The Guardian

Wasted water from leaking pipes and overuse in homes is causing damage to rivers and wildlife and putting increasing pressure on overstretched supplies, warns the Environment Agency

People need to use less water and companies must curb leaks to prevent future water shortages and damage to rivers and wildlife, the Environment Agency (EA) has warned.

Many sources of water supplies are already overstretched and, with climate change and a growing population, much of England could see significant supply shortages by the 2050s – particularly in the south-east.

Bodnant Garden, Gwynedd: Rhododendrons and azaleas flash white, pink, red, orange and blue as the oaks awaken from a long winter dream

These oak leaves open like bloody beef. Not the “rich brown-umber hue the oaks unfold/ When Spring’s young sunshine bathes their trunks in gold” that John Clare described in his poem Wood Pictures in Spring. These are the emerging leaves of a Quercus robur “Atropurpurea” (they will mature to a deep red-purple), a form of English or common oak, growing in a Welsh wood on the ravine of a stream flowing into the Vale of Conwy.

Exclusive: Study finds 12,000 items worth $4m, including ivory, live orangutans and a huge number of reptiles and birds for the pet trade

The online sale of endangered and threatened wildlife is rife across Europe, a new investigation has revealed, ranging from live cheetahs, orangutans and bears to ivory, polar bear skins and many live reptiles and birds.

Researchers from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) spent six weeks tracking adverts on 100 online marketplaces in four countries, the UK, Germany, France and Russia. They found more than 5,000 adverts offering to sell almost 12,000 items, worth $4m (£3m) in total. All the specimens were species in which trade is restricted or banned by the global Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.

Proposal would repeal Obama-era rules that ban shooting of bear cubs and other controversial hunting practices in Alaska

The Trump administration is attempting to repeal a rule that bans the shooting of bear cubs, using dogs and bait to hunt bears, and killing caribou from motorboats in Alaska’s federal wildlife refuges.

The proposal would scrap a 2015 regulation by the National Park Service that restricts controversial hunting and trapping practices on around 20 million acres of federal land in Alaska.

On international day for biological diversity, the IUCN celebrates successful conservation action with images and stories of 12 species and the efforts underway to improve their status

The wildlife presenter has revealed he is storing roadkill in his freezer to feed foxes, as recent reports suggest their numbers are in sharp decline

The next time you’re at Chris Packham’s house, rifling through his kitchen looking for a snack, for God’s sake, don’t look in the freezer. That’s where Packham keeps his “enormous quantity” of roadkill.

What exactly is Packham doing with an enormous quantity of roadkill in his freezer? It’s a fair question. Should a nationally renowned wildlife presenter be running over wildlife in the first place?

Oil firm grilled over carbon emissions, but defeats motion calling for tougher targets

Shell investors have rebelled over the company’s executive pay, as the Anglo-Dutch oil company came under pressure to take stronger action on climate change.

While chief executive Ben van Beurden’s €8.9m (£7.79m) pay package for 2017 was approved, more than a quarter of shareholders voted against the firm’s remuneration report at its annual general meeting (AGM) on Tuesday.

As the fifth annual Great British Bee Count gets under way, wildlife and gardening experts are calling on the public to grow weeds to help Britain’s bees. The count, which will provide the first national health check for wild bees and other pollinators, runs until 30 June

Development of major new markets in China and reforms in Europe have provided a crucial boost as countries look at tools to cut carbon and meet their Paris climate targets

Global carbon markets have been revived from the brink of collapse as, after years in the doldrums, recent developments have provided a much-needed boost, according to a new report from the World Bank.

China has made strong progress on its new carbon markets, which when complete will be the biggest in the world, while the EU initiated reforms of its carbon trading system which have already had an effect on prices.

Snares – either metal or rope – are indiscriminately killing wildlife across Southeast Asia, from elephants to mouse deer. The problem has become so bad that scientists are referring to protected areas in the region as “empty forests.”

A simple break cable for motorbikes can kill a tiger, a bear, even a young elephant in Southeast Asia. Local hunters use these ubiquitous wires to create snares – indiscriminate forest bombs – that are crippling and killing Southeast Asia’s most charismatic species and many lesser-known animals as well. A fact from a new paper in Biodiversity Conservation highlights the scale of this epidemic: in Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom National Park rangers with the Wildlife Alliance removed 109,217 snares over just six years.

“Some forests in Vietnam don’t have any mammals left larger than squirrels,” Thomas Gray, the lead author of the new paper and the Science Director for Wildlife Alliance, said. “Given how diverse these forests formally were this must be having substantial impacts on ecosystem services and the [forest’s] entire biodiversity.”

