The Guardian

过去3年间，新加坡缉获大量非法象牙，生态保护团体担心犯罪团伙正在开辟新的走私路线。翻译：金艳 (翻译：子明/chinadialogue)

English language: Large ivory seizures in Singapore make it a smuggling hub of ‘primary concern’

生态保护组织称，过去3年间新加坡缉获大量非法象牙，使得这个东南亚城邦成为全球最大的有组织象牙走私犯罪中心。

这些象牙多数会销往中国大陆和香港，因此，两地的海关会把来自这些港口的集装箱作为重点检查对象。EIA活动负责人朱利安·纽曼以及TRAFFIC专家汤姆·米利肯表示，为了躲过中国海关的重点检查，装载象牙的集装箱会被运送到新加坡或是马来西亚的巴生港作为中转，在那里停留几个月，然后装载到另一艘船上，文件上货物的来源也会改成新的港口。

RepuTex analysis says federal government paying polluters and ambitious renewable energy targets won’t have sufficient impact

Australia’s emissions will remain at the same level through to 2030, despite the federal government paying polluters billions to lower greenhouse gas emissions and some states having ambitious renewable energy targets, according to new analysis by the energy advisory firm RepuTex.

Combining the effect of current policy settings with expected growth in liquefied natural gas exports and land clearing, Australia’s emissions were modelled to end up at just 2% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Transcripts show the Democrat presidential candidate referred to climate change directly in less than half as many speeches after her left-wing rival conceded defeat, reports Climate Home

Hillary Clinton has dropped the words “climate change” from most of her public addresses since winning the endorsement of her party rival Bernie Sanders, according to Climate Home analysis.

While the presidential candidate talks regularly about her plan for the US to become a “clean energy superpower”, in recent months she has rarely made reference to the planetary crisis that necessitates it.

Police investigating attack on small herd at Valdeserrillas reserve in Valencia after staff discover headless body of dominant male

Spanish police are investigating an attack on a herd of recently reintroduced European bison that left one animal decapitated, three missing and several more apparently poisoned.

Officers were called to the Valdeserrillas reserve in Valencia on Friday after the discovery of the headless body of Sauron, the dominant male of a small herd of bison that had been brought to eastern Spain over the past year.

Invasive species has been spotted in the Tetbury area of Gloucestershire, with attempts under way to locate nests

The Asian hornet’s long-feared arrival on the UK mainland has been confirmed, government scientists have said, with ecologists warning of dire consequences for honeybees if the species is not swiftly eliminated.

The hornets eat honeybees and have become widespread in central and southern France, prompting warnings in recent years that they could arrive in the UK via pot plants from France.

Watching professionals compete in top-level acrobatic BMX and mountain bike sports could change your view of what it means to have fun on a bike

For the many of us who ride and talk about bikes, it’s almost always about getting from A to B, and often as fast and as efficiently possible. But can there be another way? Touring the world, a group of some of the world’s most skilled and physically strong riders dedicate their lives to doing exactly the opposite.

Their aim is to go nowhere on a bike but round in inventive, breathtaking circles. And they do so with such flair, entertainment and extreme daring, that, as a road cyclist never interested when young in smaller bikes or skateboards, their performance has managed to re-orientate how I think about riding a bike. Commuting, touring, riding a sportive or occasional race, I’ve always thought about riding two wheels as akin to running. But this is like dancing.

Climate Home: With public assessment of each others’ subsidies, China and the US take a big step on transparency, but inch forward on reform

The world’s biggest polluters have released their fossil fuel subsidy peer reviews and the obstacles to reform are clear: the US will wait on Congress, while China will wait on China.

The documents, released on Monday by China’s G20 presidency, reveal the long road ahead. The G20 has commited to eliminate “inefficient” subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the medium term and the G7, of which the US is a member, has tightened the timeline to 2025.

Film explores how the contrasting fate of forests in Haiti and the Dominican Republic has exacerbated conflict, xenophobia, poverty and even murder

In January 2012, park ranger Eligio Eloy Varga was hacked to death by a machete near the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This incident, still unsolved, kicks off the new documentary thriller, Death by A Thousand Cuts. Airing in the Raindance film festival in London on 1 October, the film explores how the fate of forests in two neighbouring countries has exacerbated social conflict, xenophobia, poverty, and even resulted in multiple murders.

“[Haiti and the Dominican Republic] share the island of Hispaniola, but have starkly different trajectories, in large part, related to how they have managed their natural resources,” said Jake Kheel, co-director of the documentary, which won the Jury’s best documentary prize at the Seattle film festival.

Controversial Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa) could make it harder for governments to favour clean energy over fossil fuels as part of efforts to keep temperature rises to 1.5C

A far-reaching global trade deal being negotiated in secret could threaten the goals of the Paris climate deal by making it harder for governments to favour clean energy over fossil fuels, a leak of the latest negotiating text shows.

The controversial Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa) aims to liberalise trade between the EU and 22 countries across the global services sector, which employs tens of millions in Europe alone.

Blackwater, Norfolk Garden cross spiders must be among September’s most beautiful stars

At present it’s almost impossible to walk the rides around my patch and not snap spiders’ silk. It is everywhere. I notice, as I drive over, that there are even webs on both wing mirrors but, with the sun at the right angle, you can see that there is barely a twig or leaf not bound with gossamer to its neighbours.

