The Guardian

The speedy Somali sengi had been lost to science until an expedition to Djibouti

A mouse-sized elephant shrew that had been lost to science for 50 years has been discovered alive and well in the Horn of Africa.

The Somali sengi mates for life, can race around at 30km/h and sucks up ants with its trunk-like nose. But it had not been documented by researchers since 1968.

Magpies can recognise people and tend to swoop those they see as a threat, but with everyone in masks, they may struggle to distinguish individuals

• Where to buy face masks in Australia
• Australia’s latest Covid-19 face mask advice
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Just like the red rag to a bull, compulsory masks could spell a particularly nasty Victorian magpie-swooping season.

One birdlife expert is speculating swooping might be worse than usual because magpies will find it harder to recognise people.

While we’re stuck inside our homes, we can effect change by putting our money where our mouth is and ending the fossil fuel era

Six years ago I found myself trying to find shade from the mid-morning sun while having a chat with a farmer, Rick Laird. We were chained together, six metres above the ground, on the deck of an enormous super digger in a clearing in what would become Whitehaven Coal’s Maules Creek mine.

I had gone up to Maules Creek to show solidarity with the community protesting against the mine; to add my voice to the hundreds of others who joined the Leard blockade and had been arrested. From farmers to uni students, scientists and university professors, and the unforgettable 92-year-old second world war veteran, Bill Ryan. There I met Rick. A farmer, father and volunteer firefighter who had never taken part in any climate action before.

Residents in the Brazilian city of Porto Velho city were battling blazes spreading in the dry brush on 16 August, as firefighters arrived at the remote jungle location to fight the fires that continue to threaten the Amazon.

Smoke could be seen billowing as the fire edged closer to a farmer's home in an area of the Amazon rainforest in Rondônia state.

'We are poor, my salary is just to feed my family. The fire comes to end everything in a fraction of seconds,' local resident Rosalino De Oliveira said. 

William Perry Pendley, who was nominated to lead the Bureau of Land Management, has claimed climate change doesn’t exist

In a rare acknowledgement of defeat, Donald Trump has withdrawn his nomination of a highly controversial figure for a top environment post.

William Perry Pendley is a conservative attorney and longtime opponent of public lands and wildlife protections who had been put forward to lead the Bureau of Land Management. It oversees 240m acres of public land and is charged with managing fossil fuel and mineral development while protecting conserved lands and endangered species.

Researchers find pollutants in all samples of lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys examined

Microplastic and nanoplastic particles have been discovered in human organs for the first time. The researchers found the tiny plastic pieces in all 47 samples of lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys they examined.

Microplastic pollution has affected the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the potential impact on human health is not yet known.

Unless we contain carbon, our food supply will be under threat. By 2050, US corn yields could decline by 30%

I know a stiff wind. They call this place Storm Lake, after all. But until recently most Iowans had never heard of a “derecho”. They have now. Last Monday, a derecho tore 770 miles from Nebraska to Indiana and left a path of destruction up to 50 miles wide over 10m acres of prime cropland. It blew 113 miles per hour at the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River.

Related: Two dead and hundreds of thousands without power after wind storm batters US midwest

The Bird Photographer of the Year 2020 competition received more than 15,000 entries. Here is a selection of some of the winners

NFU predicts yields could be down by a third as extreme weather hits crops

The UK’s wheat harvest is likely to be down markedly this year, according to the National Farmers’ Union, capping a tumultuous year for British farming after consecutive seasons of extreme weather.

Yields could be down by about a third, with the worst harvest since the 1980s predicted, the farmers’ organisation said.

My kids are growing up in an England where sweltering conditions are no longer freakish – no wonder they think pumping in cold air is reasonable

I don’t think I had a single conversation about air conditioning until 2005, when a burst of August weather that we would now consider a respite felt like the mouth of hell.

Sitting in a pub living some Smiths lyrics (gasping, dying, but somehow still alive), a lugubrious friend who took delight only from grim irony said: “If this carries on – which it will, because it’s not a freak event – everyone will want air conditioning, which will only make climate change worse.” I said: “Don’t be ridiculous; this is freak weather, not British weather. Nobody will want air conditioning, because it’s an Americanism, culturally anathema, like Halloween.” Fifteen years later, air con is all anyone talks about. I may also have been wrong about Halloween.

Study finds efforts to bolster breeding ground population were successful but the good work is undone when migratory species flies north

The story of the orange-bellied parrot, a small migratory bird that breeds in Tasmania’s south-west before heading north for the colder months, holds lessons for scientists working to prevent species from reaching the brink of extinction.

In sharp decline since the 1980s, if not earlier, the bird is listed as critically endangered, with scientists warning it could be gone in three to five years.

