The Guardian

Agency rejected FOI request about potential conflicts of financial and business interests held by regional directors

The Environment Agency is refusing to provide campaigners with details of potential conflicts of interests with water companies held by its directors across England.

The refusal to provide the information comes after the head of the agency, Philip Duffy, admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Our selective engagement with nature stops humans from seeing animals clearly – and that’s not good for them or for us

One of my most annoying traits, I have been told, is my tendency to puncture others’ casual enjoyment of nature with brutal and unsolicited pieces of trivia. Chalk it up to the influence of my hobbyist herpetologist father, who instilled in me not only a passion for less cuddly animals but also a rigorous attention to the facts.

If your favourite animals are sea otters, which mate for life and hold hands so they don’t drift apart? I will inform you that they also sometimes rape baby seals to death. Oh, you prefer chimps? Have you seen that David Attenborough footage of a group of them hunting a monkey that was apparently too disturbing to broadcast with close-up detail?

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Rescue operation run by specialised whale disentanglement crews cut off ropes and buoys to let it to swim freely again

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A humpback whale which became tangled in 800kg of fishing equipment has been rescued off the Gippsland coast, almost a week after it was first seen to be in trouble.

The whale was spotted near Loch Sport in Central Gippsland on Sunday 23 June by a commercial helicopter, but then disappeared until Friday when it was seen near Lake Tyers off the south-east coast.

The full-size adult whale was first spotted a week earlier with approximately 200 metres of rope and fishing buoys wrapped around it. In a multi-agency operation, rescuers were able to free the animal of 800kg ropes and buoys. However, because of how the rope was wrapped around the whale and safety concerns for rescuers, the crew were not able to disentangle all of the rope. Ellen Dwyer, an incident controller in the rescue team, says they are 'pleased' they have been able to 'successfully remove a significant amount of weight and rope from the whale'

• Humpback whale tangled in rope rescued off New South Wales coast – video

• Low-flying drones could disrupt whale migration off Australia’s east coast, experts warn

Bilbies have the biggest genome of any marsupial, which could be down to how it evolved its incredible sense of smell

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Genetic research has revealed the threatened Australian native bilby – with its ridiculously oversized ears and stretched snout – does not only look odd from the outside.

“Bilbies are weird and cool. The genome has been fascinating,” said Prof Carolyn Hogg, of the University of Sydney, who led research that sequenced the greater bilby’s genome for the first time.

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Retrofitting for better energy efficiency often doesn’t require dramatic structural change. Some simple steps can make a big difference

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If you own or rent one of Australia’s 6 million-plus homes built 30 years ago or more, the words “coldest start to winter” can be especially depressing.

These older dwellings are leaky, rely heavily on heating and cooling, and emit more carbon than modern homes. This exacerbates health issues, spikes bills and notches up emissions. “Before time” houses, built prior to the National Construction Code’s introduction of energy standards in 2003, typically score just 1.8 stars on the 10-star Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme. New builds are generally rated between 6 and 7 stars.

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Absorption through skin could be ‘significant source of exposure’ to toxic forever chemicals, study shows

New research “for the first time proves” toxic PFAS forever chemicals are absorbed through human skin, and at levels much higher than previously thought.

Though modeling and research has suggested the dangerous chemicals are absorbed through skin, University of Birmingham researchers say they used lab-grown tissue that mimics human skin to determine how much of a dose of PFAS compounds can be absorbed.

There are just 300 electric HGVs in the 500,000-strong lorry fleet – and only one public charging point, says RHA

The road haulage industry is calling on the new government to urgently tackle investment in infrastructure for electric trucks, after pointing out there is just one public charging point for HGVs in the whole of the UK.

Takeup of electric cars is soaring, with about 1.1m fully battery-powered cars on British roads and about 63,000 charging units in 33,000 locations, according to Zapmap data.

We’ve been making short-term decisions about our planet for a long time. The consequences are horrific to behold

The slashing rain turned the dirt roads into muddy creeks, the bus’s wipers shoved the torrent back and forth across the windshield, and Don Schreiber handled the wheel like Sandra Bullock in Speed as he wisecracked from under a big gray moustache. The vehicle swerved and slid in the storm, lightning flashed on the horizon, thunder shook the air. Whether the old yellow bus would make it back to the ranch house, get stuck or slide and flip depended on his driving.

Don, in his white Stetson and a blue and white checked western shirt, was our tour guide on this land in northwestern New Mexico that he knew intimately and had dedicated his retirement to protecting. When he and his wife Jane Schreiber bought the ranchland about 200 miles north-west of Santa Fe in 1999 to retire to, they – like many westerners – found that they owned the land, but not the subsurface rights. The fracking boom came, and gas companies began gouging holes for gas wells, laying pipelines and cutting roads across the fragile desert soil. Big trucks rolled across the land night and day to service the wells that studded the landscape. At the well we stopped at, the pressure gauge was broken.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

Cold or Wet? You think, squishing a sock betwixt red, swollen fingers. Cold or Wet? You wonder as you slide into icy sheets

Complaining is a universal language that creates social bonds quicker than chatting about positive topics. In these economic times it is a cheap way to treat yourself. When was the last time you had a little whinge? I indulged mere moments ago. Some call it negativity, I call it self-care, and there’s no better time than winter to complain because it is so cold.

