The Guardian

Environment secretary will hope move can reset relations with farmers after inheritance tax row

The environment secretary, Steve Reed, is to announce a five-year extension of the seasonal farm worker scheme in an attempt to reset relations with farmers after fury over inheritance tax.

Making his pitch to farmers at the National Farmers’ Union conference in central London on Tuesday, Reed will also announce the opening of a new national biosecurity centre to tackle diseases including foot-and-mouth and bluetongue.

Dog walker’s close encounter prompts debate over whether the animals, once native to UK, should remain

Sightings of wild boar on Dartmoor have raised suspicions a guerrilla rewilder has been releasing them – and prompted a debate over whether they should be allowed to remain.

Videos of a group of boar on the moors in Devon were posted online earlier this month, and a dog walker has recently complained of a close encounter with one of them, which frightened his pet.

Distinctive, slender deep-sea creature, also known as ‘doomsday’ fish, seen wriggling on Baja California beach

A shimmery, slinky oarfish – a deep-sea creature that is rarely seen near the surface – was spotted in Baja California Sur, along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, this month. A group of people visiting the area noticed the shiny, wriggling fish along the beach, and tried to guide it back into the water.

The slender creatures live at depths between 660 and 3,280ft underwater, and on the rare occasions that they have been seen by humans, they have usually been dead – washed ashore after storms. In Baja California Sur, Robert Hayes of Idaho, who was visiting the beach with his wife, saw a live fish and quickly began filming it.

Study shows funding bias towards animals like rhino while other endangered species including amphibians and algae disregarded

Most global conservation funds go to larger, charismatic animals, leaving critically important but less fashionable species deprived, a 25-year study has revealed.

Scientists have found that of the $1.963bn allocated to projects worldwide, 82.9% was assigned to vertebrates. Plants and invertebrates each accounted for 6.6% of the funding, while fungi and algae were barely represented at less than 0.2%.

Their metamorphosis seems more like a human’s than a butterfly’s – so much is visible, and awkward, whereas the butterfly forms in secret

Some species of frog have eyes so sensitive to light that they can detect a single photon. To confirm this, scientists dissected a frog’s eye and removed the lens. If you dissected eyes in biology class, you may remember that a lens is extraordinarily simple, and unlike other organs. It is a hard, clearish, object that comes out clean: no blood supply, no blood. It looks like a glass bead, and functions – inanimate – much like glass, and not like most things we find in our body (except maybe teeth, which function like knives). Look through the lens at the classroom around you, you will see it clearly, but upside down.

A frog in space, moving further and further from the sun, would eventually start to see not a shrinking star, but tiny flashes of light: individual photons. This is because as the photons travel further from their source, they are spread over greater areas: they will hit a frog’s eye less and less often.

Anthocyanins in nuts, fruits and vegetables seem to lesson harmful effects of microplastics on reproductive systems

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Antioxidants that give fruits and flowers their vibrant colors seem to counteract some of the most dangerous reproductive system effects of exposure to microplastics, such as decreased fertility, and could ultimately be used in developing treatments, new peer-reviewed research shows.

The paper focused on microplastics’ reproductive toxicity and plant compounds called anthocyanins, which are widely found in nuts, fruits and vegetables. The new review of scientific literature on anthocyanins found that the compounds are probably protective against a range of plastic-induced impacts on hormones, reductions in testosterone and estrogen, decreased sperm counts, lower sperm quality, erectile dysfunction and ovarian damage.

Green sector growing at triple the rate of the UK economy, providing high-wage jobs and increasing energy security

The net zero sector is growing three times faster than the overall UK economy, analysis has found, providing high-wage jobs across the country while cutting climate-heating emissions and increasing energy security.

The net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024 and generated £83bn in gross value added (GVA), a measure of how much value companies add through the goods and services they produce.

Many of the nations gathering in Rome for Cop16 have offered no plans to honour their agreement to protect 30% of land and sea for nature

More than half the world’s countries have no plans to protect 30% of land and sea for nature, despite committing to a global agreement to do so less than three years ago, new analysis shows.

In late 2022, nearly every country signed a once-in-a-decade UN deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems. It included a headline target to protect nearly a third of the planet for biodiversity by the end of the decade – a goal known as “30 by 30”.

Hospitals, schools and prisons to be set target of sourcing half of all food from farms with high welfare standards, which should benefit British growers

Hospitals, schools and prisons are to be urged to buy more British food, as part of a government push to heal a rift with farmers over changes to inheritance tax, the Guardian understands.

The environment secretary, Steve Reed, will tell the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) annual conference on Tuesday that the public sector is to be set a target of sourcing at least half of all food from farms with the highest welfare standards, which should benefit British growers and food producers.

