The Guardian

They were hunted to near-extinction. Now a £3.5m project aims to let the Scottish molluscs flourish again

The sun shines on clear river water running through a valley in the Cairngorms, bringing the stones on the river bed into colourful focus. Here and there are dark shadows, half-buried clusters of dull black shells, lined and gouged by decades of shifting water and gravel: the pearl mussels of the river Dee.

Related: Fundraising drive aims to save seabird paradise off Scotland

Campaigners say Crystal Serenity trip puts at risk very environment tourists are travelling to see in Northwest Passage

A decision to proceed with plans to sail the first huge cruise liner through the Northwest Passage on Tuesday with 1,000 passengers on board has rekindled rows with environmentalists about the Arctic.

The wildlife charity WWF has accused Crystal Cruises of putting at risk “the very thing that tourists would come to see” – a pristine wilderness and home to endangered species such as polar bears and walrus.

South Uist They exist in two worlds, coming to flower in the sunshine and open air while rooted in the murky waters of the loch

It’s a scene worthy of the grounds around the most cultured of stately homes. An expanse of tranquil water faithfully reflecting back the glorious blue of a cloudless summer sky while a spread of white waterlilies rests serenely on its surface. Yet this is no planned garden but just one of the many lochs and lochans on the moorland and rough grazing which, for a short period each year, becomes something almost magical.

The contrast with the wiry grasses and the stands of scratchy, leggy heather itself soon to come into bloom only emphasises the waxy perfection of the waterlilies. Each layered ruff of white petals curves gently upward, cradling the mass of yellow anthers in the centre of the flower. There is a touch of the purity of the lotus about them, yet also somehow a hint of danger and mystery, existing as they do in two worlds, coming to flower in the sunshine and open air while rooted in the murky waters of the loch.

The Rio Olympics, wildfires in Europe, the continuing violence in Aleppo – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

New South Wales government couches its words carefully, but community hopes the end of BHP mine also spells the end of the Shenhua Watermark mine

One of Australia’s biggest mining battles could be drawing to a close, with the enormous Shenhua Watermark coalmine looking set to be stopped by the state government after relentless community pressure.

In a major victory for the uneasy coalition of environmentalists, farmers and conservative politicians and commentators, the New South Wales government said it was moving to stop mining in the fertile farming soils of the Liverpool Plains.

The enormous predator is one of the oldest and largest creatures on planet Earth. Writer Thomas Batten imagines a shark’s tale

Researchers in Arctic waters have used new techniques to set the age of a female Greenland shark at a staggering 392 years. The enormous predator – one of the world’s largest at about five meters in length – actually isn’t the oldest creature in the sea, as that honor belongs to a 507-year-old Icelandic clam, but the shark has definitely lived an extraordinary life.

Related: 400-year-old Greenland shark is oldest vertebrate animal

It is very commendable that George Monbiot has converted to veganism (Opinion, 10 August), but perhaps he is deluding himself into thinking that this will alter our output of CO2 into the atmosphere. We can practise all the accepted methods of reducing carbon emissions, but nothing is more effective than choosing to have no more than two children. As we hurtle towards the point of no return with regards to global warming, choosing not to eat meat is quite low down the scale of things we need to do.

Which are: 1 Stabilise world population. 2 Eradicate poverty. 3 Stop using fossil fuels and change to renewables. 4 Use our land to produce crops more effectively. 5 Reduce excessive meat consumption.

Eamon Kelly, 52, from Didcot, disqualified for cheating in Tarbes Grand National race after sending decoy birds

A pigeon-racing champion has received a lifetime ban from the sport after allegations that he cheated to win one of the most prestigious competitions in the sport’s calendar.

Eamon Kelly, 52, from Didcot, was accused of cheating by registering 14 birds for the Tarbes Grand National race but keeping them at home and sending decoys instead.

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

Scientists say the Greenland shark has the longest lifespan of any vertebrate on the planet. Julius Nielsen, who has been studying the sharks, says record goes to a female thought to be between 272 and 512 years old and is five metres in length

• 400-year-old Greenland shark is oldest vertebrate animal
  

Elephant herds face an uncertain future – over the next year we’ll be taking a closer look at what can be done to help

Welcome to the elephant conservation hub. Over the next year, with the support of Vulcan, Guardian journalists will be taking a closer look at the situation of elephant herds around the world.

