The Guardian

As average population falls reach 95% in some regions, experts call for urgent action but insist ‘nature can recover’

Global wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 73% in 50 years, a new scientific assessment has found, as humans continue to push ecosystems to the brink of collapse.

Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the steepest average declines in recorded wildlife populations, with a 95% fall, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial Living Planet report. They were followed by Africa with 76%, and Asia and the Pacific at 60%. Europe and North America recorded comparatively lower falls of 35% and 39% respectively since 1970.

Large, cattle-like tauros will shape landscape and strengthen wildlife as huge, extinct herbivore once did

A herd of beefy, long-horned tauros are to be released into a Highlands rewilding project to replicate the ecological role of the aurochs, an extinct, huge herbivore that is the wild ancestor of cattle.

The tauros have been bred in the Netherlands in recent years to fill the niche vacated by the aurochs, which once shaped landscapes and strengthened wildlife across Europe.

Our leaders may prefer complexity because it means they can defer taking action – but doing something about emissions reduction or slow wage growth is actually not that complex

After spending any time analysing policy you quickly realise that politicians expend a supreme level of effort to avoid doing the obvious, and instead they do complex things that neither solve a problem nor appease their opponents.

For politicians, the problem with clarity is that it demands action. Complexity provides safety because action can more easily be avoided. And so the obvious and clear are painted as “extreme”, while the complex is regarded as “mature”.

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Milton, which fluctuated in intensity as it approached Florida, was a category 3 hurricane as it made landfall.

'It will continue to move across central Florida throughout the night and into the early morning hours,' said Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

• Hurricane Milton

With clean air projects receiving just 1% of aid, activists say nations ‘cannot continue polluting practices at expense of climate stability’

Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, a report has found, rising ​​from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022.

“This shocking increase in aid funding to fossil fuels is a wake-up call,” said Jane Burston, CEO of nonprofit the Clean Air Fund, which conducted the research. “The world cannot continue down this path of propping up polluting practices at the expense of global health and climate stability.”

Climate disasters risk pulling society apart. To survive we need solidarity – and only one ticket in the US election offers that

Even as the good people of Florida’s west coast pulled the soggy mattresses from Helene out to the curb, Milton appeared on the horizon this week – a double blast of destruction from the Gulf of Mexico that’s a reminder that physics takes no time off, not even in the weeks before a crucial election. My sense is that those storms will help turn the voting on 5 November into a climate election of sorts, even if – as is likely – neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump spend much time in the next 25 days talking about CO2 or solar power.

That’s because these storms show not only the power of global heating (Helene’s record rains, and Milton’s almost unprecedented intensification, were reminders of what it means to have extremely hot ocean temperatures). More, they show what we’re going to need to survive the now inevitable train of such disasters. Which is solidarity. Which is something only one ticket offers.

Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo says regulator Ofwat ‘complacent’ about water firms putting their shareholders before public

The privatised English water system has been singled out for criticism by the UN special rapporteur on the human right to clean water.

Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo said water systems should be managed as a publicly owned service, rather than run by private companies set up to benefit shareholders.

The mining tycoon says his iron ore business will stop using fossil fuels by the end of the decade without carbon offsets or carbon capture and storage

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About $45 trillion of global business revenue is covered by corporate “net zero emissions” pledges but iron ore billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest thinks the whole net zero thing is “fantasy”.

“Now is the time to walk away from net zero 2050, that hasn’t been anything really but a con to maintain fossil fuels,” Forrest said last week.

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Government criticised over list of potential countries for sourcing biomass, which also includes Afghanistan

A plan by the British government to burn biomass imported from countries including North Korea and Afghanistan has been described as “bonkers”, with critics saying it undermines the credibility of the UK’s climate strategy.

A bioenergy resource model, published in late summer, calculates that only a big expansion in the import of energy crops and wood from a surprising list of nations would satisfy the UK’s plan to meet net zero.

