The Guardian

A giant stick bug, brawling zebras and an athletic marmoset monkey are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Decades of neglect have left Manila’s transport system unable to cope with its citizens’ daily travel, putting its commuters through exhausting, stressful and lengthy journeys. Filipino-American photographer Lawrence Sumulong captures the smoggy claustrophobia in a fisheye view of the city

Brazil’s environmental regulator rules the dam’s backers had failed to supply information to show its social and environmental impact

Brazil’s environmental regulator Ibama decided on Thursday to shelve the environmental license request for a hydroelectric dam on the Tapajós river in the Amazon, a project that had been opposed by indigenous tribes and conservation groups.

Ibama’s licensing office ruled the dam’s backers had not presented information in time to show its social and environmental viability. They halted the 30bn reals (£7.2bn) project. In April, Ibama had suspended the licensing process that began in 2009 after criticism by Brazil’s indigenous affairs department, Funai.

Contact comes through contaminated pasture and dung, with significant implications for farming practices

Badgers and cattle never came into close contact during a new field study examining how tuberculosis (TB) is transmitted between the animals.

Most TB in cattle is contracted from other cattle but some infections come from badgers. The new research indicates that the disease is not passed on by direct contact, but through contaminated pasture and dung, with potentially significant implications for farm practices such as slurry spreading.

AGL project to roll out 1,000 battery systems to homes and businesses will operate like a 5MW plant, and optimise energy produced from solar panels

Adelaide will be home to the world’s largest “virtual power plant” – AGL is rolling out 1,000 battery systems to homes and businesses, with backing from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena).

AGL and Arena say the project will improve network security and dampen a volatile wholesale electricity price in South Australia. However, an energy expert says that at the current size, the system will have a minimal impact on network security or wholesale prices, but might pose a challenge to the revenues of companies that own the poles and wires.

Oil spills in the Komi Republic caused by old pipelines are relatively small and rarely garner widespread attention - but added up they threaten fish stocks and pasture for cattle

The Komi Republic in northern Russia is renowned for its many lakes, but sites contaminated by oil are almost just as easy to find in the Usinsk oilfields. From pumps dripping oil and huge ponds of black sludge to dying trees and undergrowth — a likely sign of an underground pipeline leak — these spills are relatively small and rarely garner media attention.

But they add up quickly, threatening fish stocks, pasture land and drinking water. According to the natural resources and environment minister, Sergei Donskoi, 1.5m tonnes of oil are spilled in Russia each year. That’s more than twice the amount released by the record-breaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Watership Down, Hampshire Disturbingly large and menacing in flight, the billy witch is a beetle of otherworldly workmanship

The day has been hot and heavy and full of the drones of insects sounding up at their own unique frequencies. In the cool of the evening my muscle memory is still swaying, an artefact from the repeated left and right arc of cutting hay on the meadow bank. All day as I worked I’d watched the bees hum and fumble at the flower heads as I cut down through the cornflowers, ox-eye daisies and yarrow at the field’s edge; a meadow’s measure of summer music.

At my desk in front of the wide open window I can hear what sounds like the distant hum of a chainsaw, its pitch changing as it cuts through the wood. With alarming suddenness, the sound is upon me, in the room and loud around my ears as a cockchafer flies past my head and settles on the books by a lamp.

Activist Debi Goenka says Indian coal market, which has swung dramatically against the viability of imported coal for power, will seal Carmichael mine’s fate

Continued attempts by Australian politicians to link Adani’s Carmichael coalmine to the social uplift of the poor in India are “completely ridiculous”, a veteran Indian conservationist says.

Debi Goenka, the Mumbai activist who challenged Adani’s environmental licence for its mine in the Queensland land court in 2014, said Australian government figures continued to rely on arguments about imported coal lifting Indians out of poverty, which were “all bunkum”.

Queen Mary University of London tracked four bumblebees for whole life, and found disparities in how they found food

A study has revealed that bumblebees have distinct personalities.

Some bees play it safe by returning to the same flowers again and again while others search for new sources of nectar, scientists found.

