The Guardian

Natural History Museum, London A short walk takes you on a wildlife journey that would otherwise take days of travel

What would it look like if you tried to compress the English countryside into a 6,000 sq m metropolitan plot? Well, the wildlife garden at the Natural History Museum is as close to achieving the experience as is possible. A short perambulation takes you on a wildlife journey that would otherwise take days of travelling.

Related: An exuberance of life on the undrained fen

27 October 1906: Billed as the ‘most important exhibition of cage birds in the kingdom,’ Hulme Town Hall allows breeders to show 1,500 birds

Just now the Hulme Town Hall is filled with the twittering of many canaries. It is the show of the Manchester and Northern Counties Ornithological Society, the most important exhibition of cage birds in the kingdom. To the amateur it is astonishing to find to what an extent the breeding of canaries is carried. There are some dozens of distinct varieties, not to speak of the “mules” or cross-breeds between canaries and other kinds of birds.

One walks down long lanes lined on either side by little cages, each containing a small cheery yellow, green, or cinnamon coloured bird. There are more than 1,500 birds, whose niceties of tint and form are giving pleasure to the fanciers. The Norwich canaries are perhaps the most excellent as they are certainly the most numerous exhibits. The Norwich canary is known by his rich reddish-yellow breast. The aim of the fancier is to get as “warm” a colour as possible. Then there is the Lancashire canary, the “Lancashire coppy,” much affected in Rochdale and Oldham and thereabouts. This is the bird of a beautiful pure yellow, with a little round crest like a cap. The spangled lizard canary is a pretty fellow, too, with his neat, trim body and gold-coloured patch on the top of his head. Some lovers of canaries prefer the cinnamon breed, and they are certainly delightful creatures in their deep mellow coat.

Living Planet Index shows vertebrate populations are set to decline by 67% on 1970 levels unless urgent action is taken to reduce humanity’s impact

The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.

The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

Western Australia could become a renewable energy superpower – if the government halts LNG expansion plans and creates an innovation fund

Last year the world’s governments finally got their act together on climate change, agreeing to limit global warming to well under two degrees. To meet this commitment, we need a rapid global transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The fossil fuel age is over.

The new era, powered by renewable energy, will be swept in on a massive wave of investment. According to Beyond Zero Emissions’ report, Renewable Energy Superpower, the world will invest $US28tn in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the next 20 years.

Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef must accept that climate change is damaging the reef, say Climate Council chief and university expert

Scientists and conservationists have called for a purportedly pro-environmental group supporting the Great Barrier Reef to distance itself from climate deniers, after the broadcaster Alan Jones launched the group and said the reef was “fine” and that climate change was a “hoax”.

The calls come as details emerged regarding links between the group, called Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, and the former environment minister Greg Hunt, whose department sought to minimise publicity about the danger climate change posed to the reef.

This symbolic threshold (Carbon dioxide levels bring climate change into a ‘new era’, 25 October) is one of many very real tipping points the world will experience on a path of climate change due to human effects. The tipping points we should also be paying attention to are the mass extinctions, global warming, melting ice and complete habitat changes we are currently seeing worldwide. Soon we will recognise these not as symbolic thresholds but more as points of no return. The Paris and Kigali agreements are both important for slowing down the climate trend wiping out animal and plant species worldwide. But both are just bandages to the real problem of resource management and consumption practices exacerbating the problems to unsustainable limits.
Caroline Hernandez
Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA

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Both Aditya Chakrabortty (Opinion, 26 October) and Ken Loach in his film I, Daniel Blake highlight the horrors created by the destruction of social security by austerity and bureaucracy. However, they are in danger of recreating the pernicious distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. Homelessness, unemployment, ill-health, sanctions and the denial of benefits make some people angry, uncooperative and even violent. Our outrage should not just be on behalf of the nice people.
Ruth Eversley
Paulton, Somerset

• I am told yet again that the decision (Heathrow expansion) is “good for business” (Report, 26 October). We have seen big business drive this country’s economy into one of low wages, low skills, and low productivity. Add in rubbish roads, stuffed trains and minimal housebuilding, plus massive financial misconduct and the trashing of people’s pensions, and it may be “good for business” – but it’s not good for most of us.
Ray Chalker
London

Europe may be performing better in EY’s influential rankings, but the UK has fallen to its lowest position yet, reports BusinessGreen

Earlier this year it was starting to look worryingly like Europe was slamming into reverse gear with its clean energy policy. In its biannual report on renewables investment, released in May, consultancy EY reported that countries across the continent were becoming less attractive to investors as the pipelines of clean energy projects slowed following widespread subsidy cuts and a perceived “scaling back” of ambition.

