution to global deforestation may rise by more than a quarter by 2030, despite a pledge to halt such practices by the end of this decade, according to a leaked draft EU analysis.

An estimated 13m hectares (Mha) of the world’s forestland is lost each year, a figure projected to spiral in the next 30 years with the Amazon, Greater Mekong and Borneo bearing the brunt of tree clearances.

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Administration moves to ‘unleash’ US fossil fuels by rewriting Obama-era plan that banned drilling along Atlantic seaboard and large parts of the Arctic Ocean

Environmentalists have condemned Donald Trump as a “threat to every ocean and coastline in the country”, after the president pushed forward plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans as part of what he called a new era of “American energy dominance”.

The Trump administration has taken the first steps to rewrite a five-year plan, put in place under Barack Obama, that banned drilling along the Atlantic seaboard and in large swaths of the Arctic. The interior department is opening a 45-day public comment period for a new plan that it says will help grow the economy.

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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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In the UK and abroad, the political events of the past year prove that politicians are willing to gamble with the health, prosperity, and fate of our food systems.

One of the many things that the past year of political turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic has revealed, is that governments have a questionable relationship with food. As the UK inches towards the completion of Brexit negotiations, and the Trump administration in the US unleashes its budget proposal, a strange kind of disconnect has become apparent: those negotiating their nations’ futures seem not to recognise that a chunk of its security and prosperity depends on how well they manage its food.

In the UK that trend became clear well before Brexit struck, when during the negotiations many pointed out a lack of meaningful discussion about what the split would actually mean for farmers. It didn’t matter enough to be a priority. Until suddenly it did--when we realised we’d have to plug the hole left behind by the European migrants that currently make up roughly 20% of the UK’s agricultural workforce, and who would exit if we ultimately back away from free movement.

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Heatwaves that saw deadly forest fires in Portugal and soaring temperatures in England were made up to 10 times more likely by global warming, say scientists

Human-caused climate change dramatically increased the likelihood of the extreme heatwave that saw deadly forest fires blazing in Portugal and Spain, new research has shown.

Much of western Europe sweltered earlier in June, and the severe heat in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland was also made significantly more likely by global warming. Such temperatures will become the norm by 2050, the scientists warned, unless action is taken to rapidly cut carbon emissions.

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A drumming cockatoo, basking sharks and flamingos are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Three men plead not guilty to professional negligence in the only criminal action targeting officials since the triple meltdown

Three former executives with the operator of the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have pleaded not guilty to charges of professional negligence, in the only criminal action targeting officials since the triple meltdown more than six years ago.

In the first hearing of the trial at Tokyo district court on Friday, Tsunehisa Katsumata, who was chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) at the time of the disaster, and two other former executives argued they could not have foreseen a tsunami of the size that knocked out the plant’s backup cooling system, triggering a meltdown in three reactors.

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Trees, graveyards and everyday life are being encroached upon by rising sea levels on the Solomon Islands. Local people are trying to adapt

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The Murray-Darling Basin is an incredibly complex ecological system. Mike Russell/Flickr, CC BY-SA

After a long and contentious public debate, in 2012 Australia embarked on a significant and expensive water recovery program to restore the Murray-Darling Basin’s ecosystems.

Despite general agreement that a certain amount of water should be reserved to restore the flagging river system, the argument continues as to whether this should be 2,750 or 3,200 gigalitres (GL) a year, and how these savings can be achieved.

A recent report by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists argues that there is no conclusive evidence, after five years, that the plan is effective. The report’s authors believe that an extra 450GL of water a year needs to be recovered to save the basin.

There is no doubt in our minds that the Murray-Darling river system is in crisis, and the Basin Plan was vitally needed. But while we broadly agree with the Wentworth Group’s report, it’s a mistake to focus on water volume alone.

Without giving equal attention to improving water quality and building critical ecological infrastructure, it’s possible that increasing river flows could actually harm the Basin.

What are we trying to recover?

We don’t really have much information on the state of the basin before industrial development. Most knowledge is more recent, but we do know that from about the 1920s onwards, considerable volumes of water have been removed. Few comprehensive historic records of flora and fauna, let alone water quality, are available.

