The Guardian

Redcastle, the Black Isle There are dozens of them waiting in the undergrowth to fly up, panic-stricken, as we pass

When we reach the turn for Gallowhill Wood the horses know we’re going home and pick up the pace. It has been a long day for them, these heavyset highlands – so low to the ground and dressed in such thick fur coats. But not so long they haven’t the energy to feign fright when we round a bend to find tripods lurking between the trees, with plastic bellies and wooden legs, short tails protruding from their underparts. They have an alien aspect, and the horses don’t like them at all. I agree.

A few minutes further and the mystery deepens. A paddock fenced with electrified wire twice my height. This looks serious. Wild boar? Oh no. I prepare for a panic of hoofbeats. But there too are strips of plastic hanging in the trees and CDs spinning on treads: this fence is to keep something safe inside.

The Tree Projects team spent 67 days documenting one eucalyptus regnans in the Styx valley of Tasmania. Using a combination of tree-climbing and elaborate arboreal rigging techniques, they produced an intimate portrait from an impossible perspective of one of the world’s largest individual flowering trees, which goes by several common names. These photos document the process that resulted in an extraordinary ultra high-definition photograph.

Forest loss worst in North America and Australia, with 63% of sites under increased pressure from infrastructure, agriculture and settlements

More than 100 of the world’s most precious natural assets are being severely damaged by encroaching human activities, according to a study examining direct human footprints and forest losses.

Natural world heritage sites are are identified by Unesco and include 229 sites around the world that are considered to have “outstanding universal values” that transcend national boundaries.

The Prime Minister’s refugee-friendly branding has veiled Canada’s fortress policies that are in urgent need of overhaul

It was a tweet heard around the world: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s rejoinder to Donald Trump’s repugnant Muslim travel ban that has sparked outrage around the world. “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” Trudeau tweeted on Saturday. “Diversity is our strength. #WelcometoCanada.”

While Trump has immediately stoked reactionary chaos, Trudeau has always struck the progressive posture. With fuzzy memes and messaging and photo-ops of him hugging refugees – and his predictably popular latest tweet – Canada’s Liberal party has painted themselves as a welcoming government in a sea of rising intolerance. Praise from the international political and media class has flowed.

Money collected as an alternative to prosecutions will go to projects that help wildlife, says Environment Agency

More than £1.5m will go to projects that help wildlife and the environment as companies pay for breaking green laws, the Environment Agency has said.

Businesses are paying between £1,500 and £375,000 in “enforcement undertakings” as an alternative to prosecutions for breaking environmental laws by polluting rivers, breaching permit conditions or avoiding recycling. The money on the new list of enforcement undertakings from 26 companies – including six paying six-figure sums – totals £1,535,992.

More than half of Liberal voters also oppose plan to loan Indian company $1bn to build a rail line between proposed Carmichael coalmine and Abbot Point

Three-quarters of Australians, including most Liberal voters, oppose the government giving a $1bn loan to Adani to build a rail line between its proposed Carmichael coalmine and the Abbot Point shipping terminal.

The government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (Naif) granted Adani “conditional approval” for a $1bn loan in December last year.

Operator says it has seen what may be fuel debris beneath badly damaged No 2 reactor, destroyed six years ago in triple meltdown

Hopes have been raised for a breakthrough in the decommissioning of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after its operator said it may have discovered melted fuel beneath a reactor, almost six years after the plant suffered a triple meltdown.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said on Monday that a remote camera appeared to have found the debris beneath the badly damaged No 2 reactor, where radiation levels remain dangerously high. Locating the fuel is the first step towards removing it.

Climate-change denier Myron Ebell says he expects Trump to withdraw the US from the global climate change agreement

The environmental movement is “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world”, according to an adviser to the US president Donald Trump’s administration.

Myron Ebell, who has denied the dangers of climate change for many years and led Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) until the president’s recent inauguration, also said he fully expected Trump to keep his promise to withdraw the US from the global agreement to fight global warming.

Trafficking of endangered snakes as pets or for their skins is having a negative impact on breeding patterns and size of species

Kenya has banned the export of various snake species, including the African rock python, to zoos and pet shops around the world after reports of animal abuse and snakes being sold on the black market for their meat and skins.

The trafficking of the endangered snakes by cartels is also having a negative impact on the environment, said authorities.

Juniper threatened by fungus-like disease is first species to be fully collected in Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens tree seed project

The future of gin is safe, according to horticultural experts who have collected juniper seeds from across the country to help conserve the declining tree species.

Juniper berries, which take two years to mature slowly on the plant, help give gin its distinctive flavour, but the native UK species is in decline.

The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest, but in the last 40 years at least 20% of it has been destroyed. The Amazon basin covers nine countries in South America, with 60% of it in Brazil, and for a decade local photographer Rodrigo Baleia has documented the beauty and destruction of the region from above

The discovery of the 600 mile-long reef in 2016 stunned scientists but oil companies are planning to drill in the area

The first images have been released of a unique coral reef that stunned scientists when discovered in 2016 at the mouth of the Amazon.

