The Guardian

Tokyo denies report by Kyodo news agency that government will reveal its decision by the end of the year

Japan is to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and resume commercial whaling next year, a report claimed on Thursday, in a move that drew condemnation from Australia, with other anti-whaling nations expected to follow suit.

Japan will inform the IWC of its decision by the end of the year, Kyodo news agency said, months after the body rejected its latest bid to resume commercial whaling.

But Green groups say proposals will mean weaker protection for nature after UK leaves EU

A new post-Brexit green watchdog will be able to sue the government over environmental failings, according to new plans set out by Michael Gove. However, campaign groups have questioned the independence of the body because the chairperson and budget will be decided by the environment secretary.

The establishment of the watchdog is part of the draft environment bill, which also puts principles such as “the polluter pays” into legal guidance, but only requires ministers to consider them. The bill, the first for 20 years, makes it a legal requirement for the government to have a long-term environment plan and report on progress to parliament each year.

The Indigenous rangers in this Cape York national park are driven by their love of country and deep satisfaction to be finally back on their homelands

• My favourite national park: tell us why it’s important to you
  

It’s 8am and the Indigenous women rangers of Lama Lama national park are rounding up the younger rangers and casual workers for the day’s fencing. It’s a huge undertaking: kilometres of fencing to keep the cattle and pigs out of the more sensitive areas of the vast national park that hugs the pristine Princess Charlotte Bay, midway up Cape York in far north Queensland.

State of the climate report points to a long-term increase in the frequency of extreme heat events, fire weather and drought

Australia is experiencing more extreme heat, longer fire seasons, rising oceans and more marine heatwaves consistent with a changing climate, according to the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s state of the climate report.

The report, published every two years, measures the long-term variability and trends observed in Australia’s climate.

Devil’s ivy with synthetic animal gene inserted helped reduce benzene and chloroform levels

A humble houseplant with a dash of rabbit DNA could help lower our exposure to indoor air pollution, new research suggests.

Scientists have revealed that by inserting a rabbit gene into devil’s ivy (Epipremnum aureum) the plant is able to clean the surrounding air by breaking down chemicals such as benzene and chloroform, which in certain concentrations can harm health.

Stay of execution for coal subsidies has been heavily criticised by climate analysts

An EU deal to slowly phase out coal subsidies is “completely inconsistent” with the bloc’s Paris climate agreement commitments, analysts say.

Marathon negotiations ended early on Wednesday with a benchmark CO2 emissions standard of 550 grams per kWh for all European power plants by 2025. But coal-dependent Poland secured a loophole allowing countries another year to negotiate new “capacity mechanisms” that would be exempted from the deadline.

Ministers setting limits for 2019 accused of ignoring scientific advice on overfishing

Fisheries ministers meeting in Brussels to decide EU quotas for next year have set some stocks within levels scientists deem sustainable but left many others vulnerable to overfishing.

The ministers also said there would be a review of the planned ban on the discarding of edible fish at sea, which could, in effect, mean the wasteful practice is allowed to continue despite an eight-year battle to end it.

In our new column about the American south and climate change, we go towards Christians who have been resistant to ideas of environmental stewardship - perhaps it’s a message they need to hear in their own terms

I was, frankly, nervous about speaking to people of faith in the south about climate change. I wrestled with my own preconceived notions and past experiences, and was surprised when conversations took inspiring, if not transcendent, turns.

Secular as I am now, I still think fondly of my childhood minister, Dr Lehman, who loved college basketball and Honda Accords (he drove 13 of them during his lifetime). At the conclusion of each Lakeside Baptist service, he’d call the eastern North Carolina congregation to action.

Court hears department and VicForests have not protected minimum area of old-growth forest required by law in East Gippsland

Logging in old-growth forests in Victoria should cease, according to testimony from the Victorian environment department in a court battle over logging in East Gippsland.

The Fauna and Flora Research Collective is pursuing VicForests and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in the supreme court.

Australia has more than 500 national parks covering 28 million hectares - almost 4% of the country.

Protecting and maintaining these treasures falls to our park rangers, who undertake a multi-faceted role that includes protecting biodiversity, managing visitors and maintaining facilities and paths.

