The Guardian

The UK’s food supply has been threatened by recent events, such as the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic

Urgent action is needed to secure the UK’s food supply in the face of climate change-induced extreme weather, the imposition of tariffs and global insecurity, a report has warned.

Days after the US president, Donald Trump, warned Europe would be next for tariffs on trade after he imposed tax levies on Canada, China and Mexico, the report said the UK’s post-second world war food system was no longer fit for purpose, and the country’s food security was in a precarious state.

For those lucky enough to have a place to return to in Altadena, going home meant dealing with unfinished chores left behind when the Eaton fire forced them to evacuate. For Samy Arbid, who had moved into a property just a block from the fire line in November, there was a different kind of challenge: a 525lb (240kg) black bear. It had moved into the crawl space under the house before the fire and was still sheltering there when Arbid and his wife returned. The California wildfire department stepped in to help, luring the bear out with treats after deciding it was too big to tranquillise. The bear's new home is much more appropriate: the Angeles national forest

Team has produced more than 20 embryos using method used in humans, though there are no plans for live joeys

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Scientists have produced kangaroo embryos through in vitro fertilisation for the first time, in a development they say could help conservation of endangered animals.

Australian researchers at the University of Queensland made the eastern grey kangaroo embryos using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a technique widely used in human IVF, in which a sperm is injected into a mature egg.

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Ian Wood wins Natural History Museum’s people’s choice award with photo taken in St Leonards-on-Sea

A badger captured glancing up at a graffiti version of itself has won the Natural History Museum’s people’s choice award for wildlife photographer of the year.

The image was taken by a British photographer, Ian Wood, on a quiet road in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

Freedom of information data reveals violations on intensive poultry and pig farms

Industrial-scale livestock farms across East Anglia have breached environmental regulations more than 700 times in the past seven years, freedom of information (FoI) data has revealed.

The farms across Norfolk and Suffolk are among the largest in the country. Pig and poultry farming is concentrated in the region and 28% of England’s pig population was farmed in the area in 2023.

Did you know molluscs protect the citizens of Poland from water pollution? It’s true!

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Labour pledges to protect 66,500 more properties, criticising previous Tory efforts

Ministers are topping up flood defence investment in England to a “record” £2.65bn, after accusing the previous government of “putting lives at risk” by under-spending.

An extra £250m is being pledged on top of the £2.4bn previously announced, to shore up defences and protect an extra 66,500 properties from flooding over a two-year period, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.

Analysis drawing on satellite data and 13 climate models concludes that climate change makes marine heatwaves 20 times more likely

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Marine heatwaves linked to the deaths of 30,000 fish off the Western Australia coast were up to 100 times more likely to occur because of climate change, new research has found.

Waters off WA have been affected by prolonged marine heatwaves since September last year.

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Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated though other scientists disagree

The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead”.

A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought.

Deprived of Rachel Reeves’s affections, the energy secretary revelled in playing climate crisis hero to her villain

He lives!

They seek him here! They seek him there! For the last ten days or so, Ed Miliband has been the Invisible Man. A large number of the cabinet were in Oxfordshire for Rachel Reeves’s growth speech last Wednesday. Ed was not. Those who didn’t make the trip were in the Commons later on for prime minister’s questions as Keir Starmer reinforced the growth message. Ed was not. Some ministers lent their support as Darren Jones gave a statement on growth. Ed did not.

Scientists say unusually mild temperatures linked to low-pressure system over Iceland directing strong flow of warm air towards north pole

Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt.

Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991–2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to water’s melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C.

Just 9,119 were counted in 2024 – down 96% on previous year and second-lowest mark in nearly three decades

The number of monarch butterflies spending the winter in the western United States has dropped to its second-lowest mark in nearly three decades as pesticides, diminishing habitat and the climate crisis take their toll on the beloved pollinator.

The butterflies, known for their distinctive orange-and-black wings, are found across North America. Monarchs in the eastern US spend their winters in Mexico, while monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains typically overwinter along the California coast.

Mountaineers now scaling more peaks for first global study of nanoplastics, which can enter lungs and bloodstream

Particles from vehicle tyre wear are the biggest source of nanoplastic pollution in the high Alps, a pioneering project has revealed.

