The Guardian

Starlings and house sparrow numbers dwindling as survey reveals long-term downward trend despite overall boost to populations due to a warm winter and bumper harvests

The number of backyard researchers in the world’s biggest citizen science survey was up this year, but participants found populations of many bird species continued to decline.

More than 585,000 people took part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch. The survey took place over a January weekend, as it has for the past 36 years.

• Emergency chief says anything but phrase ‘banned’ by governor
• Fema to pull funding for states that refuse to address climate change

The latest victim of Florida governor Rick Scott’s unwritten ban on state officials using the words “climate change” is his own disaster preparedness lieutenant, who stumbled through verbal gymnastics to avoid using the scientific term in a newly surfaced video.

Syrian scientists who risked their lives preserving the region’s ancient farming heritage with nearly 150,000 seed samples are presented Gregor Mendel award in Berlin

The fields around Aleppo have sustained humanity for tens of thousands of years. Blood-torn now, they were among the first to produce wheat, barley and the crops that made this area part of the “fertile crescent” that Western civilisation sprang from.

There may be little sign of that left today, amid Syria’s bloody civil war, but the few remaining strands of the region’s farming heritage have been pulled together by a small group of scientists, whose achievement has just been recognised.

Fall in amount of carbon absored by rainforest means even greater cuts to manmade emissions are needed to combat climate change, warn scientists

The amount of carbon the Amazon’s remaining trees removed from the atmosphere fell by almost a third last decade, leading scientists to warn that manmade carbon emissions would need to be cut more deeply to tackle climate change.

Trees in untouched areas of the forest have been dying off across the basin at an increasing rate, found the study, published in Nature on Wednesday. Meanwhile the tree growth produced by higher CO2 levels in recent decades levelled off.

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The endangered pangolin is being eaten out of existence before many people have even heard of it. Photographer Paul Hilton followed poachers in Indonesia to raise awareness of this gentle animal’s plight

Audio slideshow: See more of Paul Hilton’s work on the impact of deforestation on Indonesia’s wildlife

We feed six million loaves of bread a year to ducks in England and Wales causing damage to birds’ health and polluting waterways. Oats, corn and peas are safer for the birds

The seemingly innocent act of feeding ducks with bread is harming waterfowl and polluting waterways, conservationists warned on Monday as they urged people to use more benign alternatives.

A survey by the Canal and River Trust found nearly a quarter of English and Welsh people had together fed six million loaves of bread to ducks last year. Uneaten bread causes algal blooms, allows bacteria to breed and attracts rats and other vermin.

Consumers still eat it up — but more and more farmers are deserting organic, complaining that it costs a fortune and rowing with the Soil Association. Susanna Rustin put on her wellies to find out why they’re down on the farm

Darren and Julia Quenault took their first delivery of non-organic cattle feed a few weeks ago. After nine years of organic dairy farming, they decided to convert back to conventional, and give up their organic status, at the end of last year.

The reason was simple. “Cattle feed costs were excruciatingly expensive and we just couldn’t absorb them,” says Julia. “We’re saving £1,800 a month. We couldn’t have continued, we would have had to put up prices significantly, and we didn’t feel we could burden consumers with an extra 12% on the price of milk.”

Poachers took 15,000 birds every day for two months last autumn on Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area as conservationists warn killing is at unprecedented levels

Almost a million birds were illegally killed in just two months on a British military base in Cyprus last year, according to the RSPB.

Dr Tim Stowe, the RSPB’s international director, called on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to do more to stop local poachers, who reportedly took 15,000 birds every day during September and October from British Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area (SBA).

Lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics, says new expert study

Europe is experiencing an explosion in health costs caused by endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that is comparable to the cost of lead and mercury poisoning, according to the most comprehensive study of the subject yet published.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the human hormone system, and can be found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics.

#WeaselPecker trends on Twitter as Photoshop fans have fun with apparently genuine image of weasel flying on bird’s back through London park

It’s that age-old story: weasel meets bird, weasel falls in love with bird, weasel won’t let bird go – even when it flies off.

This extraordinary picture taken by amateur wildlife photographer Martin Le-May has caused some chin-scratching among ornithologists everywhere. Is it possible for a woodpecker to carry a weasel on its back?