Guardian Australia heads to Victoria’s Grampians national park to follow ranger Connor Smith around for a day where we learn there’s more to being a park ranger than you might think

Governments hail nature-based tourism as a win-win but conservationists say Australia’s wild places belong to everyone and shouldn’t be sold out

• My favourite national park: tell us why it’s important to you
  

The development planned for Cradle Mountain in Tasmania’s north-west is arguably the most high profile example of the dilemma faced by governments dealing with the growing popularity of nature-based tourism in national parks.

Visited by more than 268,000 tourists in 2017, and with visits growing at 12% a year, the facilities at Cradle Mountain were stretched to the limit. So the Tasmanian government pledged $160m to build a new visitor centre and tourism village on the edge of the heritage area.

Toys feature in more than half of EU alerts for products containing banned chemicals

Christmas shoppers are being warned to avoid plastic toys after they appeared in more than half of EU intergovernmental alerts for products containing banned chemicals this year.

In all, 290 of the 563 warnings sent out on the EU’s rapid alert system concerned toys with illegally high levels of toxins, most of which were plastic dolls, and all of which could be on sale on British high streets.

Scientists accuse officials of cherry-picking data to defend disease-control scheme

More than 32,000 badgers were killed in England this autumn during the annual cull, which is intended to reduce tuberculosis in cattle.

Government officials claimed the culls were effective and starting to reduce prevalence of the disease in cows. But independent scientists said the officials were cherry-picking data and making up targets as they went along.

Rare species of snail found near A47 will be monitored in new home until 2023

Snails with legally protected status could delay a road scheme by five years as a project to rehome them is kept under observation.

Ditches alongside a section of the A47 in Norfolk are a habitat for little whirlpool ramshorn snails, whose shells measure just a few millimetres in diameter.

Government strategy to make ‘polluter pay’, with penalties for difficult to recycle items

Retailers and producers of packaging will be forced to pay the full cost of collecting and recycling it under the government’s new waste strategy.

Supermarkets and other retailers could be charged penalties for putting difficult to recycle packaging – such as black plastic trays – on the market as part of the strategy, which aims to make the “polluter pay”. They would be charged lower fees for packaging that was easy to reuse or recycle.

Decisions made from now to 2020 will determine to what extent Earth remains habitable

The mood was more one of relief than triumph on Sunday when the world’s governments eventually found common ground at the UN climate talks in Katowice.

This was not just because exhausted delegates were glad to go home after negotiations that dragged on 30 hours beyond the deadline. It also reflected the harder miles and tougher battles to come over the next two years if the planet is to remain habitable.

Australia leads the world in extinction rates and now our protected habitats are at risk. That’s neglect

• My favourite national park: tell us why it’s important to you

Australia has the most extraordinary national parks, home to our unique wildlife, deserts, mountains, forests and sacred icons such as Uluru. We are rightly proud of them.

It’s hard to pick a favourite. But I do love Wilsons Promontory, where the wombats reign supreme, and getting one of these inquisitive fellows out of your tent after a late-night incursion is quite an adventure.

Results of research into 2012 mass deaths offer insights into reef health and throw up further questions

Conservationists want major bays and estuaries along the Great Barrier Reef tested for contaminants after a five-year study found “alarming” levels of some chemicals in unhealthy turtles on the reef.

Scientists working on the research have also recommended expanded monitoring of turtle-population health on the Great Barrier Reef “as an indicator of the health of the reef itself”.

Range of public figures from Jeremy Corbyn to Sue Perkins call for ban on imports

A group of public figures including Jeremy Corbyn, Zac Goldsmith, Sue Perkins and Carol Vorderman have joined forces to call for an urgent halt to imports from trophy hunters.

In a letter to the Guardian, the group, which also includes Piers Morgan, Liam Gallagher, Ed Sheeran and Joanna Lumley, condemns trophy hunting as “cruel, immoral, archaic and unjustifiable”.

Campaigners say they will force governments to act after lack of progress at UN summit

Civil society groups have pledged growing international protests to drive rapid action on global warming after the UN climate summit in Poland.

The summit agreed rules for implementing the 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to keep global warming as close to 1.5C (2.7F) as possible, but it made little progress in increasing governments’ commitments to cut emissions. The world remains on track for 3C of warming, which scientists says will bring catastrophic extreme weather.