Almost without exception, European markets slipped down the rankings while emerging economies across Latin America, Asia and Africa took their place near the top of the league table thanks to government plans to deploy green energy as a fast, relatively cheap way to develop their grids.

Countries including US, Europe, Australia vehemently oppose small hunts by coastal communities but Japan says are unjustly barred from a traditional food source

Japan pleaded with the world’s whaling watchdog Wednesday to allow small hunts by coastal communities, arguing that for three decades these groups had been unjustly barred from a traditional source of food.

The issue of “small type coastal hunting” is a key dispute between pro- and anti-whaling nations gathered in Slovenia for the 66th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Government claims oil extraction is causing minimal disturbance to the Unesco biosphere reserve in the Amazon

Ecuador has confirmed that oil drilling has begun under the country’s Yasuní national park, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.

But the government claims that there has been only minimal disturbance to the Unesco biosphere reserve in the Amazon rainforest since extraction of 23,000 barrels of oil a day began last month.

State of the Climate report from CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology says human activities have driven ‘significant changes’ to Australia’s climate

Carbon emissions from human activities have driven significant changes to the climate in Australia, including about 1C of warming and an increase in extreme hot days and fire weather, according to the latest State of the Climate report released by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.

This year the report includes new information on the cause of extreme weather, pointing the finger clearly at carbon emissions from human activities, as well as the latest findings on warming in the oceans.

Campaigners say leaked documents show ‘undue influence’ by the food industry after plans to limit acrylamide - found in starchy foods such as crisps, cereals and baby foods - are weakened

The European commission has dropped plans to legally limit a pervasive but naturally occurring chemical found in food, that is linked to cancer, just days after lobbying by industry, the Guardian has learned.

Campaigners say that leaked documents revealing the legislative retreat show “undue influence” by the food industry over EU law-making and a “permanent scandal”, although the issue is complex.

The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, tells BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that building the third Heathrow runway over the M25 rather than tunnelling under the motorway would be a cheaper and quicker way of completing the project

• Listen to the full clip on BBC Radio 4 Today’s website
• Build Heathrow third runway on ramp over M25, minister says

Syrian refugee Firas el Jasmin struggled to find work in Turkey because of his disability, so took to the streets with his son to collect recyclable material which he sells on to support his family

Letter to trading standards body calls for manufacturers to remove ‘misleading’ labelling to prevent wipes from blocking sewers and washing up on beaches

Yale environment 360: New research finds some surprising culprits and shows that fossil-fuel sources have played a much larger role than previously estimated

The stomachs of cattle, fermentation in rice fields, fracking for natural gas, coal mines, festering bogs, burning forests — they all produce methane, the second most important greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide. But how much? And how can we best cut these emissions? And is fracking frying the planet, or are bovine emissions more to blame?
Until now, the world has not had a definitive answer to these questions. But in recent months, researchers believe they have finally begun to crack the problem — and the results are surprising.
The amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled in the past 250 years. It has been responsible for about a fifth of global warming. But it has a confusing recent history. The steady rise of emissions stopped in the 1990s. Emissions were stable for almost a decade until 2007, but then abruptly resumed their rise. 

Related: Fossil fuel industry's methane emissions far higher than thought

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire This scratty bundle feigning invisibility generates an anxiety that permeates a bright autumn morning

A woodpigeon stands in the lane staring into the hedge. She waits until the very last second before her attention is broken by approaching danger and her instincts hurl her into the air.

The squab she was watching over is now alone in the grass. With feathers hardening from fluff but still incapable of flight, the chick remains still, as if that will make it invisible.

With the humpback calving season drawing to a close, here’s a look at some of Rita Kluge’s distinctive marine photos from the south Pacific. The Sydney-based photographer tells the Guardian she fell in love with whales after witnessing southern rights from the New South Wales coastline as they travelled to and from their feeding grounds in the Antarctic. She has since been to Tonga, where humpbacks breed and calf in winter months, to photograph them in the water. ‘To look into a whale’s eye is life-changing,’ she says

Police arrested more than 120 people at a Native American oil pipeline protest at the Standing Rock reservation, including Sara Lafleur-Vetter, the journalist and film-maker who captured this video. Protesters say the proposed oil pipeline threatens the Standing Rock reservation’s water supply and cultural heritage

As Chris Grayling makes assurances on fares, jobs and UK-wide benefits, runway opponents say their battle has just begun

Heathrow has promised an immediate economic boost from the government’s go-ahead for a third runway by letting new contracts related to the £17.6bn project within a fortnight.

However, airlines questioned whether the airport could be expanded without raising fares for passengers as the cost is likely to be passed on to carriers and their customers.