British endurance swimmer and United Nations Environment Programme patron of the oceans, completes most southerly swim in human history after swimming in the Bay of Whales, Ross Sea

Raising and showing selectively bred birds is a world away from pigeons’ unjust image of ‘rats with wings’ – and it’s a hobby that helps forge lifelong friendships

Don’t feed the pigeons – unless you want to travel the world, forge life-long friendships and fall in love. These are just a few of the many perks of the pigeon hobby touted by fanciers from around the globe.

“Some people make art with paint and clay, we make art with pigeons,” said Leon Stephens, president of the Los Angeles Pigeon Club. Stephens studied genetics in college before starting his career as a health inspector.

‘Hoax’ article on the Amazon correctly identifies threats to Brazil-Peru border region

In December the World News Daily Report (WNDR) published an article claiming that the “world’s oldest tree” had been cut down along the Brazil-Peru border in the Amazon. It stated that a “giant Samauma tree that is thought to be over 5,800 years old” in the “Matsés Indigenous Reserve” had been “accidentally” felled by illegal loggers, and quoted “local tribesman leader Tahuactep of the Matsés tribe” saying it had “brought darkness upon not only our people, but the whole world.”

Some media responded by reporting it as fact, others by calling it a hoax. The Independent described it as “one of the 11 weirdest hoaxes of 2014”, while the Washington Post asserted that the WNDR is a “hoax-news site whose stories — we repeat! — are always fake” and “the world’s oldest tree is actually “somewhere in eastern California” and “only 5,062 years old.”

Five quokkas that were found stuffed head-first into tree protectors and another lying nearby had ‘clearly been killed’, say authorities

Authorities in Western Australia are investigating the deaths of five quokkas that were found stuffed head-first into tree protectors on Rottnest Island on Monday.

The animals were found by Peter Basford, who told Seven News in Perth that he was visiting the island and found the animals near the camping ground.

Intelligence report identifies anti-petroleum movement as a threat to Canadian security and suggests those concerned with climate consequences occupy political fringe

The US security establishment views climate change as real and a dangerous threat to national security. But Canada takes a very different view, according to a secret intelligence memo prepared by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The memo, stamped “Canadian eyes only”, repeatedly casts doubt on the causes of climate change – the burning of fossil fuels – and its potential threat.

Dogger Bank Creyke Beck project will cover 430 sq miles and is expected to generate enough electricity to power nearly 2m homes, supporting 900 jobs

Plans for the world’s biggest offshore windfarm have been given the green light by the energy secretary, with planning permission for an array of up to 400 turbines 80 miles off the Yorkshire coast on the Dogger Bank.

The project, more than twice the size of the UK’s current biggest offshore windfarm, is expected to cost £6bn to £8bn and could fulfil 2.5% of the UK’s electricity needs.

Plans to build luxury holiday cabins, majority-owned by venture capitalists, in public forests put protected wildlife and their habitats at risk

Four years ago the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, told the House of Commons that she was ditching the coalition government’s plans to privatise the Forestry Commission (FC). “I’m sorry. We got this one wrong, but we have listened to people’s concerns,” she said.

But if you go down to the woods today, you may have a big surprise, because privatisation of our woodlands appears to be proceeding by the back door.

We need to cut carbon pollution to avoid North American mega-droughts

California is in the midst of its worst drought in over 1,200 years, exacerbated by record hot temperatures. A new study led by Benjamin Cook at Nasa GISS examines how drought intensity in North America will change in a hotter world, and finds that things will only get worse.

Global warming intensifies drought in several ways. In increases evaporation from soil and reservoirs. In increases water demand. It makes precipitation fall more as rain and less as snow, which is problematic for regions like California that rely on snowpack melt to refill reservoirs throughout the year. It also makes the snowpack melt earlier in the year. The record heat has intensified the current California drought by about 36%, and the planet will only continue to get hotter.

Suspects could face 10 years’ jail after wildlife including skinks, geckos, frogs and pygmy pythons was found by customs hidden in luggage and parcels

Four men are in custody in Perth accused of attempting to export more than 150 native animals from Western Australia.

The men were arrested at Perth international airport earlier this month after customs was tipped off by postal workers who noticed something amiss in packages sent from destinations including Carnarvon, Tom Price and Geraldton. All were destined for Europe.