The Guardian

Omsin, a green sea turtle, is recovering in Bangkok after surgery to remove over 900 coins from her stomach on Monday. She was brought to Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn university for medical attention by Thai naval personnel who noticed the struggling turtle in Sriracha. A CT scan found that Omsin (“piggy-bank” in English) was carrying a 5kg metal mass inside her, later found during surgery to be coins. It is likely Omsin was swallowing coins thrown into her pond in her hometown. She is expected to make a full recovery

More than 900 coins removed from turtle’s stomach in Thailand

Twenty-five-year-old green sea turtle nicknamed Bank swallowed money thrown into her pool by tourists seeking good luck

Tossing coins into a fountain to bring good luck is a popular superstition, but the practice brought misery to a sea turtle in Thailand from which vets have removed 915 coins.

Vets in Bangkok operated on Monday on the 25-year-old female green sea turtle nicknamed Bank, whose indigestible diet was the result of tourists seeking good fortune by tossing coins into her pool over many years in the eastern town of Sri Racha.

Ditching dirty coal benefiting environment as gas and renewables increase their share in electricity generation

The UK’s carbon dioxide emissions have fallen to their lowest level since the 19th century as coal use continues to plummet, analysis suggests.

Emissions of the major greenhouse gas fell almost 6% year-on-year in 2016, after the use of coal for electricity more than halved to record lows, according to the Carbon Brief website, which reports on climate science and energy policy.

Toxic air, unsafe water and and lack of sanitation causing the deaths of 1.7 million children under five every year

Pollution is responsible for one in four deaths among all children under five, according to new World Health Organisation reports, with toxic air, unsafe water and and lack of sanitation the leading causes.

The reports found polluted environments cause the deaths of 1.7 million children every year, but that many of the deaths could be prevented by interventions already known to work, such as providing cleaner cooking fuels to prevent indoor air pollution.

Tax hike on solar-installed properties to affect 821 state schools in England and Wales, research suggests

New research suggests schools in England and Wales which have solar panels installed will be landed with a £1.8m bill because of business rate changes that have been branded ludicrous and nonsensical.

More than 1,000 schools installed solar power in recent years to address climate change, educate pupils and provide a crucial new revenue stream to help squeezed budgets.

There’s broad support for climate policies in every state and county, but Americans view global warming as a distant problem

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published the findings of its 2016 survey on American public opinion about climate change. The results are interesting – in some ways confusing – and yet they reveal surprisingly broad support for action to address climate change. The Yale team created a tool with which the results can be broken down by state, congressional district, or county to drill down into the geographic differences in Americans’ climate beliefs.

Farmers like fixing their own equipment, but rules imposed by big corporations are making it impossible. Now this small showdown could have a big impact

There are corn and soy fields as far as the eye can see around Kyle Schwarting’s home in Ceresco, Nebraska. The 36-year-old farmer lives on a small plot of land peppered with large agricultural machines including tractors, planters and a combine harvester.

Parked up in front of his house is a bright read 27-ton Case tractor which has tracks instead of wheels. It’s worth about $250,000, and there’s a problem with it: an in-cab alarm sounds at ten-minute intervals to alert him to a faulty hydraulic connector he never needs to use.

Berserk beasts, trashed crops, vengeful villagers: tales of ‘conflict’ come thick and fast as humans and elephants are forced into closer contact. But does it have to be war? Across Asia and Africa, there are hints of how we might live in peace

While I was working on this article, two people were killed by wild elephants near my home in south India. Mary Leena, a middle-aged woman, was rushing to church for an early morning service. At an intersection, she came face to face with a huge male elephant as it turned the corner. Both panicked; the elephant swung his trunk out, and she was thrown into a wall. She was rushed to the hospital, but died on the way.

Three weeks later, a lorry driver on a national highway heard someone calling for help. He found an old lady in the tea bushes, badly injured. She was walking along the road, encountered wild elephants, and was thrown into the bushes. She too died shortly after.

Haverah Park, North Yorkshire It is an unglamorous fringeland of rush pasture and white moor, yet nature finds a use for it

Neglect has left the wooden barrack-like building looking gaunt and frankly sinister. A sky of torn clouds, a sea of rough, rust-coloured pasture, a few knotty hawthorns and some lonely telegraph poles complete the Yorkshire Gothic ambience; it could be a backdrop to a horror film.