Elephant conservation has been a particular focus for Vulcan, a private company set up by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to look for solutions to problems like endangered species, climate change and ocean health. The future of this particular species is precariously balanced. Although in some areas (a very few) elephant herds are expanding and thriving, the overall picture is one of decline, with falls of as much as 60% in elephant population in countries such as Tanzania.

A basking shark, panda cub and Finland’s bears and wolves are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Supporters are trying to improve sport’s reputation through a campaign group with no members that is funded anonymously

With the Glorious Twelfth, the 2016 grouse season is under way – and the first birds will be served up in many a country house on Friday night. But after raising a glass to the late Duke of Westminster, who owned a vast acreage of grouse moorland, the shooters may also toast a colourful and remarkably influential group of people trying to improve the tarnished reputation of their sport.

They include the retired cricketer Sir Ian Botham, a billionaire hedge fund owner who houses his chickens in a coop that supposedly cost £150,000, and a lobbyist who boasts of his role advising a Russian oligarch.

Club succeeds with an appeal to stop planning permission for the west London project that would power 600 homes

A proposed small hydropower project in west London has received a further setback, as court judges allowed an appeal by a club owned by Shell against the granting of planning permission to the site.

The project, at Teddington lock and weirs, would deliver enough electricity to power about 600 homes. It is proposed by a local cooperative group, run by volunteers, who have raised a potential £700,000 to build the plant, which the proponents say would not have any damaging effect on fish in the Thames or other local wildlife.

Wildlife presenter Chris Packham is called an extremist by former England cricketer Sir Ian Botham as they clash over a grouse-shooting ban on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Botham accuses Packham of using his position at the BBC to promote his views

• Chris Packham using BBC role to push grouse-shooting ban, Ian Botham says

Wildlife presenter accused of extremism in clash with former England cricketer as grouse-shooting season begins

The former England cricketer Sir Ian Botham has accused wildlife presenter Chris Packham of being an extremist and using his position at the BBC to promote his views on restricting grouse shooting.

The pair clashed in a joint interview on Radio 4’s Today programme on the opening day of the grouse-shooting season, – or the “inglorious twelfth” as Packham called it.

About 600 Tasmanian devils untouched by facial tumour disease will stay in sanctuaries as insurance against animals in the wild becoming extinct

A controversial proposal to halve the insurance population of disease-free Tasmanian devils has been scrapped.

But the state government said it would continue to support the staged release of some of the animals as part of a vaccine-testing program.

The world’s population of elephants is nearing a critical point. Karl Mathiesen explains why there has never been a more dangerous time to be an elephant

The largest of all land beasts, elephants are thundering, trumpeting six-tonne monuments to the wonder of evolution. From the tip of that distinctive trunk with its 100,000 dextrous muscles; to their outsize ears that flap the heat away; to the complex matriarchal societies and the mourning of their dead; to the points of their ivory tusks, designed to defend, but ultimately the cause of their ruin.

Four-tuskers, hoe-tuskers, shovel-tuskers are all wiped out - now only a fragment of this keystone species remains

If, just 800 generations ago, we took a summer holiday to Crete, Cyprus or Malta, we would have found familiar-looking islands, filled with the flowers and birds we can enjoy today. But bursting through the scrub would’ve been one surprise: a pygmy elephant, one metre high, one of many different elephant species that once roamed every continent apart from Australia and Antarctica.

The 20,000-year-old pygmy elephants of the Mediterranean islands may appear as fantastical as the woolly mammoths which still ambled across one Alaskan island just 5,600 years ago. But these animals’ lives, and deaths, take on a new pertinence today. They lived a blink of an eye ago in evolutionary time and shared the planet with modern humans. And the fate of these lost elephants, warns Prof Adrian Lister, paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum, is analogous to the troubled future facing their close relatives, the African and Asian elephants threatened with obliteration today.

In the last three years, significant amounts of illegal ivory have been picked up in the Singapore – conservationists worry that new smuggling routes are opening up

Large-scale seizures of ivory in Singapore over the last three years make the south-east Asian city-state one of the world’s premier ivory smuggling hubs for organised crime, say conservation watchdogs.

Data from seizures, collected by the UN’s wildlife trade monitor Traffic and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and shared with the Guardian, reveals how the gangsters operate. Shipping containers carrying thousands of tusks are labelled as carrying anything from tea to waste paper or avocados. They leave Africa from a few ports well-known for high levels of corruption.