The Guardian

Storks, black kites and vultures feed at Los Barrios before migrating to Africa – but many now decide to stay

A vast rubbish dump in southern Spain has become a magnet for ornithologists as thousands of storks, black kites and vultures make a stopover to feed on food waste before beginning their journey across the Strait of Gibraltar.

“It’s especially useful for carrying out a census, as with so many birds in one place it’s easy to count them and to read their rings,” said Jesús Pinilla of SEO/Birdlife in Andalucía.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child urges governments to respond to young people’s concerns about environmental threats

Governments must respond to growing concerns expressed by children about the effects of the climate crisis and other environmental emergencies on their lives and futures, a UN body has said.

In a strongly worded formal opinion published on Monday, the Committee on the Rights of the Child concludes that the triple planetary crisis – the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution – “is an urgent and systemic threat to children’s rights globally”.

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Rishi Sunak’s lack of support for expanded scheme risks stunting Londoners’ lungs, says mayor in run-up to Tuesday’s launch

• Londoners’ views: ‘Planet and health are more important than cars’

Rishi Sunak has “put decades of progress on clean air into reverse” and now risks “stunting the lungs” of London’s children by failing to support the expansion of the capital’s ultra-low emissions zone, Sadiq Khan has said.

Ahead of the clean air scheme’s rollout to all boroughs in the capital on Tuesday, the London mayor issued a stark warning to Sunak who he said risked going down in history as the prime minister who “had the chance to save lives but refused to take it”.

Petrol retailer announces partnership with OneH2 to expand use of the alternative fuel, and expects early adoption by heavier vehicle fleets

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Australia is expected to get more hydrogen service stations after the country’s largest petrol retailer teamed up with a US firm specialising in the alternative fuel.

Ampol announced its partnership with OneH2 on Monday, revealing the companies would work together to speed up the use of hydrogen in the Australian market and help to cut emissions from heavy transport.

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Large flightless birds, thought to be extinct for 100 years, have been returned to the wilderness of the Greenstone Valley in New Zealand's south island.

Low carbon emissions in Europe cannot come at the cost of environmental destruction abroad

Tunisia is one of the driest countries in Africa, and has just suffered three years of drought. Yet the EU sees the country as key to producing “green hydrogen” for export to Europe. The trouble is, this fuel is obtained by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen with electricity generated by renewable sources. Tunisia has lots of sun but precious little fresh water.

The only way of producing the raw material needed for green hydrogen is sucking up Mediterranean water and desalinating it. But a report last year for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, affiliated to Germany’s green political movement, warns that this would be a dirty, energy-intensive, water-guzzling process – and put the high cost of decarbonising the rich world on to the shoulders of poorer nations.

Drivers want to park on Moor Lane and Bridge Road, a charge-free corridor in Chessington

Residents of a road that will form a charge-free corridor through London’s expanded ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) say they have been offered “£100 a month” to let people park on their driveways and avoid paying the fee.

Motorists travelling along Moor Lane, which becomes Bridge Road, in Chessington, south-west London, do not have to pay the Ulez charge, but should they turn off at any stage they will immediately enter the zone.

Land privatization and water depletion set the stage for the Lahaina fire 150 years ago. Now, land companies may benefit even more

In the late 18th century, when the Hawaiian Kingdom became a sovereign state, Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

Humane alternatives to killing rampant creatures such as wild boar, deer and grey squirrels are being developed

Conflicts between humans and wildlife are triggering growing numbers of disease outbreaks, road accidents and crop damage. And the problem is likely to get worse unless new, humane measures to curtail animal numbers are developed in the near future, say scientists.

It is a critical environmental issue that will be debated this week at a major conference in Italy where experts will discuss how best to limit numbers of grey squirrels, wild boar, deer, feral goats, pigeons, parakeets and other creatures that are causing widespread ecological damage in many countries.

The city’s largest waterway has been abused for so long we’ve forgotten what it could be like if it ran clear again

In 2017, on a hot March day, I went looking for azure kingfishers. Tiny, elusive and even bluer than their name suggests, they’d been seen several times on the Yarra River in the outer north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

I rode to the river from Lilydale station along the busy roads that pulled like taut wire between the paddocks and empty lots out there, nearly crashing at the bottom of a fast, steep hill while cars and trucks whooshed past me.