Expert mountaineers teamed up with scientists to collect contamination-free samples and are now scaling peaks to produce the first global assessment of nanoplastics, which are easily carried around the world by winds.

Open-net farms to continue despite numbers of wild fish halving as minister looks for ‘acceptable’ pollution levels

Norway’s environment minister has ruled out a ban on open-net fish farming at sea despite acknowledging that the wild North Atlantic salmon is under “existential threat”.

With yearly exports of 1.2m tonnes, Norway is the largest producer of farmed salmon in the world. But its wild salmon population has fallen from more than a million in the early 1980s to about 500,000 today.

This country has a long history of taking its unique wildlife and landscapes for granted – but what has happened in this term of parliament is remarkable

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There is something significant missing from most of the political and media discussion about the Australian government’s promised, and now abandoned, nature protection laws: the environment. Logically, it should be a focus of the debate. In practice, it barely gets a look-in.

This would be an extraordinary state of affairs were it not so familiar. Australia has a long history of taking its unique wildlife and landscapes for granted, stretching back to European colonisation. But what has happened in this term of parliament is a pretty remarkable extension of that.

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Environmental disasters have plagued the water body for decades. Now the region is thrust in the global spotlight

The enormous semi-enclosed bay, its waters flanked by the Florida and Yucatán peninsulas and partially blockaded by Cuba, has been called the Golfo de México for centuries, a name that first appeared on a world map in 1550. And for centuries the name bothered no one.

Thomas Jefferson used the name without shame, even as he, Donald Trump-like, imagined dominating nearby nations. If the US could take Cuba, Jefferson wrote in 1823, it would control the “Gulf of Mexico and the countries and isthmus bordering on it”. Country music stars, no less than founding fathers, liked the romance of the place. Tracy Lawrence dreams of a Gulf of Mexico filled with whiskey. Johnny Cash wanted to dump his blues down in the Gulf.

Crevasses increasing in size and depth in response to climate breakdown, Durham University researchers find

The Greenland ice sheet – the second largest body of ice in the world – is cracking more rapidly than ever before as a response to climate breakdown, a study has found.

Researchers used 8,000 three-dimensional surface maps from high-resolution commercial satellite imagery to assess the evolution of cracks in the surface of the ice sheet between 2016 and 2021.

Research looking at tissue from postmortems between 1997 and 2024 finds upward trend in contamination

The exponential rise in microplastic pollution over the past 50 years may be reflected in increasing contamination in human brains, according to a new study.

It found a rising trend in micro- and nanoplastics in brain tissue from dozens of postmortems carried out between 1997 and 2024. The researchers also found the tiny particles in liver and kidney samples.

Manatees don’t have incisors or canines, only ‘cheek teeth’. No hair, only whiskers. Algae growing on their backs. Everything is gentle

A manatee looks like every animal I have ever tried to make with play-dough: roll a big piece into a sausage, flatten a bit on either side with your forefingers, and a bit at the end with your thumb. Hey presto. A manatee also happens to be the grey of all Play-Dough colours mixed together.

Imagine eating lettuce underwater: the crunch, the squelch. Reading about manatees, I finally give in and look up what the word “prehensile” actually means, as in a giraffe’s prehensile tongue, a monkey’s prehensile tail, a manatee’s prehensile lips. What could these things have in common, you wonder, for 25 years. Then it is time to find out.

They can be joyful and important social spaces, but a new generation of customers runs a mile from the shelves of plastic and chemicals

When I first heard that garden centres are facing a wave of closures, I immediately thought of the one around the corner from where I live. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the car park was full and the cafe was bustling with people my parents’ age and older, chatting over milky coffees and slices of cake. The retired ladies who talk to me in the gym changing room love to come here for a jacket potato after their aquafit class.

Yet, as I stepped through the automatic doors, the plants weren’t immediately visible. First, I had to pass a bright deli counter, an area filled with homeware and crockery, shelves of fragrant toiletries, and a section of children’s toys before anything remotely connected to gardening came into view. I waded through gloves, power tools, pesticides and outdoor furniture, and then, finally, I found the annual bedding plants and potted shrubs. Here, all was quiet. The gardening section was quite unlike the busy cafe; I was alone but for one member of staff.

Claire Ratinon is an organic food grower and writer