The Guardian

MPs warn that the uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles is too low to meet national climate change targets

The government is falling behind on its commitments to switch a proportion of Britain’s car fleet to electric vehicles, an influential committee of MPs said on Thursday.

Take-up of electric vehicles has been slower than hoped in the UK, but the technology is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport, and tackling the air pollution produced by the increased number of diesel cars on the road.

Australia the only country to receive a rating of ‘very poor’ in a majority of categories in Climate Transparency scorecard

Australia is the worst country among the G20 when it comes to action on climate change, according to a comprehensive assessment before the G20 summit in China.

Under China’s leadership, this weekend’s G20 in the eastern city of Hangzhou has had a strong focus on climate-related issues.

Hill End, Weardale Turf starved of nutrients creates a doll’s house lawn, a tapestry of fescues and eyebright

From the fell where we stood, knee-deep in purple heather, the old limestone quarry in the valley seemed just another scar on the landscape, a great bite of mineral wealth torn from the hillside leaving a bare cliff face, rushy pools and broken rock.

It was only when we got close, really close, that it revealed another legacy, one that lasts for just a few weeks in late summer.

Most scientific experts agree that data from the initial trial badger culling areas in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset do not justify further extension of culling (Scientists criticise badger cull extension, 31 August). In ignoring this advice, and extending culling to five new areas, the government risks not only wasting much money but also giving farmers false hope that the approach will contribute to reducing TB in cattle. The initial trial areas were set up to test whether free-range shooting could be done humanely and at the same time reduce badger populations by at least 70% – the figure previously established as the level needed to achieve a significant reduction in TB in cattle.

The government was able to announce last year that it had achieved its culling targets, but only because they were based on unrealistically low badger population estimates – not on the central or best estimate value, but on the lowest bound value of the statistical margin of error around this estimate. This was simply a fudge. In none of these exercises did it achieve a 70% reduction based on the most likely population estimate.

My friend Chris Leyland, who has died of cancer aged 62, was that rare breed – a farmer for whom people mattered as much as the livestock in his care. In his native Northumberland, his most recent achievement was securing a future for the unique, 800-year-old Chillingham breed of wild cattle. Appointed park manager at Chillingham Castle in 2005, Chris used his farming expertise to double the herd numbers to more than a hundred today, by reversing decades of decay in their habitat.

But he will be best remembered by the Northumberland farming community as leader of a campaign that led to the creation of Bell View, a visionary approach to the housing and care of old people in Chris’s home town of Belford.

George Purcell, 15, joins local outcry after charity buys historic farm’s land and sheep, but not its farmhouse or outbuildings

A teenage farmer has accused the National Trust of endangering farming for future generations by acquiring a piece of land in the Lake District, which has sparked an outcry in the area over fears it could end an agricultural tradition going back thousands of years.

Fifteen-year-old George Purcell, who began farming Herdwick sheep with his parents when he was 11, said the National Trust’s actions had put the future of farming in the Lake District in jeopardy.

Barry Gardiner has warned the prime minister that any delay risks the UK being sidelined in influencing future action on climate change

Labour has warned Theresa May that the UK must hurry up and ratify the Paris climate deal before the year is out or risk being sidelined in influencing future action on global warming.

Writing to the new prime minister, Barry Gardiner said that the Brexit vote in June meant it was also vital that the UK demonstrated its continued commitment to international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Ambitious Great Elephant Census finds nearly one-third of continent’s largest elephants were wiped out between 2007-14, largely due to poaching for ivory

Poaching has driven a huge decline in Africa’s savanna elephants with almost a third (30%) wiped out between 2007 and 2014, the first ever continent-wide survey of the species has found.

Around 144,000 animals were lost over a seven-year period in 15 African countries, declining at a rate of 8% a year. The population across those countries today stands at 352,271 elephants.

More than 30% of the water sources on our planet are being over-exploited, in many cases to near exhaustion. World Water Week brings together experts and innovators from around the world to develop solutions for a sustainable water future

• This year World Water Week takes place in Stockholm, 28 Aug to 2 Sept, and takes the theme of Water for Sustainable Growth

Joan Rose, a microbiologist who has won the world’s most prestigious water prize, is both depressed and optimistic at progress to make water fit to drink

• World Water Week - in pictures

In May 2000, around half of Walkerton’s 5,000 residents fell severely ill and seven people died when cow manure washed into a well. The extent of the water pollution in the small Canadian town was concealed from the public, people drank from their taps and the result was ruined lives.

For academic microbiologist Joan Rose, who has observed water pollution outbreaks around the world, it was the worst that she had ever experienced.