The 600 mile-long reef is expected to reveal new species as scientists explore it further, but oil companies are planning to drill in the area. The photographs were captured from a submarine launched to a depth of 220 metres from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. Campaigners say drilling must be prevented to protect the reef.

The research is clear – humans are responsible for all the global warming since 1950

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – which summarizes the latest and greatest climate science research – was quite clear that humans are responsible for global warming:

It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together … The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period … The contribution from natural forcings is likely to be in the range of −0.1°C to 0.1°C, and from internal variability is likely to be in the range of −0.1°C to 0.1°C.

Roger Gower’s brother says he wants something good to come from tragedy after pilot was shot dead in Tanzania

The family of a British pilot who was shot dead by elephant poachers in Tanzania have said they want to “make some good come from tragedy” as they spearhead an appeal to raise £1m to help tackle the African ivory trade.

Roger Gower, 37, was tracking criminals who had killed three elephants near the Serengeti national park when a poacher opened fire with an AK-47 rifle on 29 January last year.

Thorpe Wood, Peterborough This wood was here long before the city grew up around it. If it were lost its space would be instantly absorbed

Here’s a strange little peace in a tightened noose of noise. If you stumbled on it by footbridge, housing estate passage or nondescript pull-in, it would be a surprising find: an ancient worked wood caught in an outer eddy of the city. Thorpe Wood was here long before Peterborough grew up around it, before the city began to squeeze, before what little was left was mercifully protected.

The morning’s snowfall has gone. In spring there might be bluebells here, wild garlic, wood anemone, the “pock” of woodpecker, smells, shade. But in January life has descended to waist height and is thick with hardy, sharp things. At eye-level, winter’s transparency makes the wood a weave of disorderly trunks. The rafters are empty and naked, and it’s here the trees spread, contrast, throw flamboyant shapes against the sky.

RET was settled 18 months ago under former prime minister’s leadership, says Simon Birmingham

The Liberal frontbencher Simon Birmingham has dismissed Tony Abbott’s latest criticism of the Coalition’s renewable energy target, reminding Abbott that the target was settled under his leadership just 18 months ago.

Abbott warned at a Young Liberals conference at the weekend that power was getting more expensive and less reliable because the Turnbull government was making it “harder and harder” to use coal and gas through the renewable energy target.

Originally published in the Guardian on 4 February 1967

MACHYNLLETH: Foxes, unlike most creatures, are noisiest in midwinter. Here they usually begin calling about a week before Christmas and go on till early February. Their normal cry is often described as a bark. But foxes are not dogs and their call sounds to me more like a honking, a strangely vibrant, rather eerie owk-owk-owk-owk. This is repeated about every half-minute for several minutes at a time, it is a far-travelling call; so when you hear it the fox may be much farther off than you suppose. But foxes will cry close to houses. One night a fox called for ten minutes just outside our garden, a loud, wild, exciting sound.

We mostly hear our foxes in the early part of the evening. But they must call on and off all night, for if I wake I occasionally hear one. On morning this week there was a fox in full voice in broad daylight but that does not happen very often. So the mating season passes. And soon, come wind, come weather, the young foxes will be born safe and warm in their burrows. But not safe for long, many of them, when the spade and terrier brigade arrives. Still, not all will be discovered, for though thousands will be killed plenty will survive to send their lovely cries through the nights of next midwinter. So let us rejoice. For the fox is, as Hudson once said, “good to meet in any green place.”

Under a new French scheme cars are labelled according to the pollution that they emit. This allows the worst offenders to be banned when necessary

Last week Paris suffered its fourth smog of the winter and tried a new idea to protect its residents from the worst effects. Like many European cities, the Paris region has a well-established system of emergency actions that escalate if smog persists. Initial steps include health warnings, reduced speed limits and restrictions on lorries in the city centre. Final steps include cheaper public (€3.80 for a day pass), and bans on half of cars, using an odd/even number plate system.

Related: The UK’s deadly air pollution can be cured: here's how

RETs are the only policy tool left to shift Australia’s electricity sector away from fossil fuels, RepuTex modelling shows

State-based renewable energy targets are becoming essential drivers of Australia’s carbon reduction framework and, based on current policy settings, will be vital for Australia to meet its 2030 emissions targets, according to a report by the energy consultancy RepuTex.

The finding comes amid attacks on state-based renewable energy targets by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and his ministers, who have called for them to be scrapped.

Last Sunday evening, the air over London achieved a remarkable quality. As winds died and a freezing stillness gripped the city, levels of nitrogen oxides and particles of soot slowly built up in the air until they reached maximum measurable levels at 24 different locations across the capital. It was a degree of pollution that had never been recorded in London since the government introduced its current methods and scales for recording air quality, the Daily Air Quality Index, in 2012.

“What we recorded was a very intense pollution event over London – in common with several other areas of western Europe,” said air pollution expert Gary Fuller, of King’s College London. “We had not seen anything like it here for the past five years.”