The Guardian

A Kalahari desert sunrise and a wren’s nest under a bike seat are among the winning images in the scientific journal’s annual competition, which showcases biodiversity, natural beauty and biological interactions photographed by ecologists

Waltham Brooks, West Sussex Now breeding has finished, the numbers of starlings gathering together are building up again, and will rise into the thousands in the coming months

The river Arun has slowed almost to a stop, the bare strip of dried earth along the bank betraying the low water level. Large bunches of dark green weed are exposed. Along the grassy footpath, there are a still a few thistles in bloom, glowing purple in the evening sunshine, but many other thistle heads have now exploded, trailing their down of sticky, spindly white seeds. It’s warm and close, but the breeze is slowly bringing a band of black cloud from the west.

Related: Country diary: South Downs, near Arundel: Grey partridges have become a rare sight on the Downs, except here

Scientist and Nobel prize-winner Peter Doherty says new One Nation senator ‘has no understanding of how science works’

Across Australia, climate science denialists are beside themselves with glee at the voting into office of one of their own.

Late last week, the Australian Electoral Commission confirmed that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had snagged Queensland’s final 12th Senate spot. Her candidate, Malcolm Roberts, is now a senator.

Scientists in Queensland develop an environmental DNA test to help make habitats easier to identify

Australian scientists have developed a cutting-edge test that could give the endangered largetooth sawfish a better chance of survival.

Researchers working from James Cook University in Queensland, have found a way to reliably test large bodies of water for the DNA of the prehistoric-looking fish and help make habitats easier to identify.

Australia is one of the world’s largest diesel consumers per capita but a cleaner option called dimethyl ether could change all that

As one of the world’s largest consumers of diesel per capita, Australia could soon benefit from the onshore production of a cleaner-burning alternative.

Dimethyl ether (DME) is a colourless gas used as an aerosol propellant for things such as hairspray, but engine manufacturers and other companies have been exploring its potential as an alternative transport fuel.

Sweeter stone fruits abundant alongside lower yields of leafy vegetables due to erratic British weather

Shoppers can hope to enjoy a late-summer bounty of bigger and sweeter cherries, apricots and plums, followed by late blackberries, as this year’s fluctuating weather and unpredictable growing conditions have an effect on UK-grown fresh produce.

But while farmers have struggled with lower yields from leaf vegetables such as spinach and kale, regional weather variations and imports mean supermarket shelves are unlikely to fall empty.

The Macduff Marine Aquarium releases an octopus into the North Sea in July. The octopus was given to the aquarium after it was caught in a fisherman’s creel by accident. The female octopus was studied for several weeks before being returned to the sea to complete its brief life-cycle

The nuclear project is outdated and expensive - the UK should be focussing time and money on renewables, interconnectors, storage, smart grids and efficiency

Hinkley Point C, the multibillion pound nuclear deal, years in the making, is on the cusp of unravelling. At the last minute, the government has hit the pause button in order to take a hard look at what Hinkley is offering in return for £37bn of energy consumers’ money.

The voices of opposition are growing. Even newspapers which have supported the nuclear industry are raising doubts.

Government says payments, capped at £10m for communities near wells, will not be made until site is up and running

The government has admitted that payments of up to £10,000 a household for living near a fracking well would not be distributed until a new site begins operating and producing gas – at least five years after exploration begins.

In a consultation on the shale wealth fund published on Monday, officials said that payments would be capped at £10m for each community living near a well, over its lifetime. They also conceded that any money flowing directly to households would not happen until a full-scale fracking industry is up and running.

Earlier this year photojournalist Toby Smith followed a group of migrating cuckoos to the forests of Gabon, west Africa. His images document the African landscapes in which the globally dwindling cuckoo population spends its winter months away from the UK, and will help conservationists understand how land use change is affecting birds

Clexit calls for withdrawal from climate treaties, rejects the conclusions of 97% of climate science experts and 95% of economics experts

Brexit support and climate denial have many similarities. Many Brexit Leave campaign leaders also deny the dangers of human-caused climate change. Older generations were more likely to vote for the UK to leave the EU and are more likely to oppose taking action on climate change; younger generations disagree, and will be forced to live with the consequences of those decisions. On both issues there’s also a dangerous strain of anti-intellectualism, in which campaigners mock experts and dismiss their evidence and conclusions.

With Brexit, the Leave campaign won the vote, and the UK economy is already feeling the consequences. As Graham Readfearn reported, a new group called “Clexit” (Climate Exit) has formed in an effort to similarly withdraw countries from the successful international climate treaty forged last year in Paris. As the group describes itself:

Scientific survey found all reefs had been affected by high sea surface temperatures, with up to 90% of coral colonies bleached in some areas

More than 60% of coral in reefs in the Maldives has been hit by “bleaching” as the world is gripped by record temperatures in 2016, a scientific survey suggests. 