Some people seem to be above the law. Those people do not include the whistleblower and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery

Timor-Leste only achieved independence in 2002. It was Asia’s poorest country and desperately needed revenue. Revenue from massive gas resources in the Timor Sea was its big hope. But it needed to negotiate a treaty with Australia on their carve-up. Australia ruthlessly exploited that fact: delays from the Australian side in negotiating a treaty for the carve-up of those resources, and repeated threats of more delays, were a constant theme of the negotiations. In November 2002 the former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told Timor-Leste’s prime minister, Mari Alkatiri: “We don’t have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years.” In late 2003 Timor-Leste requested monthly discussions. Australia claimed it could only afford two rounds a year. Poor Timor-Leste offered to fund rich Australia’s expenses. Australia didn’t accept.

Related: Witness K and the 'outrageous' spy scandal that failed to shame Australia

A country better disposed to considerate wild camping and swimming would be a happier and healthier one

Supporters call it “wild camping”; opponents call it “fly-camping”. What both sides accept is that there has been an upsurge in the past few months, with increasing numbers of visitors pitching their tents on any bit of land they fancy. In part, this reflects the fact that official campsites have been wholly or partially closed, or are hugely oversubscribed in a summer when fewer people are going abroad. It is also cheap, at a time when many are worried about what the economic future holds. But it may also be an expression of a desire for freedom – a response to the months of lockdown that is also mirrored in the increased interest in wild swimming in lakes and rivers.

Most of the coverage of the boom in wild camping has been negative. What might be deemed amusing at the Glastonbury festival has not gone down well on Dartmoor, one of the few places in England where wild camping had previously been explicitly permitted. It has now been banned there for August and the early part of September because of a rise in antisocial behaviour, with campers dumping litter, human waste and even their tents on the moorland. Similar action has been taken in Northumberland, the Lake District and the New Forest. Even in Scotland, where camping is permitted on most unenclosed land, tensions are rising.

Ten-year management strategy aims to combat habitat loss and dwindling wildlife in Kenya’s oldest national park

Kenya’s oldest national park, which is facing threats from habitat loss, a decline in wildlife species and government infrastructure developments, is at the centre of a fresh row over its future.

Created through a colonial proclamation in December 1946, the 45-square mile Nairobi national park is the only sanctuary in the world where wild animals roam freely next to a bustling metropolis. Its ecological health is indicative of the country’s efforts to preserve Africa’s vanishing wildlife.

Short-term analysis of ways to save society, and indeed humanity, is useless

In a biology lesson about the bacterial growth curve, the parallels with the climate crisis were hard to miss. Stick bacteria in a test tube with food and their population will grow exponentially until, eventually, they run out of resources and kill themselves off. Even a couple of decades ago, the comparison with humanity’s predicament felt glaringly obvious; and we have not really strayed since from the inevitable path to extinction.

The hope seems to be that a big crisis might be the shock we need to change course. But we are living through the biggest global crisis for decades – and are travelling and consuming less as a result of the pandemic – yet it already seems unlikely that much will change. It’s easy enough to throw around the old adage “never waste a good crisis”. But when it comes to existential questions about the future of humanity, it has proved fairly useless.

Recent series ignore environmental and social issues in favour of strained ‘fun’

According to TV industry media, the fast fashion brand Missguided turned down more than 500 requests from TV production companies before agreeing to allow Pulse Films into its head office in Manchester last year. The fruits of that labour, Inside Missguided: Made in Manchester, a four-part series in Channel 4’s “coveted” 10pm documentary slot, were revealed last week.

Let’s be honest, I did not enjoy the show. A more substantive archive of my distress can be found on Twitter, but the short version is that I’m disturbed that this horror show of turbo-charged consumerism was ever commissioned.

Scientists say the loss of millions of reptiles in Australia’s summer bushfires will have a huge impact on ecosystems and biodiversity

What should have been a damp swamp beside Victoria’s Bemm River in East Gippsland was a blackened crunchy mess when Nick Clemann arrived in early March.

“These are habitats not known for burning. To have them converted to just smouldering charcoal was pretty confronting,” says Clemann, a senior scientist for the Victorian state government’s Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research.

As researchers, we have been shocked to find the most remote depths of the Pacific Ocean polluted by our plastic. And it will outlive us all.

Another bottle. Yet another one. We are 200km from land, in the middle of the South Pacific, and this is the third bottle we’ve found already this morning.

Everywhere is plastic.

Andrew Barr calls for more funding to reduce environmental assessment delays, following finding that governments are failing to protect unique native species

The chief minister of the ACT, Andrew Barr, has called on the Morrison government to increase funding for agencies responsible for environmental assessments for major projects, saying budget cuts had caused delays to assessments.

Speaking in Canberra on Friday, Barr said the statutory review of Australia’s national environmental laws needed to modernise the 20-year-old Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to ensure the legislation addressed climate change.

Battle is on to remove fuel oil from Japanese vessel the MV Wakashio as weather worsens

A Japanese bulk carrier that ran aground on a reef in Mauritius last month threatening a marine ecological disaster around the Indian Ocean island has broken apart, authorities said on Saturday.

The condition of the MV Wakashio was worsening early on Saturday and by early afternoon, it had it split, the Mauritius National Crisis Committee said.