The Guardian

Anthony Albanese plays it safe with the sulphur-crested cockatoo while the tawny frogmouth proves popular among MPs who took blue ribbon seats off Liberals

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The tawny frogmouth is the bird of winners – at least politically.

Three of the MPs who chose the introverted icons as their bird of the year also happen to be among those who took blue ribbon seats off Liberal MPs.

Independent senator David Pocock has a simple message for everyone voting in the Guardian/BirdLife Australia bird of the year poll – get on board and vote for the endangered gang-gang cockatoo. 'These charcoal-coloured cockatoos are incredible,' he says

• Keep up with all our bird of the year coverage here

We swift parrots are asking for your vote to be the next bird of the year. We're one of the few migratory parrot species and can be found throughout Australia’s south-east states, but we breed only in Tasmania. We're also critically endangered, with less than 300 to 750 of us left in the wild. Experts think we may become extinct in the next 10 years

• Cast your vote for the Guardian and BirdLife Australia’s bird of the year poll.

Public to vote in contest organized by Katmai national park to see which bear looks to have put on most pre-hibernation weight

Fat Bear Week, the annual competition to see which Alaskan bears can pack on the most pounds before hibernation season, begins this week, with a combination of fan favorites and newcomers vying for the title of the state’s most rotund bear.

The contest, which has become increasingly popular in recent years, will see 12 bears in the Katmai national park in Alaska face off against each other, in an online vote.

Paper reveals scientists’ concerns that single-species carbon plantations threaten native flora and fauna, while delivering negligible benefits

Monoculture tree-planting schemes are threatening tropical biodiversity while only offering modest climate benefit, ecologists have said, warning that ecosystems like the Amazon and Congo basin are being reduced to their carbon value.

Amid a boom in the planting of single-species plantations to capture carbon, scientists have urged governments to prioritise the conservation and restoration of native forests over commercial monocultures, and cautioned that planting swathes of non-native trees in tropical regions threatens important flora and fauna for a negligible climate impact.

The group also wants governments to develop a plan to electrify all existing properties

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All state and territory governments should introduce bans on gas connections in new homes and develop a clear plan to electrify existing properties and small businesses, according to an organisation representing energy consumers.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry examining Australia’s residential electrification efforts, Energy Consumers Australia urged the government to consider mandatory information disclosures to warn consumers about “the potential economic consequences” of buying a new gas appliance.

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The felling of this much-loved tree reflects a society that has become utterly disconnected from the non-human world

At some point during Wednesday night last week, when Britain was being battered by Storm Agnes, a person – or perhaps more than one – walked up to one of the country’s most famous and beloved trees, fired up a two-metre chainsaw and began to cut.

In as little as half an hour, the Sycamore Gap had been reduced to a gap. The tree that filled that little U-shaped dell in Hadrian’s Wall and was thought to be up to 300 years old was gone. What was left was a gaping, empty hole. Not only in that sweep of tree-scarce Northumberland landscape that once demarked the Roman empire’s northern limits, but in the lives of the many people from all over the world who had taken that lone tree, defiantly clinging on to those windy northern moors, to heart. People who grew up, as I did, wrapping arms around it on long walks along the wall in waterproofs and who later returned with their own children to do the same. People who scattered the ashes of their loved ones around its roots. People who visited it religiously through the seasons and sought shelter from sun and showers under its canopy; who saw its leaves fire in the autumn and its stark silhouette scratched black into a cold, winter sky.

Rob Cowen is a writer and author

Exclusive: Analysis says under Labor’s revamped safeguard mechanism some coalmines could more than double their emissions and still benefit financially

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Ten coalmines could increase their greenhouse gas pollution until 2030 while being financially rewarded under an Albanese government climate policy that is meant to cut industrial emissions, according to a new analysis.

The analysis of how different facilities are treated under the safeguard mechanism – the government’s main policy to deal with major polluters – has prompted calls for changes to deal with this “perverse outcome” and require every coalmine to take additional steps to cut emissions.

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It’s believed there are fewer than 20 of these ‘little birds of the spinifex’ – and their future hangs in the balance

• Cast your vote in the Australian bird of the year poll today
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It’s hard to say precisely when I became a card-carrying bird nerd. Perhaps it was when I began keeping a pair of binoculars in my bag (you know, “just in case”). Maybe the time I taught bush kinder children the local bird calls so we could chat to our feathery friends out on country. Most likely though it was the point at which I became hopelessly obsessed with a little bird named mukarrthippi and its entanglement with my family history.

Mukarrthippi (pronounced mook-waa-tippy) captured my heart, not just because of its charismatic rufous-brown eyebrows, alert upturned tail and striking white streaked body, but also for the rather dubious honour it holds of potentially being Australia’s rarest bird. A recent survey estimates that fewer than 20 individuals exist in the world, most of whom reside in a single small area of sandhill in what is now known as Yathong Nature Reserve.

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We’re nearing the end of the eliminations and getting to the business end of the voting now. Who will get their beak in front when it counts?

