The Guardian

More than 170,000 acres of protected countryside in the south-east face risk of drilling

More than 170,000 acres of protected countryside, including national park land, in the south-east of England are at risk from a new wave of oil drilling, environmental campaigners have warned.

Under threat are areas of outstanding natural beauty in the Weald, which runs between the north and south downs, and the South Downs national park, Greenpeace said.

New Mexico is a battleground in the fight over once public waterways, sparking fears it could set a national precedent

As Scott Carpenter and a few friends paddled down the Pecos river in New Mexico last May, taking advantage of spring run-off, the lead boater yelled out and made a swirling hand motion over his head in the universal signal to pull over to shore. The paddlers eddied out in time to avoid running straight through three strings of barbed wire obstructing the river.

Swinging in the wind, the sign hanging from the fence read “PRIVATE PROPERTY: No Trespassing”.

For the first time ever, scientists in Antarctica have attached a camera to a minke – one of the most poorly understood of all the whale species.  The camera (attached with suction cups) slid down the side of the animal – but stayed attached – providing remarkable video of the way it feeds.

Unprecedented joint inquiry by four committees of MPs demands polluters pay for air pollution causing ‘national health emergency’

The car industry must pay millions of pounds towards solving the UK’s toxic air crisis under the “polluter pays” principle, according to an unprecedented joint inquiry by four committees of MPs.

The MPs call the poisonous air that causes 40,000 early deaths a year a “national health emergency” and are scathing about the government’s clean air plans. These judged illegal three times in the high court, with the latest plan condemned as “woefully inadequate” by city leaders and “inexcusable” by doctors.

Crook, County Durham: starving birds lose their inhibitions if apples are available in gardens

The steep climb from the start of the Deerness Valley Way follows the route of an old rope-worked incline where, a century ago, a stationary engine on the hilltop hauled railway wagons up from Bankfoot coke works. Today it was hard work hauling ourselves up the hill, with every footstep sinking into thawing snow that was still knee-deep in places.

Researchers find levels of plastic fibres in popular bottled water brands could be twice as high as those found in tap water

A new analysis of some of the world’s most popular bottled water brands says more than 90% contain tiny pieces of plastic.

Analysis of 259 bottles from 19 locations in nine countries across 11 different brands found an average of 325 plastic particles for every litre of water being sold.

Empty rhetoric from corporates is not enough as climate change is accelerating far faster than expected

Business leaders seem astonished that community trust in their activities is at an all-time low, trending toward the bottom of the barrel inhabited by politicians. To the corporate leader dedicated to the capitalist, market economy success story of the last 50 years, that attitude is no doubt incomprehensible and downright ungrateful.

Related: Arctic warming: scientists alarmed by 'crazy' temperature rises

The land-clearing crisis has been hastened by individual decisions, but it’s supported by a network of power brokers, lawmakers and enforcement agencies

The broadscale denuding of the unique Australian landscape is the result of thousands of landholders making a tapestry of individual decisions.

Over the past few years, millions of hectares of land has been cleared of native vegetation, exacerbating climate change, the decline of threatened species and the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

We’re not yet optimizing biofuel production for both economic and environmental factors

Facing the reality of human-caused warming, we now look for ways to reduce the problem so that future generations will not inherit a disaster. So, what can we do now to help the future?

The easiest answer is to use energy more wisely and quit wasting our precious resources. Second, we can increase our use of clean energy, particularly wind and solar power. These are great starts but we will still need some liquid fuels and for those, we can make decisions about the best fuels for the environment. There has been extensive conversation recently about biofuels and how they may help solve the climate problem.

Recycling industry in Victoria and NSW on verge of collapse, Senate inquiry told

Australia’s kerbside recycling systems are at risk of collapse, a Senate inquiry has heard. China’s ban on importation of recyclable rubbish has left councils and state governments in Victoria and New South Wales scrambling to find space to stockpile growing mounds of waste.

An estimated half of Australia’s recyclable waste was going to China before the ban, the hearing was told, although the precise share of waste exported was not known.

UK households throw away more than 25m slices of bread each day, says anti-food waste campaign

Around 25m slices of bread are thrown away every day in the UK – more than a million an hour – because people do not get around to using it in time and worry it is stale.