My daily winter outfit in our sunburnt country is leggings, thermals, hoodie, flannelette shirt, beanie and slippers, and I’m considering buying gloves and a balaclava due to chilblains. Along with draping myself in blankets this has been a staple winter outfit for years in Melbourne and Sydney houses prone to mould, crumbling foundations and draftiness that could be attributed to poor insulation or ghosts. I like to imagine ghosts because they’re less spooky than landlords.

Volunteers work to herd Atlantic white-sided dolphins found Friday in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, into deeper water

More than 100 dolphins have become stranded in the shallow waters around Cape Cod on Friday in what an animal welfare group is calling “the largest single mass stranding event” in the organization’s 25-year history.

A group of Atlantic white-sided dolphins were found Friday in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, about 100 miles south-east of Boston, in an area called the Gut – or Great Island at the Herring River – which experts have said is the site of frequent strandings, due in part to its hook-like shape and extreme tidal fluctuations.

Angela Richardson accuses campaigners against polluted water of putting Conservative MPs in danger

The Conservative party deputy chair Angela Richardson called the sewage crisis a “political football” and claimed opposition parties and activists had put Tory MPs in physical danger by campaigning on the issue.

Richardson, who is standing for re-election in Guildford, where the River Wey was recently found to have 10 times the safe limit of E coli, also suggested the only reason people were talking about the problem was “because the Conservatives let everyone know it was happening”.

Downpours moved south from Alps as far as Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, causing rivers to overflow

Heavy rain and thunderstorms have caused havoc in Switzerland and northern Italy over the past week. Switzerland was badly hit on Friday 21 June, with downpours delivering more than 100mm across many areas – more than half of this within one hour.

Flash flooding and landslides swept away cars and houses, with at least one person known to have died, alongside widespread damage to transport infrastructure. The mountain resort of Zermatt was entirely cut off due to a combination of flood water, road closures and suspended train services.

Fears of fire and environmental disaster as company repeatedly misses UK deadlines to decommission sites

The North Sea’s biggest oil and gas infrastructure company is risking fires and environmental disasters, experts have warned, as documents reveal it is failing to plug its ageing oil wells in time and is missing decommissioning deadlines by up to a decade.

Last year, the fossil fuel firm Perenco faced controversy after an oil spill from its Poole Harbour operations polluted the Dorset site, which is internationally recognised for its ecological importance. The RSPB reported oiled birds in the water at the largest natural harbour in Europe, which is one of the most heavily protected areas in the UK. Perenco promised it would never happen again and committed to pay for the damage caused.

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

More than 21,000 old sites may be releasing ‘forever chemicals’ into land often left as open space

• ‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Thousands of polluted landfills across England could be leaking toxic chemicals into the environment and harming people who live nearby, experts have warned.

A few decades ago, the method for getting rid of industrial and domestic waste was to stick it in a hole in the ground, cover it up and hope for the best. It was known as “dilute and disperse” and it assumed toxic substances would seep into the surrounding soils, air and water and become harmless.

The oil major’s net zero plans have made it a sector leader but have yet to win over investors while fossil fuels are booming

Grand corporate strategies are launched in weighty declarations by chief executives who fancy themselves as visionaries. That was how Bernard Looney, the then chief executive of BP, did it back in February 2020 when he said the company would get serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions and investing in renewables. “The direction is set. We are heading to net zero. There is no turning back,” Looney told his City audience.

By contrast, the watering down of ambition tends to happen in increments. Thus, when Looney last year scrapped BP’s aim to reduce hydrocarbon output by 40% by 2030, versus 2019’s level, in favour of a 25% cut, he claimed the change was a case of “leaning in” to the same strategy, just in the new circumstance of a world that was worrying more about energy security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Invasive Species Council demands audit of all defence sites after red imported fire ants detected at Swartz Barracks outside Queensland containment zone

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Defence bases pose a “huge risk” when it comes to stopping the spread of invasive fire ants in Australia, with experts suggesting there has been “a massive surveillance failure” on the commonwealth-owned properties.

Fire ants have been detected at eight defence sites in Queensland. Seven are within the state’s 700,000-hectare fire ants containment zone which stretches from the Gold Coast to Caboolture.

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The intent of greening up its tournament, while undoubtedly sincere in corners of the organisation, is being undermined

Didier Deschamps wasn’t amused. Les Bleus had had to fight hard to see off an excellent Austria side in the evening game and needed to rest. Yet it was well past 3am when the coach ferrying them back from the Düsseldorf Arena finally came to a halt at the entrance of their hotel in Bad Lippspringe. The 180-kilometre trip had taken some three hours, when a 30-40-minute flight from Düsseldorf to Paderborn would have allowed Deschamps’ players to be in their beds considerably earlier. Deschamps kept his thoughts to himself, however. It was not his role to question the commitment made by the French federation to minimise its carbon footprint, in accordance with the principles of “climate action and advocacy” outlined in the “Football Sustainability Strategy” programme which Uefa had unveiled in December 2021.

The same principles have been applied to adapt these Euros’ schedule in order to “maximise sustainability without compromising fairness”, to quote Uefa’s head of men’s national team competitions, Marcelo Alleca. The folly of Euro 2020’s revolving carousel of venues – 11 stadiums in 11 countries, for goodness sake – would never be repeated. A more compact, greener tournament? Yes please, and thank God for that, everyone said, from fans and media to players and environmentalists. Unlike Fifa’s ludicrous – and thoroughly debunked – claim that Qatar 2022 would achieve Net Zero, Euro 2024 would at least be a step in the right direction. Uefa meant business.

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UNESCO … and Gary the crab

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