While knowledge of the state and significance of the ecology of the river systems is scant, there is ample evidence that increased levels of nutrients, salts and, in particular, sediments have adversely affected the wetlands, main channels and associated floodplains.

The records of fish that historically lived in the rivers, billabongs and wetlands also tell a cautionary tale. These wetlands and rivers once teemed with native fish. In 1915, a single scoop of a 10 m seine net would yield more than 100,000 native fish in a single wetland.

There were dozens of species at each site, supporting a burgeoning fishery that was considered inexhaustible.

An example of extreme overfishing of Murray cod in the late 1800s, which caused the first strong declines in the species. Such catches were typical for the period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_cod

Since that time the basin has been extensively developed. The fishing industry expanded, forests were cleared, dams were built, floodplains were blocked by levies, water began to be diverted for irrigation, the demand for drinking water increased and invasive species were introduced. But somewhere over the past 100 years we crossed a threshold where the system stopped being able to support native fish.

Nowadays, visiting the wetlands that were historically packed with native fish (all of which had huge cultural importance to traditional owners), we find mostly invasive species such as carp, goldfish and weatherloach.

In some places, native species that were once abundant have not been seen in 40 years. The formerly productive commercial fisheries, and the livelihoods they supported, have been shut down.

Our native fish are in trouble, and unless urgent action is taken, many face extinction within decades.

Rebuilding a complex system

The Basin Plan is underpinned by a focus on river volume as the cause of system degradation and subsequent recovery. But the system is much more complex than that. Fluctuating levels of sediments, salts and nutrients drive significant changes, and so regulating river flows – which carry these components from place to place – fundamentally alters the dynamics of main channels and floodplain wetlands.

Over the last century, erosion has filled the rivers in the Murray system with mud. When this water flows into the wetlands, this sediment builds and blocks the light, killing the aquatic plants that support native fish.

Simply increasing the water flow without addressing water quality runs the risk of exacerbating this problem. We therefore argue the first step in river recovery is attending to water quality.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has focused very heavily on the amount of water in the system; partly because speaking in terms of volume is easiest to demonstrate and understand. But the paleoecological record reveals that water quality, at least in wetlands, declined well before human use of water changed the river flows.

So if recovering water volume is a critical target, it is equally important that this water is of good quality. Recent experience with blackwater events, in which oxygen levels drop so low that fish suffocate, highlights this need. Even water of the wrong temperature, known as “thermal pollution”, can cause real harm. Winter-temperature water, for example, can prevent fish from breeding if it occurs in summer. Bad water quality will simply not provide good ecological outcomes.

A century of engineering development has fundamentally changed the basins rivers in a way that does not support native fish or the original ecology in general. Even if the recovered water is of high quality, we will need to take other steps to achieve tangible outcomes. Thus we need “complementary measures”, which augment the benefits of increasing river volumes. These include:

• Mitigating thermal and other pollution to ensure the water temperature and overall quality is adequate,
• Building fishways so that fish can navigate dams and weirs,
• Restocking threatened fish species into areas they are no longer found,
• Controlling carp and other non-native species that now dominate our waterways;
• Building fish-friendly irrigation infrastructure such as screens on irrigation pumps or overshot weirs; and
• Improving habitat through resnagging or controlling harmful practices on flood plains.

Another measure to improve the basin’s waterways, the proposal to release a virulent strain of carp herpes, has raised debate over whether it will neatly solve a major environmental and economic problem or create further issues.

If implemented correctly, these complementary measures are just as important as water recovery and improving water quality for meeting the basin plan’s ecological targets.

Repairing a river system such as the Murray-Darling is incredibly complex, and we must broaden our view beyond simply thinking about water volumes. Some of these extra steps can also provide benefits with less cost to the people who live and work with the water. To achieve this we suggest a staged program of recovery that allows the communities who live in the basin more time to adapt to the plan.

Max Finlayson receives funding from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and the Australian Research Council.

Lee Baumgartner works with the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation to investigate the benefits of complementary measures across the basin, including the release of the carp virus.

Peter Gell received funding from ARC to fund previous research into the Murray-Darling Basin. He currently receives funding from the NSW state government for research into wetlands. He is a member of the Greens.