The Guardian

Killings fell by 53% in the first six months of 2020 as restrictions and disruption to international flights hinder poachers

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The number of South African rhinos killed by poachers fell by half in the first six months of the year, partly helped by the nationwide coronavirus lockdown and disruption to international smuggling rings.

During the first six months of the year, 166 rhino were pochaed in South Africa, compared with 316 in the first half of 2019, Barbara Creecy, the minister of environment, forestry and fisheries, said on Friday, a drop of 53%.

As Eid al-Adha begins, a campaign for painless killing is starting to win favour with slaughterhouses and religious leaders

As Turkey gears up for Eid al-Adha, or Qurban Bayram, the Muslim festival of sacrifice, animal rights campaigners are celebrating progress in their efforts to convince religious leaders, butchers and slaughterhouses of the merits of stunning animals before ritual slaughter.

Livestock warehouses across the country were busy on Thursday before the festival began at sunset, with families inspecting sheep and cows to slaughter in honour of Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael.

The waste incinerator sits in one of the poorest areas of the country, where air pollution already breaches legal limits

• UK waste incinerators three times more likely to be in deprived areas

Georgia Elliott-Smith lives near the Edmonton EcoPark waste incinerator in north London. It sits in one of the poorest areas in the country, where 65% of the residents are from ethnic minority backgrounds and air pollution already breaches legal limits.

The waste-to-energy incinerator is run by the North London Waste Authority (NLWA), serves seven London local authorities, and is planning to expand to increase its capacity by 200,000 tonnes.

Greenpeace data raises concern over air quality and health of vulnerable people

• Edmonton incinerator expansion ‘fundamentally unjust’ say residents

Waste incinerators are three times more likely to be situated in the most deprived and ethnically diverse areas of the UK, it has been revealed, raising fears about the impact on air quality and the health of vulnerable people.

Data obtained by Unearthed, the investigative arm of Greenpeace, found that areas in the top 20% for deprivation host nearly one-third of the waste incinerators in the UK. The richest, least ethnically diverse areas are home to less than 10% of incinerators, which are increasingly being used to deal with the UK’s waste.

The man in his 20s is being flown to a Perth hospital after being bitten on his leg, but the extent of his injuries is not yet known

A man in his 20s is being flown to hospital after he was attacked by a shark at a popular surfing spot about 200km south of Perth.

The man was bitten on the leg at Bunker Bay, near the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park, and the extent of his injuries is not yet known, a St John Ambulance WA spokeswoman told the Guardian.

Non-native predators and pests, forestry and farming mean our recovery is faltering. Here’s what we need to do

• Read more stories from our After the Bushfires series

Australia’s “black summer” megafires were a severe blow to ecosystems already reeling from decades of adverse impacts. Feral predators and grazers, weeds and unsustainable land and water use have reduced the resilience of nature in Australia. So when the unprecedented fires came, they were able to push species to the brink.

Walking the fire grounds it was impossible to miss the immediate impacts: charred bodies of snakes lying among rocks, and dead wallabies floating in waterholes. But some astonishing survivors were also to be seen: small lizards that had waited it out in burrows, and birds that had fled to safety then returned. And with rain, the trees and grasses swiftly resprouted.

Most polluted census tracts in 1981 remained the most polluted in 2016 despite nationwide reductions in pollution, study says

Wealthy white Americans are still getting to breathe cleaner air than lower-income communities of color, despite significant nationwide reductions in pollution since the 1980s, according to a new study.

Fine particle pollution – which is 2.5 micrometers or smaller – has fallen an average of about 70% since 1981. But air pollution is not equally distributed around America.

Human-caused sea level rise, storm surges and high tides will put trillions of dollars of assets at risk around the world by the end of the century

The combined impacts of human-caused sea level rise, storm surges and high tides could expose an extra 23 million people to coastal flooding within the next 30 years, even with relatively ambitious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, a new global study has found.

In a worst-case scenario where emissions continue to rise and no efforts are made to adapt to the rising sea levels, coastal assets worth US$14.2tn – about 20% of global GDP – could be at risk by the end of the century.

French government risks paying huge fines if it bows to pressure from hunting lobby

France is to outlaw trapping birds using sticks covered in glue after the European commission threatened legal action and fines.

The move was welcomed by campaigners who have described the practice as “barbaric” and who urged the French government not to bow to pressure from the powerful hunting lobby.

After last summer’s deadly bushfires, Guardian readers have found tentative signs of renewal in the charred landscape

• Read more stories from our After the Bushfires series

From the eerie absence of birdsong to green shoots sprouting from burnt-out trees, Guardian readers in Australia have shared their stories and pictures of nature in the aftermath of the country’s devastating bushfires.