Patrick Barkham on how a colony of rare butterflies living in a healthy elm has become a key element for citizens resisting Sheffield council tree felling

We tend to picture butterflies feeding on flowers, but five British species spend most of their lives in the tops of trees. These insects are often overlooked during their unobtrusive lives. But the white-letter hairstreak finds itself in the spotlight this month as local people fight to save a fine mature elm in Sheffield.

Related: Rare UK butterfly under threat as elms disappear

After boundaries were re-drawn on 1 August, we asked you to share your best pictures of the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District national parks – including the newly incorporated areas now on many walkers’ bucket lists

• See more images and add yours using the blue GuardianWitness button below
  

Analysis by the car manufacturer marks end of the decade as a potential tipping point for the mass take up of electric vehicles, reports Business Green

Public electric vehicle (EV) charge points will outnumber petrol stations in the UK by the end of the decade, marking a potential tipping point in the adoption of zero emission vehicles.

That is the conclusion of a new analysis by auto giant and EV manufacturer Nissan, which argues that based on current trends EV charge points will overtake traditional petrol stations by August 2020.

In drought-prone Chad, 4.3 million people – more than a third of the population – are food insecure, and 176,000 children have severe acute malnutrition, after erratic rains led to ruined crops

Photographs: Peter Caton/Tearfund

Lord Gardiner, who will be involved in reforming EU farming support post-Brexit, receives £49,000 a year in payments, it has been revealed

One of Theresa May’s new environment ministers has been accused by campaigners of a conflict of interest over tens of thousands of pounds he receives annually in EU farming subsidies.

Lord Gardiner is parliamentary under secretary of state and the House of Lords spokesperson for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which will be heavily involved in plans for replacing EU farming support.

Like the annual music concert at your child’s primary school, the English Premier League’s offseason can seem endless. But despair not, it does end, and its end is nigh. As Jurgen Klopp would say: “Boom!” So how will you take in the coming Premier League season? Whether you’re a solo spectator, in a group, or out on the town, what steps should you consider taking in order to appreciate all that the world’s most exciting football league has to offer? We’re glad you asked!

Proposals would see the basic income support system of subsidies scrapped and farmers being paid out of public funds for environmental services

The National Trust has called for complete reform of the British farm subsidy system after Brexit, by ending payments for owning land and only rewarding farmers who improve the environment and help wildlife.

“The subsidy system is broken. It is not working. Farmers are going out of business. The state of wildlife is in steep decline and large parts of that is because of intensive agriculture. The vote to leave the EU allows us to think radically about the future of the entire system,” the trust’s director general, Dame Helen Ghosh, told the Guardian ahead of a speech at Blenheim Palace on Thursday.

Warkworth beach, Northumberland Wave-agitated sand had ground down the shell revealing its hidden structure, a helter-skelter chamber

We have beachcombed this tideline on scores of summer days but have only gone home with painted top shells (Calliostoma zyzyphinum) on a handful of occasions.

Of all the shells washed ashore here, this is the most desirable: a pointed yellow cone decorated with purple streaks. Stand it on its tip and it resembles a 1in tall replica of an old-fashioned spinning top.

The South Australian town is abandoning its reliance on expensive diesel and forging a future in which most of its power comes from wind and solar

Coober Pedy is the epitome of the Australian mining town. Located in the South Australian outback, it is as famous for its opals as it is for the extraordinary underground housing that has become a feature of its way of life.

Now the township of 3,500 people may be about to make a name for itself in another way – abandoning its total reliance on expensive, imported diesel fuels for its electricity, and forging a path to a point where most of its power comes from wind and solar with the support of battery storage.

Exclusive: In photographs obtained by the Guardian, a fisherman can be seen selling the rostrums – long, saw-like bills – at a market in Mackay in June

A commercial fisher in Queensland has been caught selling bills of sawfish, which experts say are the world’s most endangered marine fish.

Many of the country’s biggest producers say that without a scheme for seasonal workers, homegrown produce would all but vanish from the shelves

British fruit and vegetables would all but vanish from shops if Brexit means the foreign workers who pick virtually all the home-grown produce are no longer able to come to the UK, according to some of the country’s biggest producers.

They warn that the nation’s food security would be damaged and that produce in UK shops would become more expensive if the freedom of movement for EU workers came to an end. They are urging ministers to set up a new permit scheme for seasonal workers.