The Guardian

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

Deaths due to wood-burning stoves are comparable to those of ‘black summer’ bushfires, says Australian study

Scientists are starting to count the health cost of heating our homes with wood. One study, in Canberra in Australia, has found that deaths from everyday exposure to smoke from wood burners is comparable with those during the unprecedented “black summer” bushfires of 2019/2020.

Prof Sotiris Vardoulakis, part of the research team and director of the Healthy Environments and Lives (Heal) National Research Network, described winter in the city: “When I take my two boys to play basketball outdoors in winter, or when we walk the dog before dinner, there is always a smell of wood smoke in the air.”

People encouraged to record sightings of mohican-sporting birds in RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend

The scale of this waxwing winter will be revealed this weekend when people are encouraged to spend an hour recording the birds they see in their gardens, balconies, parks and school grounds.

The spectacular migratory, mohican-sporting birds have been spotted across Britain during the colder weather and will be recorded alongside more familiar sparrows, blackbirds and robins in the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch.

Call for companies to ‘clean up their mess’ as Athabasca oil sands emissions vastly exceed industry-reported levels

Toxic emissions from the Canadian tar sands – already one of the dirtiest fossil fuels – have been dramatically underestimated, according to a study.

Research published in the journal Science found that air pollution from the vast Athabasca oil sands in Canada exceed industry-reported emissions across the studied facilities by a staggering 1,900% to over 6,300%.

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah opens claim against environment, health and transport departments in pursuit of ‘right to clean air’

The mother of a nine-year-old girl who became the first person in the UK to have air pollution cited on their death certificate has launched a high court claim against the government.

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is suing three government departments for compensation for personal injury arising from the illness and premature death of her daughter Ella. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport and the Department of Health and Social Care have all been named as defendants in the claim.

Hunting by Kenyan lions impeded in ‘ecological chain reaction’ as big-headed ants fail to stop elephants stripping acacia trees – the cats’ ambush cover

When a lion decides to chase down a zebra it seems as though nothing can stop it. But now researchers have discovered these enormous predators are being thwarted by a tiny foe: ants.

Scientists have found the spread of big-headed ants in east Africa sets off a situation leading to lions making fewer zebra kills.

Research finds 14 different types of PFAS chemicals commonly used in ski wax on slopes in Austrian ski resorts

Skiers are leaving “forever chemicals” in the snow on ski slopes, a study has found.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a group of 10,000 or so human-made chemicals widely used in industrial processes, firefighting foams and consumer products – are colloquially known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment; they do not easily break down.

The Hōkūleʻa’s oceanic voyages, navigated by the stars, have led other Indigenous people to revive their own ancient traditions – and serve as a call to action on the climate

A double-hulled Polynesian sailing canoe glides up to a busy dock in San Diego, California. Hōkūleʻa’s two short wooden masts are dwarfed by the historic schooner that escorted the boat into the harbour. Dozens of small outrigger canoes trail in its wake, honouring the crew’s arrival.

Once the docklines are secure, Hōkūleʻa’s 13 crew members put on ceremonial leis – floral garlands – and request permission from the local Indigenous tribe to come ashore. In response, 30 members of the Kumeyaay Nation sing and dance to welcome them to their native lands. Hundreds of onlookers snap photos before joining the festivities at a nearby park.

On a walk through a nature reserve I felt dread at the pink flowers on a bone-grey tree, grief-stricken right down to my roots

There is a particular queasy disquiet that comes from looking at blossom in January. Or daffodils just weeks after Christmas. At seeing catkins dangling from trees that are still bathed in dark from about 4.30pm. It is an uncanny sense that something here isn’t right. I get it, too, in August, when the blackberries have already ripened into dust, before the new school term starts. Or when I hear birdsong under a yellow streetlamp.

Perhaps this is just the outdoors equivalent of moaning about Easter eggs being in the shops in January. As in, it happens every year but we are somehow shocked anew each time. Maybe daffodils have always pushed up their spears as students fill in their Ucas applications. Maybe there have always been blackberries in July. Maybe it’s just my memory playing tricks on me.

Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood

Fast-growing monocultures are less able to withstand extreme weather events than varied woodlands, researchers find

As 90mph winds whip across the UK and Europe this week, new research shows forests containing diverse tree species are more likely to stay standing than monocultures when hit by extreme weather.

Forests with two or three tree species are on average 35% more resilient to storms than forests with only one species, simulations created by researchers found. The type of trees also matters – forestry plantations are typically made up of fast-growing tall trees such as conifers, but they are more vulnerable to high winds than slower-growing hardwood species such as oak.

US Fish and Wildlife Service completes review of petitions and finds 10 new species that may be added to Endangered Species Act

Federal wildlife officials announced on Wednesday they will consider adding 10 new species to the Endangered Species Act, including a big bumblebee that serves as an important pollinator across the United States.

US Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they had completed 90-day reviews of petitions to add the species to the list and determined that listing may be warranted. The finding triggers reviews of the species’ status.

Environment secretary, Steve Barclay, tells firms he will toughen regulatory approach but gives no timescale

The environment secretary has told water companies in England that they will no longer be able to monitor and report on pollution from their own treatment works.

Steve Barclay told the privatised industry he would put an end to operator self-monitoring in a toughening of the regulatory approach.

Extreme weather threatens world’s biggest carbon store as the rainforest is already close to tipping point

The climate crisis turned the drought that struck the Amazon rainforest in 2023 into a devastating event, a study has found.

The drought was the worst recorded in many places and hit the maximum “exceptional” level on the scientific scale. Without planet-warming emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal, the drought would have been far less extreme, the analysis found.

Terms such as ‘green’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ understood only by minority, says study

The British public has a worryingly low understanding of language around the climate crisis and environmental policies to reduce waste, according to the findings of a survey.

Only a quarter of people questioned clearly understood the term “green” and about the same number could accurately describe what “sustainable” – making something in a way that causes little or no damage to the environment – meant.

Increasingly fearless predators found to be serious threat to safety in national parks

Dutch authorities can shoot “deviant” wolves that could pose a danger to the public with paintball guns, a court has ruled, as debate rages in Europe over protecting the animals.

After a lengthy legal battle, the court in Utrecht, central Netherlands, decided on Wednesday that the behaviour of some of the wolves in a national park was “a serious threat to public safety”.

Fossil emissions ‘finally back to 1960s levels’, say analysts, but they warn levels are still falling too slowly

The European Union pumped out 8% less carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels it burned in 2023 than it did in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, pushing these emissions down to their lowest level in 60 years.

The fall in planet-heating pollution is the steepest yearly drop on record behind 2020, when governments shuttered factories and grounded flights to stop the spread of Covid-19, according to analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea).

The first successful embryo transfer in a southern white rhino paves way for using technique to save rarer northern cousins

The critically endangered northern white rhino could be saved from the brink of extinction after scientists performed the first successful embryo transfer in white rhinos.

After the last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died in 2018, the disappearance of the species looked imminent. Just two infertile female northern white rhinos – Fatu and Najin – remain, and are under 24-hour armed protection at a conservation reservation in Kenya. But a new scientific advancement means the mother and daughter may not be the last of their kind.

Experts say world is ‘past peak fossil power’ but warn against uneven development of energy projects

Nuclear power generation is likely to break records in 2025 as more countries invest in reactors to fuel the shift to a low-carbon global economy, while renewable energy is likely to overtake coal as a power source early next year, data has shown.

China, India, Korea and Europe are likely to have new reactors come on stream, while several in Japan are also forecast to return to generation, and French output should increase, according to a report on the state of global electricity markets published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday.

The UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders is right to warn that a pillar of democracy is under threat in Britain

In the last few years, environmental protesters in Britain have pulled off some striking – and strikingly irritating – acts of civil disobedience. These have caused indignation and aggravation, especially by disrupting people’s lives. But their actions grabbed our attention. The purpose is to denounce an injustice by intentionally breaking the law in a non-violent way. The justification is a climate emergency that threatens humanity’s future.

There is nothing new in this: the suffragettes smashed windows and set buildings alight. Today we honour their cause and courage. Yet the government appears intent on criminalising protest, a move rightly criticised by Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders. He warns that a pillar of democracy – the right to protest – is under threat in Britain. The demonisation of environmental activists and the erosion of civil rights without adequate scrutiny from lawmakers, or protection by the courts, are undermining the UK’s guarantees of freedom and the rule of law. It had been almost unheard of since the 1930s for demonstrators to be imprisoned for peaceful protest in the UK. Last month, he said, a climate protester got six months behind bars for slow-walking on a road.

The US oil company is off to court to try and block a green activist motion aimed at accelerating the company’s attempts to cut emissions

ExxonMobil is “committed to responsibly meeting the world’s energy needs”, according to the corporate blah blah, but it is clearly not committed to allowing its shareholders to express their own opinions on the “responsibly” bit of the boast. The US oil company is off to court in Texas to try to block a vote on a resolution tabled by Follow This, a Dutch green activist investor group that would like Exxon to move faster (a lot faster) on reducing emissions.

Exxon has an argument of sorts, one might say, in that Follow This tabled similar-sounding resolutions at the last two annual meetings and neither passed. Some 27.1% of shareholders aligned with the rebels in 2022 and 10.5% last year. Why go through the same process again, the company will argue. And, since last year’s meeting at Exxon contained 13 shareholder motions in total, haven’t US regulators allowed agendas to become overcrowded?