Consultation proposes reducing pollutants, including particulates from wood burners and ammonia from farms – but does little to tackle diesel emissions

A new clean air strategy published by the UK government has been criticised as “hugely disappointing” by the Labour party. Other groups said it did little to tackle the dirty diesel vehicles that are the main source of toxic air in urban areas.

The new strategy, announced on Tuesday by environment secretary, Michael Gove, aims to crack down on a wide range of pollutants. These include particulates from wet wood and coal burning in homes, ammonia emissions from farms and dust from vehicle tyres and brakes.

Lower Benefield, Northamptonshire: When the two eggs hatch, the nomad bee larva’s sickle-shaped jaws make short work of the mining bee larva

Our delayed spring, when it arrived, came in a sudden burst. Each insect species has a calendar slot for emerging from hibernation. For many bees good timing ensures that they emerge when their favourite flowers are opening. For the chocolate mining bee (Andrena scotica), a large, shiny, dark bee that nests in Benefield lawns and banks, success is awaking when the blackthorn blossom bursts.

The thaw triggered an explosion of flowers and insects that in warmer years would have emerged in March and early April, all arrived at once. My car windscreen accrued a sparse smattering of ex-insect life, and others reported similar. It is odd to celebrate pointless high-speed fatalities, but they represent an echo of the richer aerial plankton of past decades, and thereby a flicker of hope for the future.

White clouds of gas billow into the sky over Hawaii as molten rock from the Kilauea volcano pours into the ocean. People have been warned to stay away from the fumes, which are laced with hydrochloric acid and fine glass particles that can irritate the skin and eyes and cause breathing problems.

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact

Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.

The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.

Oh no: an article about how we can be kind to insects (G2, 21 May). Does this go for clothes moths too? They have just eaten through my only ever cashmere sweater. When he sees them, my husband says: “It’s no use killing them – I should torture them and ask where they are coming from.” The Indian tapestry, I suspect. What do they eat in the wild? Is our house “the wild” for them? Do I have to be kind to them?
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife

• If Noah Charney wishes to include the recently sold Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo, in his forthcoming book (Raiders of the lost art, G2, 21 May), he should first look at the many representations of the same subject by Bernardino Luini, in all of which the same error in the depiction of the sphere is made. Luini was a painter from Leonardo’s circle and worked in a similar idiom.
Deirdre Toomey
London

Republicans paid by the fossil fuel industry deny these realities

Last week, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held yet another climate science hearing similar to those from April 2017, February 2017, January 2016, May 2015, June 2014, December 2013, and so on. It seems as though disputing established climate science is House Republicans’ favorite hobby. This time, it was Philip Duffy’s turn to spend two hours playing whack-a-mole with the committee Republicans’ endless supply of long-debunked climate myths.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) claimed that sea level rise is due to the White Cliffs of Dover tumbling into the ocean (yes, really), and his colleagues argued that scientists in the 1970s were predicting global cooling, that Earth is just returning to its “normal temperature,” that Antarctic ice is growing, and sea levels are hardly rising.

Department says it approached the non-profit group just weeks before the budget and had still not signed an agreement
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The government approached a non-profit group that will receive a record grant for reef protection only a few weeks before it announced the deal in the federal budget.

Biomass-burning unit to use pioneering technology that aims to cut emissions

Drax Group will lead a £400,000 trial to capture and store carbon at its north Yorkshire power station in an attempt to kickstart a technology that has repeatedly failed to get off the ground in the UK.

The company was part of earlier efforts to build a £1bn prototype carbon capture coal plant, but pulled out in 2015 after it missed out on renewable energy subsidies. Now the firm will try again with a pioneering form of the technology, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), to cut emissions from one of its four biomass-burning units. Experts believe the project is a world first.

Government urged to take steps to reduce the impact of toxic air on vulnerable children

Clean-air campaigners have written to the government calling for a ban on parents driving their children to school in an attempt to cut down on toxic levels of air pollution.

Environmental groups and medics warn that pollution from the school run is having a serious impact on young people’s health.

21 May 1918 Doubtless this gummy mess, if boiled and strained, would make good soup

Swifts, which for a fortnight have been arriving in small numbers, came with a rush at the weekend, and now the air is full of noisy birds. The swift comes late and leaves early; it has but little time to rear its young, which should be strong enough on the wing to start the return journey in August.

Related: Without the common swift, another silent summer beckons | Andrew Mayers