Threats of violence as ultra-low emission zone expansion begins – but mayor defends it as essential for health

• Read more: how Ulez expansion is affecting lives of Londoners

The Metropolitan police has vowed to throw “considerable resources” at protecting this week’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) amid fears the rollout will prompt a spike in vandalism and disruptive protests.

The force’s declaration came as London mayor Sadiq Khan issued a fierce defence of his bitterly contested policy, saying he was acting to tackle “toxic air” and prevent the capital’s children “growing up with stunted lungs”.

Despite progress towards a 2045 zero-emission goal, the high price of EVs has created a headache for governments

European countries are struggling to persuade people to switch from combustion engine cars to electric ones, experts warn.

Europe sells 10 times more electric cars today than it did just six years ago, according to the International Energy Agency, but its fleet is cleaning up too slowly to meet its climate goals. Governments across the continent are struggling with the price-tag of electric vehicles, which can cost several thousand euros more upfront than comparable ones that burn fossil fuels.

Potentially lethal to fish and dangerous for humans, the summer’s toxic invader is caused by warming seas and strong winds

When Owen Francomb from Margate set out on a walk with his dog Gertie along Kent’s picturesque Thanet coast early this month, he didn’t imagine he’d need to be rescued from a tide of toxic sludge. But on the beach at Newgate Gap, French bulldog Gertie started sinking into a thick carpet of rotting seaweed and began to panic.

“She couldn’t move,” Francomb. says. “So I scrambled down the slipway and jumped down on to the beach, expecting the seaweed to be a foot deep, but it came up to my belt. I really struggled to wade through it.” Another dog walker had to help him and Gertie out of the stinking slime.

A freakish season of record temperatures, wildfire smoke and the destruction of Lahaina could soon become normal, climate experts say

It’s been a strange, cruel summer in the United States. From the dystopian orange skies above New York to the deadly immolation of a historic coastal town in Hawaii, the waning summer has been a stark demonstration of the escalating climate crisis – with experts warning that worse is to come.

A relentless barrage of extreme weather events, fueled by human-caused global heating, has swept the North American continent this summer, routinely placing a third of the US population under warnings of severe heat and unleashing floods, fire and smoke upon communities, with a record 15 separate disasters causing at least $1bn in damages so far this year.

From the Akbelen forest in Turkey to northern India to Brazil, rural women are standing up against the power of the corporate chainsaw

This summer, as Rhodes was ravaged by wildfires and the world witnessed the destruction of precious trees and fragile ecosystems, on the opposite shore in Turkey, only miles away, ancient forests were being felled for the sake of more coal, more profit. But what the energy company hadn’t reckoned with was the resistance of local women.

Akbelen, in the province of Muğla, is a woodland of about 730 hectares (1,800 acres) that provides a natural habitat for a diverse range of flora and fauna. It is this beautiful place that YK Energy, a private energy company, has been aiming to occupy in order to expand an open-pit lignite mine to supply a thermal power plant. The combustion of lignite (brown coal) generates more CO2 emissions than hard, black coal, making it the most health-harming variety. For the last four years, villagers and environmental campaigners have been holding vigils to protect the forest. But the company has carried on.

Large-scale study indicates population declines after collation of data from country’s conservation organisations and birdwatchers

A report on India’s bird population has painted a grim picture for many of the country’s species.

The State of India’s Birds (SoIB) report – published on Friday – showed worrisome declines, with 178 species of wild birds identified as needing immediate priority for conservation.

Mexico latest country where government is considering passing new laws to criminalise environmental destruction

A growing number of countries are considering introducing laws to make ecocide a crime.

Mexico is the latest country where politicians are seeking to deter environmental damage – and to get justice for its victims – by criminalising it. Karina Marlen Barrón Perales, congresswoman for Nuevo León, has submitted a bill to the Mexican congress introducing a new crime of “ecocide”.

Try to look on the bright side

Which? advises drivers paying London ultra-low emission zone fee to make sure they’re using official TfL website

Drivers are being ripped off by copycat websites that add extra fees to the ultra low emissions zone charges in London, consumer champion Which? has warned.

As Ulez expands across all boroughs in the capital from Tuesday, Which? has found a series of identical, unofficial websites targeting people trying to pay the charge. This has led to drivers paying more than the £12.50 daily fee.