Bleaching happens when algae that lives in the coral is expelled due to stress caused by extreme and sustained changes in temperatures, turning the coral white and putting it at risk of dying if conditions do not return to normal. 

Palm oil producer was stripped of its certification in March 2016 after failing to meet environmental standards, reports BusinessGreen

Palm oil supplier IOI Group has had its certificate for sustainable palm oil reinstated by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), after it was judged to have fulfilled the body’s demands to improve its environmental performance.

In a statement issued last Friday, the RSPO said the palm oil supplier would be re-instated with its certificate from Monday.

Jackie Trad says action is needed to prevent harm to the Great Barrier Reef as study shows tens of thousands of hectares cleared in catchment areas

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been cleared in Queensland, a new study has found, after a surge led by cattle graziers under relaxed laws that the state government is seeking to overturn.

A state science department study on land cover released on Sunday found 296,000 hectares of land was cleared in 2014-15, more than a third of it in Great Barrier Reef catchments.

Scotland’s industries and farmers must cut energy, greenhouse gas emissions and resource use as waste overtakes pollution as the major environmental threat, says head of regulator

Scotland’s environment agency has warned the country’s industries and farmers that their waste and inefficiency is now the biggest threat to the environment, overtaking pollution.

In a marked shift in strategy, the regulator’s chief executive, Terry A’Hearn, will urge businesses, farmers and manufacturers to adopt a “one planet prosperity” policy designed to cut their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste and resource use.

The only way the UK could have another runway without breaking climate change laws would be to increase prices

When the government’s Airports Commission endorsed the expansion of Heathrow last year it was challenged to explain how the UK could expand its airports without breaking climate change laws that limit greenhouse gas emissions.

It was a reasonable question. Like most countries, the UK has a tough emissions target for 2050 and, even though aviation has been given an easy ride compared with other industries, the sector is on course to exceed its generous limit. That’s the case even without adding a new runway. Increasing the number of flights from the UK would put the target further out of reach.

It hasn’t always been easy for individuals or minority groups to speak up for their rights against governments or large corporations. But a series of past events have strived to ensure that all Australians’ voices are being heard.

Marshwood Vale, Dorset The meadow is a waving, dancing, tawny-pink shimmer of grasshopper song

The landscape is dense, dark green and silent. Acres of monocrop ryegrass fields, grown for silage, lie empty, penned between tall hedges and thick, mostly neglected, stands of oak, ash, alder and hazel. The damp clay in the Vale nurtures straight-growing trees of monster size, once prized by the navy. Eager to keep the trees, 16th- and 17th-century farmers would coppice everything, even young oaks, to spoil them for shipbuilding. Today these old oaks can be identified by their strange shapes, branches growing out in sudden clumps from stunted trunks.

Along the line of the ploughed-out bridleway, the ground underfoot is hard and lumpy, the grass a scanty layer over stones and cracked clay. I miss the overgrown footpath through the hedge and have to go back. Pushing aside brambles and nettles, I climb the first wobbly stile and the blackthorn closes around and above me, making a low passageway. Three, four steps with twigs catching at my hair, over the second stile and out into a different environment.

There’s more to summer smog than traffic, heating and industry. Hydrocarbons are chemically reactive and can form thousands of other pollutants

The contribution of diesel exhaust to summer smog has been a topic of hot debate over the last six years.

Not all air pollution comes directly from sources such as traffic, heating and industry. Pollutants are also created from chemical reactions in the atmosphere. This is especially true in summer when stronger sunlight provides extra energy to drive the chemistry. During this July’s hot weather, air drifted over France and the UK, accumulating pollutants that then reacted in the sunshine. The resulting summertime smog reached six on the UK government’s ten point warning scale.

As Patrick Barkham says (Postcards from the hedge, 2 August) austerity is responsible for wild roadsides. But this is only partly so. Plantlife has for years campaigned for roadside verges to be left uncut until flowers have dropped their seeds, which can be as late as August or September. One cut can be ideal, with the proviso that visibility is maintained for road users. Dorset county council is following such guidelines and is experimenting with stripping topsoil to reduce fertility and introducing yellow rattle to inhibit vigorous grass growth. It is hoped that other local authorities will introduce such measures into their roadside maintenance schedules to help wildflowers that have been pushed from farmlands to the margins.
Paul Walker
Buxton, Derbyshire

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