Apparently those threads are, gram for gram, five times stronger than steel. Yet what strikes me most is not the strength but the elasticity of spider’s web. A female garden cross spider had just snared a honeybee (an unusual prey at Blackwater, although wasps are commonplace) and while the victim whirred its wings or pulsed its abdomen to break free, the web yawed but held true.

Exclusive: Offers follow actor’s plea to address climate change and coral bleaching at Our Ocean conference in US

Scientists and tour operators on the Great Barrier Reef have extended a “non-political” offer to show Leonardo DiCaprio the impacts of coral bleaching, after the Queensland government responded to the actor’s comments on bleaching by inviting him to visit the reef.

Dean Miller, a marine biologist and science director of the non-profit group Great Barrier Reef Legacy, said he wanted to say to DiCaprio: “We would like to take you to the Great Barrier Reef and show you firsthand what we see, no political or media spin, just the facts from the scientists themselves to show you what is really happening here.”

Addressing the US State Department’s Our Oceans conference in Washington DC, DiCaprio says Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has suffered what is thought to be the largest bleaching event ever recorded, and urges stronger action to protect it and other reefs around the world. DiCaprio says seeing the effects on the reefs off the Bahamas took his breath away – there was ‘not a fish in sight, colourless, ghost-like coral’.

An era of so-called reconciliation has disguised the continuation of Harper-era land and resource grabs

By now, we all know the greatest priority of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is its relationship with Indigenous peoples. How could we miss the weekly reminders?

Trudeau graciously wrapping himself in ceremonial blankets. Hauling jugs of drinking water door-to-door on a northern reserve lacking portable water. Paddling the Ottawa river in his dad’s buckskin jacket and moccasins with Indigenous youth, after a sunrise ritual at dawn.

Talk of prohibiting, preventing and countering corruption must take centre stage when signatories to the Cites treaty on regulating the international trade in wildlife meet in Johannesburg this weekend

The world is witnessing an unprecedented surge in wildlife trafficking that is stealing the irreplaceable natural wealth of countries, greatly hindering development, paralysing efforts to eradicate poverty, and undermining conservation efforts. This illicit trade in wildlife is well organised, transnational and happening across every region.

As countries prepare to meet in Johannesburgthis weekend for the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to Cites (CoP17), there is increasing recognition that to curb the global surge in wildlife trafficking we must counter the corrosive corruption that enables it.

The original Bramley apple tree and the inspiration for the mulberry bush nursery rhyme are among the 29 trees in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have been shortlisted by the Woodland Trust for its annual tree of the year competition.

Experts whittled down nearly 200 public nominations based on the tree’s story, how they would use the £1,000 care grant and visual appeal of the tree. Members of the public can vote for their favourite tree by country before 10 October with the winners going forward to the European tree of the year competition in early 2017.

A quiet crisis playing out in US forests as huge numbers of trees succumb to drought, disease, insects and wildfire – much of it driven by climate change

JB Friday hacked at a rain-sodden tree with a small axe, splitting open a part of the trunk. The wood was riven with dark stripes, signs of a mysterious disease that has ravaged the US’s only rainforests – and just one of the plagues that are devastating American forests across the west.

Friday, a forest ecologist at the University of Hawaii, started getting calls from concerned landowners in Puna, which is on the eastern tip of Hawaii’s big island, in 2010. Their seemingly ubiquitous ohi’a trees were dying at an astonishing rate. The leaves would turn yellow, then brown, over just a few weeks – a startling change for an evergreen tree.

Sacha Dench will follow Bewick’s swans on their annual journey from the Russian Arctic in a motorised paraglider in a bid to shed light on their decline

A British conservationist took to the skies in a motorised paraglider on Monday morning for the start of a daring 4,500-mile expedition across the Russian Arctic that will attempt to shed light on the decline of the UK’s smallest, shyest species of swan.

For the next 10 weeks, Sacha Dench, 41, will act as a “human swan” and follow the route of thousands of Bewick’s swans on their annual migration. From the tundra of Siberia she will head west and south through 11 countries including Finland, Poland and Germany to the swans’ wintering grounds in Britain and other parts of western Europe.

A 16-year study found that we’re at a point where more CO2 won’t keep increasing plant production, but higher temperatures will decrease it

A new study by scientists at Stanford University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested whether hotter temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels that we’ll see post-2050 will benefit the kinds of plants that live in California grasslands. They found that carbon dioxide at higher levels than today (400 ppm) did not significantly change plant growth, while higher temperatures had a negative effect.

Scientists will sail from the UK to the Falkland Islands to study scale of microplastic pollution on tiny zooplankton at the bottom of the food chain

Scientists will set off from the east coast of England this week to journey thousands of miles across the Atlantic to discover how bad the problem of the oceans’ tiniest creatures eating microplastics has become.

Zooplankton are essential for the marine food web right up to the fish we eat, and are known to be more likely to die and be worse at reproduction after eating the minuscule pieces of plastic.

Government was seeking at least $120m, while Shenzhen Energy Transport Co Ltd argued reef was self-healing

The federal government has reached a $39.3m out-of-court settlement with the owners of a Chinese coal carrier that ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef in 2010.

Shenzhen Energy Transport Co Ltd and its insurer had, for six years, refused to accept responsibility for restitution after the 225m long, fully laden Shen Neng 1 ran aground 100km east of Rockhampton at Douglas Shoal.