• Cast your vote in the Australian bird of the year poll today
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We’re now into the final week of Bird of the Year and the competition is, just like the unseasonably warm weather, HOTTING UP.

So far in the competition more than 200,000 votes have been cast and one thing is clear: the tawny frogmouth is the favourite as we near the home stretch. However, it may yet be knocked off its perch by a late surge from the swift parrot.

Probably the best-known Australian sound, one that even made it onto the soundtrack of old Tarzan movies, the laughing kookaburra assumes it's a shoe in for this year's bird of the year competition. And who can blame it? It's an Australian icon. Much loved in eastern Australia but considered a pest where it has been introduced into WA and Tasmania. An iconic sound for an iconic bird

• Cast your vote for the Guardian and BirdLife Australia’s bird of the year poll.

Rapid attribution study finds storm 10-20% wetter after city experienced a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours on Friday

The unmistakable influence of the climate crisis helped cause New York City to be inundated by a month’s worth of rain within just a few hours on Friday, scientists have warned, amid concerns over how well the city is prepared for severe climate shocks.

A new rapid attribution study, released by scientists in Europe, has found that the type of storm seen on Friday is now 10-20% wetter than it would have been in the previous century, because of climate change.

Rightwing thinktank Civitas mistakenly cost onshore wind power 10,000 times higher than reality and claimed bill would be £4.5tn

A report that hugely overestimated the cost to the UK of reaching net zero emissions has been retracted by the rightwing thinktank that published it.

The Civitas pamphlet published on Thursday claimed to offer a “realistic” estimate of the cost – £4.5tn – and said “the government needs to be honest with the British people”. However, factual errors were quickly pointed out after publication.

Exclusive: Bosses who signed letter eight years ago now highly critical of PM’s plans to roll back net zero policies

Business leaders who warned against Ed Miliband in 2015 have now turned on Rishi Sunak, criticising the prime minister’s plans to roll back net zero policies.

Some of Britain’s top entrepreneurs have told the Guardian that the plans have caused uncertainty for business, reduced the country’s international standing and punished investors who made early decisions on net zero based on the original timeline.

Behold the slug and you behold a teenager, in all of her magic and power

Slugs have not inspired much poetry – though this line from Brian Swann is nice: “Turn them over, they’re the soles of new shoes, / pale and unmarked as babies.”

Virginia Woolf insulted her enemies, herself and the perfectly nice city of Brighton with slug name calling. In an essay called Spiralling around Snails and Slugs in Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Elisa Kay Sparks lists these insults. “Poor creature! He knows he’s but a slug”; a “white and voluble slug”; “Brighton a love corner for slugs”. When she is lonely, Woolf writes, “I relish the commonest animated slug”; when she is sick: “I turned over like a slug and slept the month of February out”.

Even if the 2050 goal is still met, postponing action – as the UK has done – will cause more heat and damage

Postponing action and taking a slower route to net zero emissions by 2050 will worsen the climate crisis even if the goal is still reached by that date, the new chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

Prof Jim Skea also said that approving new oil and gas fields only increased the already large amount of reserves that will have to be kept in the ground if global heating limits are to be reached.

You might think that nature, being free, is available to all – but there are huge racial disparities in access to the outdoors

• Haroon Mota is a mountaineer and the founder of Muslim Hikers

The British countryside is often perceived as universally accessible, a tranquil escape open for all to enjoy. But is this truly the case? From my experience as a member of and advocate for minority communities in the UK, it has become increasingly evident that time in the natural world is far less accessible to some of us than we would hope.

I’ve been adventuring in the outdoors for nearly 20 years now, and from the very beginning I noticed that I wouldn’t bump into people like myself in rural spaces, despite my city being very diverse.

Haroon Mota is a mountaineer and the founder of Muslim Hikers and Active Inclusion Network

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Everyone knows Australia's largest bird, the emu, but how many are familiar with our smallest? At only 8cm to 9cm long, the weebill generally goes unnoticed due to its small stature and earthy colours, even though it is found across much of the country. It’s most often found gleaning insects from eucalyptus leaves, which at times are bigger than the bird itself

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Kieran Chapman, 27, says removal of young sycamore he planted at site of historic felled tree is ‘devastating’

A man who planted a sapling at the site where the Sycamore Gap tree previously stood at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland has said it is “devastating” that it has been removed.

The National Trust dug up the young sycamore planted by 27-year-old Kieran Chapman metres away from the stump of the historic tree, which was illegally felled overnight on Wednesday.

Experts predict there will be fewer than 100 individuals of the species by 2031 as the rate of decline in population grows faster

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“They’re really cute. They are very chatty. When they’re around you know they’re around,” says conservation scientist Giselle Owens. “They make this little flying call – it goes ‘pip, pip, pip, pip’.”

So fascinated was Owens by the critically endangered swift parrot, she is writing a PhD on the bird, which is one of just two migratory parrot species in the world, and the farthest flying.

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