The Guardian

Superintendent Don Neubacher, who is accused of publicly ‘humiliating’ and intimidating workers, stepped down as California park faces misconduct scandal

The head of Yosemite national park is stepping down in the wake of reports of “horrific working conditions” and rampant sexual harassment, the latest in a controversy that has brought national shame to one of America’s most beloved landmarks.

Superintendent Don Neubacher, who is accused of publicly “humiliating” and intimidating workers, said in an email to staff that he “regrets” leaving but wanted to “do what’s best” for the popular California park that has faced a widening misconduct scandal in recent months.

Exclusive: bank turns down owners’ application for $500,000 bridging loan on grounds that Queensland property has four coal seam gas wells on it

Australia’s biggest mortgage provider has declared a Queensland property with coal seam gas wells “unacceptable” as security for residential lending, raising fresh concerns that people living in the state’s gasfields may be unable to sell their homes.

But Queensland Gas Company (QGC), which owns the wells on the Chinchilla acreage, has insisted that no properties that host its infrastructure have had their values negatively affected.

Most painted ladies have already headed south, and new research reveals just how far these butterflies travel

The last red admirals and commas are feeding on ivy flowers in autumn sunshine and Britain’s butterfly year is drawing to a close once more.

One butterfly, though, is on the move. I’ve seen several painted ladies this month, but most have already headed south for the winter. The fate of British-born generations of painted ladies was a mystery until recently, when radar finally documented how they ascend to great heights before beginning their reverse migration.

European commission says government chooses not to apply CAP payment ceiling to large landowners in England

The UK government could have stopped wealthy landowners including aristocrats and a Saudi racehorse owner receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds from the EU’s common agricultural policy, the European commission has said.

An investigation of the top 100 recipients of CAP subsidies in the UK last year by the environmental campaign group Greenpeace revealed that at least one in five were farm businesses owned or controlled by members of aristocratic families.

Closure of coal-fired power plants led to the fossil fuel dropping to just 6% of the power mix, official data shows

Coal generated a record low 6% of the UK’s electricity this spring, official figures show.

The share of coal in the power mix fell from 20% in the same period last year, following the closures of Ferrybridge C, West Yorkshire, and Longannet coal-fired power station in Scotland.

UK has failed to provide enough safe habitats for the mammals, with just one small site formally proposed so far, says European commission

The UK will be hauled before the European court of justice for failing to provide safe habitats for harbour porpoises, the European commission said on Thursday.

Harbour porpoises resemble bottlenose dolphins, with small rounded heads, flat foreheads and a black-lipped mouth that curves upwards, as if smiling.

Fighting elk bulls and a microscopic image of shark’s skin are among the shortlisted images for the Royal Society of Biology’s photographer of the year award, which this year takes the theme Biology: from Big to Small

The winner will be announced at the Royal Society of Biology awards ceremony on 13 October at Charles Darwin House, London

Cites summit moves to protect the world’s most trafficked wild product by placing all 300 species of the tree under trade restrictions

Governments have launched a crackdown on the rampant billion-dollar trade in rosewood timber that is plundering forests across the planet to feed a booming luxury furniture market in China.

The Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) summit on Thursday placed all 300 species of rosewood under trade restrictions, meaning criminals can no longer pass off illegally logged species as legitimate.

At least one in five of the top 100 UK recipients of CAP subsidies were for farms owned or run by aristocratic families, say Greenpeace

Wealthy aristocrats and a Saudi landowning prince are continuing to reap hundreds of thousands of pounds from the European Union’s common agricultural policy (CAP).

At least one in five of the top 100 recipients of CAP subsidies in the UK last year were farm businesses owned or controlled by members of aristocratic families, an investigation by environmental campaign group Greenpeace found.

Energy Technologies Institute argues small modular reactors capable of delivering clean power and heat could be in place by 2030 if the right policy framework is put in place, reports BusinessGreen

The first small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could be operating in the UK by 2030 with the right government support, according to a new report from the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).

The analysis, released today by the government and industry-backed energy research body, examined the steps needed to support the first SMR in the UK and concluded a credible schedule for implementation can be set out - as long as a policy framework is developed to reduce risks for SMR developers and increase investor confidence.

Conservationists say dozens of young elephants being captured by Zimbabwe’s government may be bound for China, rather than nearby national park

Concerns have been raised that Zimbabwe is again preparing to send dozens of young elephants to wildlife parks in China.

The government’s national park authority, ZimParks, began capturing elephants from Hwange national park in August and keeping them in pens at Umtshibi wildlife capture and relocation unit.