Carrier bag sales have dropped by 95% since introduction of 5p charge in supermarkets in 2015

Shoppers’ use of plastic carrier bags in England has continued to fall – by 59% in the last year alone – since the introduction of the 5p charge, according to recent figures.

Overall, plastic carrier bag sales have dropped by more than 95% in Engand’s main supermarkets since the 5p charge was introduced in October 2015, government data reveals.

The shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool: each distorts the urgent global debate in their own way

A new book, described as “deeply and fatally flawed” by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles.

How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger – with jaw-dropping hubris – apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the “climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.

Shark and seal populations are increasing in New England waters, and sharks follow seals, experts say

A fatal shark attack in Maine may be linked to efforts to restore seal and shark populations along the New England coast, according to experts.

Related: Maine tells swimmers to stay in shallow water after fatal shark attack

‘Completely unexpected’ finding is significant as harmful effects of plastic might increase as particle size decreases

Small crustaceans can fragment microplastics into pieces smaller than a cell within 96 hours, a study has shown.

Until now, plastic fragmentation has been largely attributed to slow physical processes such as sunlight and wave action, which can take years and even decades.

Fast food giant praised for owning up to extent of footpad dermatitis, which can prevent birds from walking

Fast food giant KFC has laid bare the realities of chicken production after admitting to poor welfare conditions among its suppliers.

More than a third of the birds on its supplier farms in the UK and Ireland suffer from a painful inflammation known as footpad dermatitis that in severe cases can prevent birds from walking normally.

Footpad dermatitis is characterised by lesions on the feet, usually because of poor ventilation and litter management. KFC said the number of birds affected had fallen from more than half to 35% in just four years, and that its top suppliers were achieving levels of 15% or below.

Someone needs to clean up Britain’s overgrown footpaths – and it might as well be me

The bane of walkers’ lives is overgrown, impassable paths. We are blessed with many public footpaths in this country, as well as Ordnance Survey and its brilliant maps. Its smartphone app is particularly brilliant; the little red pointer will always tell you where you are and which way you are, well, pointing. This is wonderful for getting you on to unfamiliar paths wending their way through all sorts of new, captivating scenery. But just because the path is marked on the map doesn’t mean it has not turned into a thorny, stingy, dank jungle that you cannot hack your way through. And, disappointingly, OS has not seen fit to offer a helpline or panic button to facilitate instant extraction.

Last week, I was in just such an entanglement on the Gower Peninsula. I was 10 minutes into a day’s walk and already bitten, scratched, wet and greatly annoyed. Why the bloody hell, I demanded of the sheep in the neighbouring field, can’t somebody keep these paths clear? I swear at that precise moment I heard the unmistakable revving of strimmers. Encouraged, I smashed my way through the brambles, over a rotting stile, and stumbled before two strapping, uniformed, begoggled, strimmer-wielding young men. Professional path-clearers! I was beside myself with admiration and considered bunging them a few quid to walk 10 metres ahead of me all day clearing my way.

First official endangered list includes wildcat, red squirrel, water vole and hedgehog

A quarter of Britain’s native mammals are “at imminent risk of extinction”, according to the scientists who have compiled the nation’s first official Red List of endangered species.

The 11 mammals include creatures of the mountains, woodlands and rivers, such as the wildcat, red squirrel, water vole, hazel dormouse and hedgehog.

About 800 million children, mostly in developing countries, ‘will have had risky exposure’

One in three children around the world have concentrations of lead in their blood at levels likely to cause significant long-term health damage, new research has found.

About 800 million children and young people under the age of 19 are likely to have blood levels of lead at or above 5 micrograms per decilitre (5μg/dl), according to the report.

Kangaroo Island’s glossies were flourishing until the fires. Now the tale of one family’s survival has offered fresh hope

• Read more stories from our After the Bushfires series

Somewhere on Australia’s Kangaroo Island, a fledgling glossy black-cockatoo with identity number 0601 is laying down a new chapter in a remarkable survival story.

In early January this year, her panicked parents fled their nest in a gum tree at the edge of Carol and John Stanton’s garden to escape the smoke and flames of bushfires that were sweeping across a third of the island.

‘They’re so damn reliable’, says veteran mechanic Craig Salmon. In the second Green Recovery feature, we look at what’s stopping Australia from embracing EVs

Craig Salmon rattles off the benefits of electric cars with the swagger of a veteran car mechanic and the zeal of someone who is watching a profound historic change play out on his workshop floor.

Related: This builder used to be sceptical about green homes. Now he’s a convert