The Guardian

Scientists conducting annual count of grey and common seals warn of potential impact of dredging, a deadly virus and predation between species

Scores of seals loll on the riverbank of the Stour, snorting and bellyflopping as they sun themselves a couple of miles outside Ramsgate’s busy marina.

Far from exceptional, these are just a smattering of the hundreds of seals that the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) hopes to count this week in the Greater Thames estuary. The mammals are sighted as far up as Teddington Lock, and Canary Wharf is a hotspot for seeing them.

We warmly welcome the decision taken last week by the Brazilian environment agency, IBAMA, to stop the huge São Luiz do Tapajós dam that threatened to wipe out a whole swath of pristine rainforest deep in the heart of the Amazon (Report, theguardian.com, 5 August). This was a day of relief and hope not just for the Munduruku indigenous people, who faced having their ancestral lands flooded, but for everyone who cares about protecting one of the world’s great natural wonders.

The Tapajós river and the surrounding rainforest are areas of unparalleled natural beauty and biodiversity, where new animal species are still being discovered to this day.

Artists, poets, film directors and musicians call on Brazilian government and European companies to recognise the rights of the Munduruku people

Some 48 musicians, poets, chefs, artists, film directors and other celebrities including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Mark Rylance have called on the Brazilian government and European companies to recognise the rights of an Amazonian group whose territory is threatened by a large complex of dams.

In a letter to the Guardian, the group says Brazil’s plan to build four large and many smaller dams on the Tapajós river and its tributaries could destroy thousands of square miles of forest and imperil the Munduruku indigenous people.

Wenlock Edge These tiny creature spend 30% of their energy producing slime so they can travel on a film of lubricant

At first sight, the brown-lipped snails look like buttons stitched on fence posts and nettle stems in a corner of the field. They appear passive and inanimate, yet they are quietly doing what they’ve done for millions of years – adapting.

The rain has brought them out. Although snails have adapted to dry land and to breathing air, they are still creatures of water. Much of their lives are spent conserving water and they spend 30% of their energy producing slime – a mucus membrane that is hygroscopic; it attracts water, allows them to wear a wetsuit and helps them travel on a film of lubricant.

‘If you want to paint something, paint a rock,’ Florida officials implore after shells of a threatened tortoise species were found daubed with paint

Wildlife officials in Florida have urged people to not illustrate the shells of a threatened tortoise species after several animals were found daubed with paint.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) has released photos of gopher tortoises that were painted red and a shade of turquoise. The FWC said the “illegally painted” tortoises were at risk from paint fumes and from toxins that could be absorbed into the bloodstream via the shell.

Controversial proposals ahead of this year’s global wildlife trade summit threaten to fuel a divisive debate and divert attention away from the real measures needed to tackle the illegal ivory trade

Anyone paying even cursory attention to wildlife stories in recent years would have heard all about Africa’s elephant poaching crisis. And with good reason. An estimated 30,000 animals are being killed for their ivory every year, a shockingly high figure that threatens the survival of central Africa’s forest elephants as well as some elephant populations in east Africa.

They also would have read about the international community’s response to the poaching crisis, with governments around the globe promising action and conservation organisations scaling up efforts to tackle elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade.

A Kalahari desert sunrise and a wren’s nest under a bike seat are among the winning images in the scientific journal’s annual competition, which showcases biodiversity, natural beauty and biological interactions photographed by ecologists

Waltham Brooks, West Sussex Now breeding has finished, the numbers of starlings gathering together are building up again, and will rise into the thousands in the coming months

The river Arun has slowed almost to a stop, the bare strip of dried earth along the bank betraying the low water level. Large bunches of dark green weed are exposed. Along the grassy footpath, there are a still a few thistles in bloom, glowing purple in the evening sunshine, but many other thistle heads have now exploded, trailing their down of sticky, spindly white seeds. It’s warm and close, but the breeze is slowly bringing a band of black cloud from the west.

Related: Country diary: South Downs, near Arundel: Grey partridges have become a rare sight on the Downs, except here

Scientist and Nobel prize-winner Peter Doherty says new One Nation senator ‘has no understanding of how science works’

Across Australia, climate science denialists are beside themselves with glee at the voting into office of one of their own.

Late last week, the Australian Electoral Commission confirmed that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had snagged Queensland’s final 12th Senate spot. Her candidate, Malcolm Roberts, is now a senator.

Scientists in Queensland develop an environmental DNA test to help make habitats easier to identify

Australian scientists have developed a cutting-edge test that could give the endangered largetooth sawfish a better chance of survival.

