The Guardian

Permit lets Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Native American tribes kill 540 California sea lions and 176 Steller sea lions

US authorities have given wildlife managers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho permission to start killing hundreds of sea lions in the Columbia River basin in hopes of helping struggling salmon and steelhead trout.

The bulky marine mammals long ago figured out that they could feast on the migrating fish where they bottleneck at dams or where they head up tributaries to spawn.

Busy beaches and warm, calm seas fuel sightings of lion’s manes, compasses and moons

From a “mile-long” swarm in Devon to warnings to swimmers in the Outer Hebrides, it seems jellyfish are difficult to ignore this summer.

High temperatures, calm and warm seas and packed beaches have resulted in large numbers of reports of jellyfish blooms around the UK coast, and combined with a glut of the plankton on which they feed, some are reaching record sizes, experts said.

Public comments on the project reopened after oil and gas company claimed economic benefits would be greater than thought

A decision on a controversial coal seam gas development at Narrabri, in north-west New South Wales, has been delayed after the company behind it lodged a last-minute submission suggesting it will have greater economic benefits than previously claimed.

The state independent planning commission announced on Friday it would reopen public comments on the $3.6bn project, proposed by the oil and gas company Santos, and push back a decision by four weeks, until 30 September.

Leaked environment department document raises concerns about the regent honeyeater and forest and woodland ecosystems

Raising the wall of the Warragamba dam could affect half the remaining population of the critically endangered regent honeyeater and would put forest and woodland communities at risk of extinction, according to a summary of the environmental impact statement for the proposal, contained in a leaked federal environment department document.

The department found the New South Wales government had failed to properly assess how its proposal to raise the wall of the dam by 17 metres to mitigate flood risk in western Sydney would affect endangered wildlife.

What better time than the UK’s hottest-ever week for ministers to commit to bold climate action?

The hottest week in the UK since records began offers further proof that our weather is changing. Climate change and global heating are not predictions, but facts of life that we must deal with now. Ten of the UK’s warmest-ever years have been since 2002, while the temperature of 36.4C recorded at Heathrow airport last week made it the hottest August day since 2003.

Links between climate and weather must always be made with caution. But scientists already have evidence that 2020’s record temperatures are the consequence of human-caused climate change. According to researchers, the heatwave in the Siberian Arctic between January and June, which caused permafrost to melt and buildings to collapse, was made at least 600 times more likely by greenhouse gas emissions. While this summer has seen no repeat of 2018’s devastating wildfires in Greece, which killed more than 80 people, records have been broken in the Middle East as well as Europe and 2020 is likely to be the hottest year globally on record. On 29 July Baghdad recorded a temperature high of 51.7C, leading to protests about electricity and goods shortages.

Growers hope to avoid a third bad year but have already been hit by lockdown and a heatwave

The humble spud, staple of the British dinner table, has weathered storm, flood and lockdown, but farmers are on tenterhooks ahead of the crucial growing season for the key crop as the UK heatwave is followed by thunderstorms and deluges.

Farmers are desperate to avoid a repeat of last year, when good growing weather over the summer was followed by heavy rains in some areas from late September that left the ground too sodden to harvest for months, spelling disaster for many potato growers.

Countryside and coastal custodians lament ‘different demographic’ of visitors leaving litter and endangering wildlife

Fires caused by portable barbecues, wild flowers being dug up, the disturbance of shorebirds, and an avalanche of rubbish. These are just some of the threats to Britain’s wild places as record numbers enjoy coastal and countryside “staycations”.

Beleaguered rangers complain that a new generation of holidaymakers are treating the countryside like a festival site, leaving behind tents, chairs and excrement, as well as endangering rare habitats and wildlife.

By 2100 the island nation could be submerged. As a representation of the looming future Giulia Piermartiri and Edoardo Delille projected tourists’ photos onto residents’ homes in a series for Festivals Images Vevey

Brazil's Amazon rainforest has had its worst start to a fire season in a decade, with 10,136 blazes spotted in the first 10 days of August. The increase follows a similar rise in year-on-year figures from July 2019 to July 2020. The 'extraordinarily concerning' fires in 2019 caused an international crisis, and these new figures suggest this season could be much worse 

• Brazil experiences worst start to Amazon fire season for 10 years

Chinese investment in Argentina’s hog industry would boost exports, but environmentalists fear risk of pandemic

A government-sponsored plan to turbocharge Argentina’s hog industry with Chinese capital is generating unprecedented resistance among its supposed beneficiaries – the Argentinian general public.

Nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions opposing the move. “We never had such a huge response before,” said environmental lawyer Enrique Viale, one of the group who banded together last month to challenge the government’s initiative. His petition currently has 200,000 signatures; another on change.org has almost 120,000 additional signatures, and three separate petitions on the same platform have clocked up another 55,000 between them.

Blood-sucking maggots are bent on the deaths of these innocent creatures

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I want my kids to enjoy the freedom of being on traditional land, as we have been doing for thousands of years. Our island home is at risk

I’d like to tell you about my home, Masig Island. Masig is a coral cay in the Torres Strait Islands, about halfway between the tip of Cape York and the mainland of Papua New Guinea. I wake and sleep to the sound of the ocean breathing its waves on to the beach.

My genealogy, my ancestors, my family tree lies here. This island is my library, my school and my storyteller. It’s love, it’s life, and it’s ancient. There is a mythical, spiritual aura around this place. We are not migrants to this sacred land, we have lived here for generations.

Economists say falling cost of clean energy and growing climate risks strengthen case for cutting CO2 emissions

Withdrawing from the Paris agreement does not make economic sense for the US, a group of economists has argued, as the cost of clean energy has fallen since the agreement was signed in 2015, while the risks of climate catastrophe have increased.

Economists from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics examined the economic case for the US withdrawal, which President Donald Trump signalled in June 2017, and which will take effect on 4 November, the day after this year’s presidential election.

Biggest threat is non-native fish, but study was conducted before summer bushfires impacted Australia’s rivers

• Freshwater hell: scientists race to save endangered fish from bushfire ash

Some 22 native freshwater fish have a 50/50 chance or worse of becoming extinct within two decades unless targeted action is taken to save them, according to new research.

The most threatened fish is Victoria’s tiger-striped shaw galaxias which, experts concluded, had an 80% chance of being gone in 20 years time.

Temperature and CO2 changes reduce the numbers of some species and promote the growth of algae, University of Adelaide study finds

Heating of the world’s oceans could radically reorganise marine food webs across the globe causing the numbers of some species to collapse while promoting the growth of algae, new research has warned.

Healthy marine food webs that look like a pyramid, with smaller numbers of larger predatory species at the top and more abundant smaller organisms at the bottom, could become “bottom heavy”.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that heats the planet far faster than CO2 and addressing it is critical to slowing global heating

The Trump administration is revoking rules that require oil and gas drillers to detect and fix leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas that heats the planet far faster than carbon dioxide.

Methane has a much more potent short-term warming effect than CO2 and addressing it is critical to slowing global heating as the world is already on track to become more than 3C hotter than before industrialization.

Queensland MP writes report urging Coalition to increase efforts to reduce emissions, especially in Covid-19 recovery response

The Morrison government’s Great Barrier Reef envoy, Warren Entsch, has urged fellow Liberal MPs to do more on climate change policy, including pushing for greater global action, after the world heritage site suffered a third mass bleaching event in five years.

In a report to the environment minister, Sussan Ley, Entsch said climate change was having a growing impact on the reef and was unequivocally its greatest long-term threat. He said he feared that programs to address greenhouse gas emissions might be dropped as the government rationalised spending in response to the Covid recession, and called for it to take another path.

Satellite images of the MV Wakashio shipwreck off the south-east coast of Mauritius reveal the damage as the Japanese bulk carrier leaked an estimated 1,000 tonnes of oil. The ship, owned by Nagashiki Shipping and operated by Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd, struck a coral reef on 25 July and began leaking oil last week, raising fears of a major ecological crisis

Pair fledge first chick in Dundreggan for 40 years in eyrie built by conservationist

A nest of arm-sized sticks built on a precipitous crag by an octogenarian conservationist dangling from a rope has enticed a pair of golden eagles back to the Highlands of Scotland.

The eyrie handmade by Roy Dennis, a renowned conservationist who has masterminded the revival of endangered species across Britain, helped the eagles successfully fledge the first chick on Trees for Life’s Dundreggan estate in 40 years.

Fishing time in first half of 2020 almost double that in whole of last year, Greenpeace says

Supertrawlers vastly stepped up their fishing in the UK’s protected waters during the coronavirus lockdown earlier this year, while most of the UK’s smaller vessels were confined to port.

The amount of time supertrawlers spent fishing in marine protected areas in the first half of this year was nearly double that spent in the waters in the whole of last year, according to a Greenpeace investigation. There were 23 supertrawlers catching fish in UK protected areas in the period, none of them UK-owned.