Yet this is Doug Simpson’s preferred patch for a wander. Best known for overseeing the successful reintroduction of red kites to Yorkshire, he looks at this windswept, indefinite area of “unofficial countryside” in Haverah Park, near Harrogate, through the eyes of an ornithologist.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 6 March 1917

How the earwigs, beetle larvæ, and earthworms must hate the Food Controller! When, quite in the fashion, I was breaking up some fresh ground in my small garden, I caused great annoyance and considerable injury to numerous worms and insects which no doubt thought that they were in safe winter quarters. It was the earwigs that I specially noticed, and I was almost sorry for them, for, like birds, they were sitting on their eggs. I had to stop occasionally to watch a half-awake mother earwig, if I did not happen to have damaged her with my spade. She turned up an expostulating and threatening tail, metaphorically rubbed her eyes, dazzled by the unexpected light, and then began to fuss round, striving to gather together those precious eggs. She is a model mother amongst insects, and when the tiny larva – very like her in general appearance – are hatched she looks after them in quite a correct manner, while the babes seem to recognise their nurse and crowd round her like much more highly developed animals, even crawling upon her back for a ride. The earwig is not generally popular, but she has some excellent points, and the really neat arrangement of her beautiful wings, folding like a fan from the centre of their forward edge so that they will tuck safely inside her short elytra, is most wonderful.

ANZ, NAB, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac provided three times more for non-renewable than clean energy projects in 2016, says Market Forces

Australia’s big four banks invested three times as much in global fossil fuels as they did in clean energy in 2016, despite pledging to help Australia transition to a low carbon economy.

The banks provided a combined $10bn to projects around the world that expanded non-renewable energy, according to finance group Market Forces.

US president’s Scotland development is under fire as it seeks to expand its boutique hotel and ditch its ecological monitoring group

The Trump Organization is facing a new battle with Scottish planners and conservationists over the protection of rare dunes and wildlife at its Aberdeenshire golf resort.

Trump International Golf Course Scotland has challenged a key part of the planning permission it won for the resort in 2008 as it pushes ahead with plans for a second 18-hole golf course and an extension to its boutique hotel.

Choose the right brands if you want to promote women’s rights

Ethical shoppers like me want to think that they always have the sisterhood top of their list when they shop. But in practice I find most can rattle off the five freedoms of animal welfare, but are pretty hazy on enshrined women’s rights, like the right to hold elected and appointed government positions.

Even ethical shoppers are often pretty hazy on women's rights

Painscastle, Powys Over the past few years, to my delight, a pair of swans had made this sky-reflecting pool their home

We all have our touchstone places. One of mine is the Monk’s Pond on the Begwns – a little group of bracken hills north of the river Wye as it heads eastwards out of Wales. For more than half a century I’ve made regular pilgrimages to this pool, the southern Welsh uplands wrapped round it like a protective barrier. The view takes in the Black Mountains to the south, the Brecon Beacons in the west, and those smooth, heathery highlands of Radnorshire to the north.

There’s a stand of drowned Scots pine at the pool’s western end. Their roots were submerged when it was enlarged for a local farm’s water supply. The pines are sibilant with goldcrests. Buzzards that range this wide country perch here and watch for prey.

Scientists find that commercial hunting caused “basin-wide collapse” among aquatic species

Scientists have conducted what they call the first systematic, historical account of the impacts on the Amazon basin of the 20th century international trade in furs and skins. The conclusion: “basin-wide population collapse” for aquatic species, but much greater resilience shown by terrestrial species.

The study focuses on four states in Brazil - Acre, Amazonas, Rondonia and Roraima - and draws on a wide range of historical records including those belonging to the Amazonas state government and the concession owner of the Manaus port. It was published in Science Advances in late 2016, but is reported now to mark UN World Wildlife Day. Here are 10 of the most fascinating - and sometimes horrifying - take-aways:

Proposal would remove environmental justice office, tasked with bridging gap in pollution in black, Hispanic and low-income areas and wealthier white ones

Planned cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency are set to fall heaviest upon communities of color across the US that already suffer disproportionately from toxic pollution, green groups have warned.

Related: New EPA head Scott Pruitt's emails reveal close ties with fossil fuel interests

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

The new government plans to relocate residents to larger atolls – leaving small islands ripe for development. It says these super resorts, not solar power, will create the money needed to adapt to climate change

When Mohamed Nasheed, the young, first democratically elected president of the Maldives, said in 2008 that he was seeking to buy a new homeland to save his people from being inundated by rising sea levels, it made the country of 1,200 coral islands the moral leader in the UN climate talks and helped persuade rich countries to act.

This week the Maldives, under new president Abdulla Yameen, apparently changed environmental tack, saying that mass tourism and mega-developments rather than solar power and carbon neutrality would enable it to adapt itself to climate change and give its young population hope for the future.

Poison arrow frogs, a Steller sea lion and a chameleon are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Exclusive New research indicates the benefits of eating omega-3 fatty acids, but also that pollution particles can penetrate the lungs into many organs, including testicles

Supplements of healthy fats could be an immediate way of cutting the harm caused to billions around the world by air pollution, according to emerging research.

However, the research also shows air pollution particles can penetrate through the lungs of lab animals into many major organs, including the brain and testicles. This raises the possibility that the health damage caused by toxic air is even greater than currently known.