The Guardian

EPA analysis paints grim picture for ecosystems under increasing threat from habitat destruction, invasive species and climate crisis

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The New South Wales government has admitted land clearing has increased threefold over the past decade, woodlands and grasslands are deteriorating and 62% of vegetation in the state is now under pressure from too much fire.

The NSW State of the Environment 2021 report, released every three years, paints a grim picture for land and freshwater ecosystems, which are under increasing threat from habitat destruction, invasive species and the climate crisis.

Campaigners say Tory MP for High Wycombe is trying to ‘wreck’ government plans for environment

Constituents of Steve Baker MP who are concerned about his environmental position have set up a “Steve Baker Watch” group and are launching a crowdfunding page to raise money. The constituents in Baker’s constituency of High Wycombe in the rolling Chiltern Hills believe that Baker is trying to “wreck the government plans to improve the environment”.

Baker, who as chair of the European Research Group was instrumental in pressing for a hard Brexit, helped set up the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), which has close links to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a lobbyist group that has been accused of denying climate science.

Sadiq Khan and Marvin Rees call for action as major report launched during UN Migration Week

Two of the UK’s leading mayors are calling for urgent action to prepare for mass migration to cities due to the climate emergency, as a major report into the issue launches at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

Mass migration to some of the world’s cities due to the climate emergency is already under way and the World Bank has estimated that unless significant action is taken, 216 million people could be on the move by 2050. In 2020, 30 million people were displaced due to the climate crisis, and 70% of people internally displaced due to the climate crisis are living in urban areas. The World Bank predicts that more than 1 billion people are at risk of being driven from their homes for climate-related reasons.

Novel legal strategy argues that top schools including Princeton and Vanderbilt are legally obliged to put the public interest first

Students at five leading universities have filed legal complaints accusing their colleges of breaking a little-known law by investing in the fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate emergency.

The students from Yale, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Vanderbilt wrote to the attorneys general of their respective states on Wednesday asking authorities to investigate breaches of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which requires universities to invest in a manner consistent with their “charitable purposes”.

The Net Zero Scrutiny Group claim green levies are a burden, yet their own party is cutting spending on energy efficiency

Partygate has suggested that the prime minister has, shall we say, a flexible approach to the rule of law. The laws of physics, you would think, cannot be treated so carelessly – yet that is what is happening inside the Conservative party. There has been a relentless push by some MPs for the UK to abandon our climate targets and slow down, or even abandon, the transition to net zero emissions.

The goal of net zero by 2050 at the latest is not some fashionable green meme or virtue signalling by the comfortable middle classes. It is the measure we must take to keep the already painful and life-threatening impacts of climate change within the bounds of the manageable. This goal is shared not just by scientists and environmental campaigners but by 192 governments, more than 90 major banks and all of the world’s major investment managers.

Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

New South Wales police say they ‘located human remains in the water’ after being called to the south-eastern suburbs beach on Wednesday afternoon

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A swimmer has died from “catastrophic injuries” after being attacked by a shark off a beach in Sydney’s south-east.

Emergency services were called to Buchan Point in Malabar, off Little Bay Beach, about 4.35pm on Wednesday following reports a swimmer had been attacked by a shark.

SMMT says number of chargers has not grown fast enough to keep up with growth of EVs

The UK car industry has warned of a “growing regional divide” in the provision of electric car chargers, as it called for a new regulator to oversee legally binding targets for charger installation.

The number of publicly available chargers has not grown fast enough to keep up with the soaring number of battery-powered electric cars on British roads, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group. Public charger numbers rose by 82% between 2019 and 2021, but this pales in comparison with the 600% jump in the number of electric cars during the same period.

Each year a shortlist is chosen from more than 900 species of the iconic Australian plants

As a teenager, Dean Nicolle dreamed of planting one of every eucalypt species in Australia. He took his parents to nurseries and requested that they buy “any eucalypt with a different name on it”. Nicolle, a self-described “gum nut” who is now a botanist and ecologist, has been fascinated by plants since he was eight.

On a plot of land at Currency Creek, an hour’s drive south of Adelaide, he set about creating his own arboretum. “The first plantings went in in 1992,” he recalls.

Tainted flows begin arriving in upper Menindee lakes in New South Wales as expert says problem ‘accelerated by poor management’

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Floodwaters carrying “blackwater” lethal to aquatic life are moving south in the Barwon-Darling river towards the Menindee Lakes, raising fears the situation may cause a repeat of events in 2019 where over a million native fish were killed.

Blackwater events are caused when heavy rains wash leaf litter that has collected on a floodplain into a major river such as the Barwon-Darling, turning it the colour of dark tea.

Exclusive: conservationists urge caution as documents show government considering decision-making workaround after bill blocked in Senate

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The Morrison government is considering whether a little-known section of national environmental laws could be used to allow developments in some parts of the country to proceed without the need for federal approval.

The move, revealed in documents released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, could allow the commonwealth to reduce its role in environmental decision-making without needing support for a bill to transfer power to the states and territories which has been blocked by the Senate since last year.

Unless estate owners are held responsible for what happens on their land, our largest bird of prey will be driven to extinction

The sight of a magnificent white-tailed eagle has once again become common for those lucky enough to live in the flight path of those recently introduced to the Isle of Wight. Thousands of Britons have seen and heard the giant two-metre wings beating overhead, and seen the cruel-beaked birds dramatically dive for fish. For us, living in a nature-depleted country, seeing such a large predator in the wild takes the breath away.