Wet spring and sunny conditions pave the way for a spectacular display of colour, according to the Forestry Commission

Autumn could come as early as mid-September as a wet spring and sunny conditions pave the way for a spectacular display of colour, the Forestry Commission has said.

England’s wet spring saw rainfall 30% above average in the east and the south, data from the Met Office shows.

Special review recommending steps needed to strengthen climate policies receives a mixed response

The Climate Change Authority has advised the Australian government to institute two emissions trading schemes and strengthen regulations in order to meet Australia’s 2030 emission reduction targets and to allow it to lift those targets in line with international climate change obligations.

The move is expected to put pressure on the new environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, to strengthen Australia’s climate policies but it has received a mixed response.

Over the past 70 years, the bird has become a global staple, and could be the key fossil evidence for human-influenced epoch

The domestic chicken is set to play an epoch-defining role for humanity, as its bones could become the key fossil evidence for the dawn of the age in which humankind came to dominate the planet.

On Monday, an expert group announced that a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, should be declared. But the key to defining a geological age is finding global physical evidence of the transition that will be preserved for future geologists, and the chubby modern chicken eaten worldwide is a prime candidate.

New study finds poaching has helped shrink population by 60% since 2002 – and eventually may be responsible for eradicating one of the largest creatures left

Forest-dwelling elephants are likely to face extinction far more quickly than previously assumed because their sluggish reproduction rate cannot keep pace with rampant poaching and habitat loss, a new study has found.

The first comprehensive research into forest elephant demographics found that even if poaching was curbed, it will take nearly 100 years for the species just to recover the losses suffered in the past decade. The forest elephant population has crashed by more than 60% since 2002, with the species now inhabiting less than a quarter of its potential range of the Congo basin in Africa.

At best, just 2,500 Indochinese leopards survive today across Southeast Asia. They have been eradicated from 93% of their historic habitat by snares, poachers, deforestation and declines in prey. Can conservationists stop the bleeding before its too late?

Conservationists have long known that it’s hard – and in some cases – nearly impossible to survive as a tiger in Southeast Asia. Burning forests, high human populations and unflagging demand for tiger blood, tiger skin and crushed tiger bone means the big cats have to tread a daily gauntlet of snares, guns and desperate poachers. Now, conservationists are discovering, belatedly, that the same is largely true for leopards.

A sobering new study in Biological Conservation has found that the Indochinese leopard – a distinct subspecies – may be down to less than 1,000 individuals. And in the best-case scenario only 2,500 animals survive – less than the population of Farmsfield village in Nottinghamshire.

Geodynamics makes announcement as solar researchers speak out against cuts to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency

Renewable energy projects in Australia are already being suspended as a result of the two major parties’ plans to effectively abolish the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena).

In an announcement this week to the Australian Stock Exchange, Geodynamics announced it was suspending two large biogas projects in Goulburn, New South Wales, and Mindarra, Western Australia. It told investors it was doing so because of uncertainty surrounding the possibility of getting grant funding for the projects in the future.

Kit Hill, Tamar Valley Patches of sunlight enhance emerald regrowth in hay and silage fields, and the luminous glow of stubble and uncut corn

Harvesting of cereals is fast these days, hardly noticed by passersby. Close to home, stubble is glimpsed through gateways off narrow lanes encompassed by rank hedge banks overgrown with honeysuckle. Loaders and trailers race to gather the big round straw bales before rain, and there remain some uncut fields of later, spring-sown, barley.

The rare sight of stooks (cut for thatching) prompt boyhood reminiscences: Jack, my husband, drove the Fordson Major, pulling the binder with his father sitting on the back, and our neighbour, Jeff from Yorkshire, was tasked with catching tossed up sheaves and handing them, butt side out, to the expert rick builder for layering around the central vent.

From a curious fox to a hungry hornbill, these stunning scenes represent some of the world’s best nature photography

Craig Kelly says he wants wind and solar funding to be redirected to research into ‘technological breakthroughs’ because existing renewables had ‘little effect’

The Liberal chairman of the Coalition’s environment policy committee, Craig Kelly, has questioned solar and wind power subsidies and would like a cost-benefit analysis of future emission reductions policy, due to be reviewed next year.

Kelly was named chairman of the environment and energy committee at the party room meeting on Monday, making him responsible for coordinating backbench feedback to the government on climate and energy policy.

Iranian Cheetah Society says situation is critical as numbers of the subspecies continue to dwindle

Conservationists say only two female Asiatic cheetahs are known to be alive in the wild in Iran, which hosts the last surviving population.

Asiatic cheetahs, also known as Iranian cheetahs, are a subspecies of the fastest animal on earth and classified as critically endangered, with fewer than 40 believed to remain in Iran.