Startling evidence of the dangers to birds and rivers from over-the-counter drugs should be a wake-up call for owners to press for alternatives

When I was 10, I succeeded in my campaign for a family dog. Part of her care, and our joy as owners, was the monthly application of spot-on worm and flea treatment. With veterinary medicine on my mind as a career, I relished the theatre of vets-at-home. We bought doses over the counter, scheduling the dog’s treatment on the calendar like a five-a-side.

We applied these drugs to our dog because every other owner did. Because it was encouraged, because it was easy, because it felt right.

Sophie Pavelle is a writer and science communicator

Numbers of animals once hunted as vermin are rising across the continent. But scientists worry about how we are going to get along with these predators

Europe’s carnivores have had a remarkable change in fortune. After tens of thousands of years of persecution that wiped out sabretooth tigers, hyenas and cave lions, there has been a recent rebound in the continent’s surviving predators.

Across mainland Europe, bear, wolf, lynx and wolverine numbers have risen dramatically as conservation measures introduced several decades ago have begun to make an impact. There are now about 20,500 brown bears in Europe, a rise of 17% since 2016, while there are 9,400 Eurasian lynx, a 12% increase.

Research group says discovery could lead to new type of environmentally friendly farming

A biological mechanism that makes plant roots more attractive to soil microbes has been discovered by scientists in the UK. The breakthrough – by researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, Norfolk – opens the door to the creation of crops requiring reduced amounts of nitrate and phosphate fertilisers, they say.

“We can now think of developing a new type of environmentally friendly farming with crops that require less artificial fertiliser,” said Dr Myriam Charpentier, whose group carried out the research.

The PM and his ministers are supporting illiberal laws that hard-right authoritarians could apply with zeal

If the Trump project implodes, it might take with it the extreme and far-right European parties to which it is umbilically connected. Like all such parties, the hard-right Reform UK poses as patriotic while grovelling to foreign interests, and this could be its undoing.

But we cannot bank on it. The UK government must do all it can to prevent the disaster that has befallen several other European nations. If it fails to meet people’s needs and keeps echoing far-right talking points, we could go the same way as Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Finland, Sweden and Austria.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

As Ningaloo reef bleaches and an election looms, we must hold to account those who stand in the way of our safety – the small cohort profiting from fossil fuels, and the politicians who protect them

Late last spring, I was part of an expedition to Scott Reef, a magnificent coral atoll nearly 300 kilometres off the Kimberley coast. And while it was a privilege to be in such a remote and wonderful place, watching rare and endemic sea life drifting past, the moment I tipped from the boat in my mask and fins, I knew something was wrong.

The water was too hot. Not tropical warm, but uncomfortably hot.

US government stripping funds from domestic and overseas research amid warnings for health and public safety

The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: “climate.”

The US government is withdrawing grants and other support for research that even references the climate crisis, academics have said, amid Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg upon environmental regulations and clean-energy development.

Expert recommendations will influence plans for energy, housing, transport industry and farming for decades

Labour will next week be confronted with stark policy choices that threaten to expose the fault lines between the Treasury and the government’s green ambitions, as advice for the UK’s next carbon budget is published.

Plans for the energy sector, housing, transport, industry and farming will all be called into question in a sweeping set of recommendations for how the UK can meet the legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Net zero policies would result in fewer deaths saving UK billions, say researchers

Countries that weaken or stop their net zero and climate actions may be consigning their populations to decades of preventable illness.

Gains from net zero are often presented as global benefits and mainly for future generations. But less fossil fuel use also means less air pollution which results in local health gains right away.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

The annual competition draws thousands of entries from across the world and brings together images from below the water’s surface that show the diversity and challenges of subaquatic life

• All photographs courtesy of Underwater Photographer of the Year 2025

From bats to moths, species working the night shift are suffering as light pollution soars

When we think about invertebrates, most of us picture bees, butterflies, worms, crabs or perhaps even a jellyfish. But did you know that at least two-thirds of invertebrates are active at night, meaning many are unlikely to be seen? Invertebrates carry out many of the same functions as their daytime counterparts, in some cases doing so with greater efficiency and variety.

For centuries, artificial light has been a symbol of progress. From the flickering flames of early fires to the dazzling LED displays of modern cities, light has shaped human civilisation. But while we celebrate its convenience, we often overlook the darker side of our obsession with illumination: light pollution.

The Guardian is running the invertebrate of the year competition 2025 – and this time it’s global. Nominate your favourite invertebrate, and then, in a few weeks time, we’ll vote on which is the best.