White-tailed eagles were driven to extinction in Britain in the early 20th century, and persecution by landowners was the leading cause. Shot at and poisoned by those hoping to protect their game birds, Britain’s largest bird of prey didn’t stand a chance.

Helena Horton is an environment reporter for the Guardian

Nine endangered animals killed after injunction lifted on cull of 25 wolves living in conservation zone

Nine endangered wolves were shot in one day in Norway after a court ruled that a controversial hunt could go ahead.

Fifty-one wolves were originally due to be slaughtered – a significant proportion of the 80 animals thought to live in Norway. But last month, activists secured a stay of execution when they got an injunction halting the hunt until an appeal over its validity could go ahead. They claimed that allowing hunters to kill wolves in a conservation zone would be against EU nature protection laws.

West Dorset MP Chris Loder caused outrage when he seemed to imply police should not prioritise eagle death

A Conservative MP who said eagles are not welcome in his constituency had his election campaign funded by a shooting estate, the Guardian can reveal.

The West Dorset MP, Chris Loder, caused outrage when he seemed to imply police should not be prioritising the investigation of the recent death of an endangered white-tailed eagle, found dead on an estate in his constituency.

Human-caused climate change significant driver of destructive conditions as even drier decades lay ahead, researchers say

The American west has spent the last two decades in what scientists are now saying is the most extreme megadrought in at least 1,200 years. In a new study, published on Monday, researchers also noted that human-caused climate change is a significant driver of the destructive conditions and offered a grim prognosis: even drier decades lay ahead.

“Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the west has been dry for most of the last couple decades,” says Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and the study’s lead author. “We now know from these studies that is dry not only from the context of recent memory but in the context of the last millennium.”

Revised government data estimates a lower proportion of pollution comes from wood stoves but they remain a ‘major contributor’

Wood burning in homes produces more small particle pollution than all road traffic in the UK, according to revised government data.

The new data significantly cuts the estimated proportion of small particle pollution that comes from wood burners from 38% to 17%. But wood burning pollution remains a “major contributor” to particle pollution, another government report said. Road transport is responsible for 13% of particle pollution.

Warning from experts comes as government is under pressure to approve new works amid energy crisis

New oil and gas licences for the North Sea are incompatible with the UK’s international climate commitments and the Paris climate agreement, analysts have said.

The government is considering licences for new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, under pressure from backbench MPs and media commentators, who claim new fossil fuel development is needed to reduce energy bills.

A report, shared exclusively with the Guardian, provides a snapshot of industry’s involvement in some of the country’s most controversial fossil fuel investments

American private equity tycoons are profiteering from the global climate crisis by investing in fossil fuels which are driving greenhouse gas emissions, a new investigation reveals.

Oil and gas pipelines, coal plants and offshore drilling sites linked to Indigenous land violations, toxic leaks and deadly air pollution are among the dirty energy projects financed by some of the country’s largest private equity firms, according to an investigation by the corporate accountability non-profits LittleSis and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (Pesp).

The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, owns dozens of oil and gas companies including a stake in NGP Energy Capital, which boasts its own major portfolio mostly focused on fracking and drilling in states like Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. Carlyle, which recently announced a target of net zero emissions by 2050, also partners with Hilcorp Energy – a major methane emitter with a track record of offshore spills in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico – on at least $4bn in equity and debt deals. (Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, and accounts for about a quarter of today’s global heating.)

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) has a controlling stake in the Coastal Gaslink pipeline in Canada, a 400-mile multibillion-dollar infrastructure project through unceded Indigenous territories that will transport fracked gas to a Pacific coast port for export to Asia. Police have deployed to evict protests and blockades organised by the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. Co-founder Henry Kravis is a major Republican donor, donating $1m to Trump’s 2017 inauguration fund.

It has finally happened. Australia’s globally famous animal, the koala, is officially listed as endangered – a decision both long expected and completely preventable. It comes after the Morrison government last month announced $50m to help the species. 

While the funding was welcomed by environment groups, Guardian Australia's environment reporter Lisa Cox argues that the funding won't achieve much unless the root causes of the species' decline – habitat loss, disease and climate change – are addressed

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• We know how to save the endangered koala – it starts with protecting habitat
• Koala listed as endangered after Australian governments fail to halt its decline
• ‘A drop in the ocean’: government’s $50m koala pledge won’t tackle root cause of decline

Pharmaceutical pollution poses ‘global threat to human and environmental health’, major study finds

Humanity’s drugs have polluted rivers across the entire world and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health”, according to the most comprehensive study to date.

Pharmaceuticals and other biologically active compounds used by humans are known to harm wildlife and antibiotics in the environment drive up the risk of resistance to the drugs, one of the greatest threats to humanity.

Dramatic spread of native plants over past decade is evidence of accelerating shifts in fragile polar ecosystem, study finds

Antarctica’s two native flowering plants are spreading rapidly as temperatures warm, according to the first study to show changes in fragile polar ecosystems have accelerated in the past decade.

The increase in plants since 2009 has been greater than the previous 50 years combined, coinciding with rapidly rising air temperatures and a reduction in the number of fur seals, according to researchers working on Signy Island in the South Orkney Islands.