International coalition of NGOs is calling for an end to the throwaway culture after the success of a plastic bag charge shows a similar charge on coffee cups could work too

The billions of disposable coffee cups thrown away each year globally should be replaced with reusable ones because they are a waste of resources and harm forests, an international coalition of NGOs has urged.

The call comes as a study by Cardiff University said that the plastic bag charge in England had been so successful that it showed a charge on coffee cups in the UK could work too.

Abandoned with a bullet wound in a local shop, an orphaned orangutan named Didik is just one of thousands of victims of the ecological destruction of Borneo

When International Animal Rescue (IAR) staff found Didik, he was emaciated and near death. The 18-month-old orangutan, who had been dumped at a local store in Ketapang, Indonesia, had a bullet in his shoulder and had very likely seen his mother killed by the same people who put it there.

“Our team deals with so many cases like Didik’s in which the baby has ended up as someone’s pet but the true fate of the mother remains unknown,” said Lis Key, communications manager for the IAR, adding that “orangutan mothers are very protective of their babies and wouldn’t let go of them without a fight.”

Latest model’s 250-mile range will help ‘psychological barriers’ in drivers who fear running out of power, carmaker claims

Renault has unveiled a new electric car that it claims will overcome psychological barriers among drivers who fear running out of power between charges.

Launched on Thursday ahead of the Paris motor show, the latest Zoe model will have the longest range of any mainstream electric vehicle, the French carmaker said.

Study finds a rise in the number of people carrying their own bags since the introduction of a 5p charge on plastic bags nearly a year ago

Shoppers in England have become much more likely to take their own bags to the high street since the introduction of a plastic bag charge nearly a year ago, a study has found.

More than nine in 10 people now often or always carry their own bags, up from seven in 10 before the 5p charge came into effect, and the public became much more supportive after it started. The number of plastic bags taken from supermarkets and big retailers in England has fallen by 85%.

Kinloch, Skye Though the land is deserted now, the signature of human habitation is deeply imprinted upon it

High about the shoreline, looking across the Sound of Sleat, lie the remains of the township of Leitir Fura. Abandoned by their inhabitants in the early 19th century, the low stone blackhouses have been laid bare by the elements in the subsequent decades, their exoskeletons crumbling as – stone by stone – they return to the earth.

Though the land is deserted, the signature of human habitation is deeply imprinted upon it. Buildings that have entirely subsided linger as ghostly apparitions, their presence announced by changes in the pattern of vegetation: neat oblong forests of bracken, or tough reedy tussocks in tight, straight-edged formation.

29 September 1971: The Electricity Council says that electric cars are clean, silent, reliable, and make a valuable contribution to reducing pollution

Electric city cars could be in mass production and on the streets of Britain by 1973 if manufacturers and the Government gave a lead to their development, the Electricity Council said yesterday when it released details of the Enfield 8000, a vehicle capable of 40 mph and a range of 60 miles on one charge.

But both the council and Enfield, who have been given an order for 80 vehicles, admit that it is unlikely to boost the exploitation of electric cars unless the motor industry drops its obsession with the internal combustion engine.

Environment officials tell parliamentary inquiry there is no modelling on how current policies will affect emissions beyond 2020, or when emissions will peak

Government officials have acknowledged that Australia’s 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reductions pledged at Paris in 2015 were made without any modelling to show whether existing policies could achieve those targets.

They also admitted the government did not have any modelling revealing when Australia’s emissions would peak.

Steady winds produce a pattern on the sea’s surface like parallel furrows in a field

Researchers are still trying to unravel the complex interactions between wind, waves and currents. One of the most visible results of these interactions is Langmuir circulation, which produces a pattern on the water surface like parallel furrows in a field. These lines are known as wind streaks or windrows, and occur only in steady winds of more than 7mph.

Related: The oceans are heating up. That's a big problem on a blue planet | Bill McKibben

Gary Smith of the GMB says that Labour’s fracking ban is “an abdication of our environmental and moral responsibilities” (Report, 27 September). Clearly he hasn’t been reading the Guardian: otherwise he’d know that climate change is so serious that we need to leave most fossil fuel reserves in the ground. He also seems unaware of the Committee on Climate Change’s technical advice that fuels used by 2030 should produce an average of no more than 50g of CO2 per kilowatt hour. Natural gas generates nine times that and, with the risk of fugitive emissions, fracking is likely to produce more. If you want to deliver skilled jobs in an environmentally safe manner, look no further than investment in housing retrofit to deliver massive energy savings in our housing stock, the second leakiest in Europe. There’s also the option of reviving the growth of solar power, where 30,000 skilled jobs disappeared last year when the feed-in tariff was slashed.
John Rigby
Exeter

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com