Now a new campaign from the anti-waste charity Love Food Hate Waste is urging consumers to freeze bread and toast it straight from the freezer, and to consider eating toast as a snack at any time of day.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: this is mythologised woodland, a secular sacred place, a hunting ground and a sanctuary

Sunlight pools on thousands of wild garlic leaves on the bank of an abandoned railway cutting. Trees stand in companionable silence, the breath between them is slight. Days ago, slender ash trunks rattled like yacht masts in a marina, hawthorns hissed in the east wind, great oaks and steeple limes soughed in deep snowy murmurs. Much of the storm wreckage has been cleared from the path; it is now a gallery full of early birdsong and light falling in patches as if from high windows.

Yesterday a blackbird repeated a one … two-three … four syllable phrase of song; today it is elaborated by bright description and excited story. Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It about the bird under the greenwood tree singing “come hither” with no enemy but “winter and rough weather”.

They might be disparaged as bin chickens now but in ancient Egypt they were revered

In Australia they’re reviled as bin chickens. But in ancient Egypt, ibises were revered and offered as gifts to the gods.

Two mummified ibises have given researchers at the University of Sydney a riveting insight into their ancient appeal.

Conservationists say planned clearing would make sediment problems on the reef – which funding is designed to prevent – much worse

A property in Queensland with one of the biggest tree-clearing proposals in Australia, and which is specifically identified by experts as a risk to Great Barrier Reef water quality, is one of the beneficiaries of a $4m federal government reef water quality program.

Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Andrew Picone said that it showed the federal government “isn’t taking its reef commitments seriously” since the proposed clearing would exacerbate the very problem the funding is meant to mitigate.

From the Amazon to Africa, WWF report predicts catastrophic losses of as much as 60% of plants and 50% of animals by the end of the century

The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century unless nations ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming on biodiversity hotspots.

Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds are also likely to disappear on a catastrophic scale in the Amazon and other naturally rich ecosysterms in Africa, Asia, North America and Australia if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, concludes the study by WWF, the University of East Anglia and the James Cook University.

Committee says government should have got stronger commitments on bank’s future

MPs have accused the government of a “deeply regrettable” failure to put in place strong guarantees that the UK’s green investment bank will continue to support renewable energy after its privatisation.

The public accounts committee said it was unclear whether the bank would continue to support the government’s energy policy or climate change goals, because the bank’s new owner is not legally bound to stick to its green aims.

Government should have got binding commitments a private owner would continue to invest

The government’s £1.6bn sale last year of the Green Investment Bank (GIB) to the Australian financial outfit Macquariewas a shambles, it was argued here at the time, and now the public accounts committee agrees. The rough summary of its report runs as follows: in their eagerness to trim a few quid from the national debt ministers accepted a few airy pledges from Macquarie about future investment and called them commitments.

The MPs’ verdict makes a nonsense of the government’s claim that a sale would deliver “the best of both worlds” – value for money and a new owner that would definitely use GIB to support UK energy policy and invest in low-carbon infrastructure. The price tag looks OK since the Treasury made a profit of £186m, but the boast about Macquarie’s good intentions has been exposed as an exercise in hopeful assumptions. The Aussie financiers may decide to play ball, but, if they don’t, there is little the government will be able to do.

The liquid tinkling of this tiny finch adds to the springtime chorus in Spain but can we expect to see the bird in Britain?

Under a fiercely blue sky, the sun shines down on groves of oranges and almond blossom. I am in the mountain village of Sella, in Spain’s Alicante province, enjoying a sneak preview of spring – a month or more before it arrives in Britain.

The migrant birds are not yet back, but half a dozen different butterflies are on the wing and birdsong fills the air. The scratchy sound of Sardinian warblers, the metallic song of the black redstart, and, from every little bush and tree, the liquid tinkling of serins.

New bill will be first step by ministers to protect and restore soil as fears grow over a future soil fertility crisis

A new bill will be brought before parliament this year mandating, for the first time, measures and targets to preserve and improve the health of the UK’s soils, amid growing concern that we are sleepwalking into a crisis of soil fertility that could destroy our ability to feed ourselves.

The UN has warned that the world’s soils face exhaustion and depletion, with an estimated 60 harvests left before they are too degraded to feed the planet, and a 2014 study in the UK found matters are not much better, estimating 100 harvests remaining.

Scientists found a strong link between high temperatures near the pole and unusually heavy snowfall and frigid weather farther south.

The sort of severe winter weather that has rattled parts of the US and UK is becoming more common as the Arctic warms, with scientists finding a strong link between high temperatures near the pole and unusually heavy snowfall and frigid weather further south.

A sharp increase in temperatures across the Arctic since the early 1990s has coincided with an uptick in abnormally cold snaps in winter, particularly in the eastern US, according to new research that analyzed temperature data from 1950 onwards.