Researchers working from James Cook University in Queensland, have found a way to reliably test large bodies of water for the DNA of the prehistoric-looking fish and help make habitats easier to identify.

Australia is one of the world’s largest diesel consumers per capita but a cleaner option called dimethyl ether could change all that

As one of the world’s largest consumers of diesel per capita, Australia could soon benefit from the onshore production of a cleaner-burning alternative.

Dimethyl ether (DME) is a colourless gas used as an aerosol propellant for things such as hairspray, but engine manufacturers and other companies have been exploring its potential as an alternative transport fuel.

Sweeter stone fruits abundant alongside lower yields of leafy vegetables due to erratic British weather

Shoppers can hope to enjoy a late-summer bounty of bigger and sweeter cherries, apricots and plums, followed by late blackberries, as this year’s fluctuating weather and unpredictable growing conditions have an effect on UK-grown fresh produce.

But while farmers have struggled with lower yields from leaf vegetables such as spinach and kale, regional weather variations and imports mean supermarket shelves are unlikely to fall empty.

The Macduff Marine Aquarium releases an octopus into the North Sea in July. The octopus was given to the aquarium after it was caught in a fisherman’s creel by accident. The female octopus was studied for several weeks before being returned to the sea to complete its brief life-cycle

The nuclear project is outdated and expensive - the UK should be focussing time and money on renewables, interconnectors, storage, smart grids and efficiency

Hinkley Point C, the multibillion pound nuclear deal, years in the making, is on the cusp of unravelling. At the last minute, the government has hit the pause button in order to take a hard look at what Hinkley is offering in return for £37bn of energy consumers’ money.

The voices of opposition are growing. Even newspapers which have supported the nuclear industry are raising doubts.

Government says payments, capped at £10m for communities near wells, will not be made until site is up and running

The government has admitted that payments of up to £10,000 a household for living near a fracking well would not be distributed until a new site begins operating and producing gas – at least five years after exploration begins.

In a consultation on the shale wealth fund published on Monday, officials said that payments would be capped at £10m for each community living near a well, over its lifetime. They also conceded that any money flowing directly to households would not happen until a full-scale fracking industry is up and running.

Earlier this year photojournalist Toby Smith followed a group of migrating cuckoos to the forests of Gabon, west Africa. His images document the African landscapes in which the globally dwindling cuckoo population spends its winter months away from the UK, and will help conservationists understand how land use change is affecting birds

Clexit calls for withdrawal from climate treaties, rejects the conclusions of 97% of climate science experts and 95% of economics experts

Brexit support and climate denial have many similarities. Many Brexit Leave campaign leaders also deny the dangers of human-caused climate change. Older generations were more likely to vote for the UK to leave the EU and are more likely to oppose taking action on climate change; younger generations disagree, and will be forced to live with the consequences of those decisions. On both issues there’s also a dangerous strain of anti-intellectualism, in which campaigners mock experts and dismiss their evidence and conclusions.

With Brexit, the Leave campaign won the vote, and the UK economy is already feeling the consequences. As Graham Readfearn reported, a new group called “Clexit” (Climate Exit) has formed in an effort to similarly withdraw countries from the successful international climate treaty forged last year in Paris. As the group describes itself:

Scientific survey found all reefs had been affected by high sea surface temperatures, with up to 90% of coral colonies bleached in some areas

More than 60% of coral in reefs in the Maldives has been hit by “bleaching” as the world is gripped by record temperatures in 2016, a scientific survey suggests. 

Bleaching happens when algae that lives in the coral is expelled due to stress caused by extreme and sustained changes in temperatures, turning the coral white and putting it at risk of dying if conditions do not return to normal. 

Palm oil producer was stripped of its certification in March 2016 after failing to meet environmental standards, reports BusinessGreen

Palm oil supplier IOI Group has had its certificate for sustainable palm oil reinstated by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), after it was judged to have fulfilled the body’s demands to improve its environmental performance.

In a statement issued last Friday, the RSPO said the palm oil supplier would be re-instated with its certificate from Monday.

Jackie Trad says action is needed to prevent harm to the Great Barrier Reef as study shows tens of thousands of hectares cleared in catchment areas

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been cleared in Queensland, a new study has found, after a surge led by cattle graziers under relaxed laws that the state government is seeking to overturn.

A state science department study on land cover released on Sunday found 296,000 hectares of land was cleared in 2014-15, more than a third of it in Great Barrier Reef catchments.