Analysis shows Gulf’s heat that worsened Helene 200-500 times more likely because of human-caused global heating

As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida, fueled by a record-hot Gulf of Mexico, a new analysis has shown how the Gulf’s heat that worsened last month’s Hurricane Helene was 200 to 500 times more likely because of human-caused global heating.

Helene, one of the deadliest storms in US history, gathered pace over the Gulf before crashing ashore with 140mph winds.

Selected from a record-breaking 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories, the winners of the Natural History Museum’s prestigious wildlife photographer of the year competition have been announced, with an exhibition opening on Friday 11 October. The Canadian marine conservation photojournalist Shane Gross was awarded wildlife photographer of the year 2024 for his image of tadpoles, The Swarm of Life, captured while snorkelling through lily pads in Cedar Lake on Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Ahahahah oh this is gold

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IEA says faster clean energy rollout being led by solar power in China with country set to boast half of world’s renewables by 2030

China is expected to account for almost 60% of all renewable energy capacity installed worldwide between now and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

The IEA’s highly influential renewable energy report found that over the next six years renewable energy projects will roll out at three times the pace of the previous six years, led by the clean energy programmes of China and India.

Emma Pinchbeck will take over as chief executive of Climate Change Committee next month

The government’s official climate watchdog has appointed the head of the energy industry’s trade association to lead its work helping to drive the UK’s emissions to net zero by 2050.

Emma Pinchbeck, the head of Energy UK, will take up the role of chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) from early next month after four years at the helm of the trade association.

Record emissions, temperatures and population mean more scientists are looking into possibility of societal collapse, report says

Many of Earth’s “vital signs” have hit record extremes, indicating that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”, a group of the world’s most senior climate experts have said.

More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse, says the report, which assessed 35 vital signs in 2023 and found that 25 were worse than ever recorded, including carbon dioxide levels and human population. This indicates a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, it says.

Tanya Plibersek claims Labor is protecting 52% of its ocean territory, but experts say that is ‘misleading’

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Scientists have challenged Tanya Plibersek’s claim that Australia is protecting more than half of its oceans and has “blitzed” a 30% target, arguing industrial longline fishing will still be allowed in some areas the government says it is conserving.

The environment minister told a “global nature-positive summit” in Sydney on Tuesday the government had quadrupled the size of the sub-Antarctic Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve, a world heritage area about 4,000km south-west of Perth.

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Alexander Darwall, owner of Blachford estate in national park, is challenging the right to wild camping

Picnicking on Dartmoor is trespassing, according to the lawyers for a landowner who is challenging the right to wild camping on the moors.

The public should have no right to undertake any activities other than walking or horse riding in the Dartmoor national park without landowner permission, Timothy Morshead KC told a supreme court hearing on Tuesday.

Critically endangered flowers get stay of execution after local environmental group threatens legal action against Victorian government

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A critically endangered orchid has received a late reprieve after a local environmental group threatened legal action against the Victorian government, prompting officials to cancel a planned burn of its habitat.

The bald-tip beard orchid – a species with fewer than 10 plants remaining in the Australian wild – was thought extinct until rediscovered in 1968 at a site near Whroo, in central Victoria, where the last surviving wild population has persisted.

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Harvesting in Bulga state forest, inland from Port Macquarie, is just 400km from global nature-positive summit the government is hosting

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Forest campaigners have accused the federal government of hypocrisy for hosting a global nature-positive summit in Sydney while logging resumed in public forest 400km away in mid-north New South Wales.

The NSW Forestry Corporation has started its harvesting operations in Bulga state forest, inland from Port Macquarie. The area is a stronghold for threatened species including endangered koalas and the endangered greater glider – Australia’s largest gliding possum.

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Exclusive: Environment groups urge government to stick to its promises and refuse pesticide application

UK ministers are considering allowing the use of a bee-killing pesticide next year despite promising during the election to ban it.

Neonicotinoids are banned in the EU because they are toxic to bees, but have been authorised for use every year in the UK since 2021.