The Guardian

Afon Mawddach, Gwynedd: As I pondered my options, pools of water formed in the carpet of vegetation around my boots

Passengers for Morfa Mawddach station, to use the formal language of the announcement, “should inform the conductor that they wish to alight”. Your reward, if you do so, is a single narrow platform overlooking the salt marsh on the southern side of the Mawddach estuary. The station was once an important railway junction and, almost hidden by the undergrowth, an abandoned platform edge marks where a second track curled eastward towards Dolgellau. This line has been closed for more than 50 years, but the trackbed has found a new life as a route for walkers and cyclists.

From an anti-nuclear court ruling in South Africa to a campaign that nudged the Vietnamese government from coal to renewable energy, the winners of the world’s leading environmental prize are all grassroots activists who have taken on powerful vested interests

Winners are all grassroots activists who have taken on powerful vested interests

• 2018 Goldman environmental prize – the winners in pictures

The world’s foremost environmental prize has announced more female winners than ever before.

The struggle for a healthy planet may sometimes feel like a series of defeats, but this year’s Goldman environmental prize celebrates six remarkable success stories, five of them driven by women.

Report on the state of the world’s birds reveals a biodiversity crisis driven by intensive farming, with once-common species such as puffins and snowy owls now at risk

One in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction, and once widespread creatures such as the puffin, snowy owl and turtle dove are plummeting towards oblivion, according to the definitive study of global bird populations.

The State of the World’s Birds, a five-year compendium of population data from the best-studied group of animals on the planet, reveals a biodiversity crisis driven by the expansion and intensification of agriculture.

• Former NYC mayor criticises Trump for pulling out of deal
• EPA chief Pruitt did meet lobbyist linked to condo, despite denials

The former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he will write a $4.5m cheque to cover this year’s US commitment to the Paris climate agreement.

Related: Macron begins Trump charm offensive with Fox News interview

Pod of orcas spotted between Dunoon and Gourock, thought to be hunting seals or porpoises

A pod of killer whales has been spotted in the river Clyde apparently hunting seals or porpoises.

Images and videos have been posted on social media over the weekend of about half a dozen killer whales, or orcas, between Dunoon and Gourock.

• Pruitt and Steven Hart both denied any recent business
• Two men met at EPA HQ in July 2017 to discuss Chesapeake Bay

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt met in his office last year with a veteran Washington lobbyist tied to the bargain-priced condo where Pruitt was living.

Both Pruitt and lobbyist Steven Hart had previously denied Hart had conducted any recent business with EPA.

Survey suggests pest problem is worst in south-east England, and in flats and pre-1950s housing

Got a lovely collection of cashmere sweaters you don’t want devoured by moths? Then maybe you should move to a new-build house in the east Midlands. That, you see, is the type of dwelling and region least likely to be tormented by the pesky insects, according to a new study by English Heritage at least.

English Heritage conservators have been monitoring the remorseless rise in moth numbers, blamed on a string of exceptionally mild winters – although the survey ended before the spectacularly bitter weather of last winter – and last year invited visitors to their properties to help by collecting free moth traps and reporting their haul.

The environmental scourge of plastic has shot to the top of the political agenda. We talk to the creatives and campaigners behind five imaginative new ventures

Among retailers and manufacturers, they talk of “the Blue Planet effect”. The BBC series, screened late last year, was the moment that many of us realised the catastrophic impact our use of plastics was having on the world’s oceans. Scenes such as a hawksbill turtle snagged in a plastic sack, the albatrosses feeding their chicks plastic or the mother pilot whale grieving for her dead calf, which may have been poisoned by her contaminated milk, are impossible to unsee.

It’s a crisis that affects us all, and the facts make for dispiriting reading. If nothing changes, one study suggests that by 2050 our oceans will have more plastic swimming around, by weight, than fish. It’s already estimated that one third of fish caught in the Channel contain plastic; another piece of research found that “top European shellfish consumers” could potentially consume up to 11,000 pieces of microplastic a year.

Removing a thick fishing rope from a highly fertile whale’s jaw was a priority for scientists who fear the species may be in terminal decline

A mission to disentangle a particularly important North Atlantic right whale from a thick rope wrapped around its jaw has proved a partial success, amid growing fears that the endangered species is approaching a terminal decline.

The individual female whale, known as Kleenex, is considered one of the most productive North Atlantic right whales left in existence, having given birth to eight calves. Its condition has deteriorated, however, since it was spotted off the coast of Delaware in 2014 with a thick fishing rope wrapped around its head and upper jaw.

Taps in capital city of Maputo being turned off every other day as climate change exacerbates southern African drought

In the township of Chamanculo, in Maputo, Mozambique, a network of household taps made the community water pump obsolete years ago, freeing residents from the daily burden of lugging massive jerrycans of water long distances.

But a water crisis, partly caused by an ongoing drought affecting much of southern Africa, is already reversing progress in this coastal city. An emergency “orange alert”, declared last February by the country’s disaster management council after failed rains, has triggered such strict water rationing across the capital city that the taps are turned off every other day and irrigation is banned.

Decision on Tasmanian, NSW and Queensland woodlands’ on hold despite advice from expert committee

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Farmers’ associations, the Tasmanian deputy premier and a Tasmanian Liberal senator lobbied the environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, not to grant critically endangered status to woodlands eligible for protection under Australia’s national environment laws.

In 2017 the independent threatened species scientific committee, which provides scientific advice to the government about conserving threatened species, recommended two new woodlands be listed as critically endangered ecological communities under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Marshwood Vale, Dorset: ‘Askers’, great crested newts, used to be common here but the number of suitable breeding pools has more than halved

It’s the yellow that catches my eye. Bright egg-yolk splotched with black warts, glistening against wet asphalt. Long, striped toes. A forearm flung out, fingers drooping, thumb hanging down, elegant as a lady offering her hand for a kiss. A great crested newt, Triturus cristatus, squashed.

The pattern of pulping suggests a big, ridged tyre, probably a tractor. The driver would never have seen it in the dark, perched up high on his plastic seat, roaring up the lane to feed the heifers, one last job before turning in.

Measures would demand ‘all reasonable measures’ are taken to ensure handlers are licensed

People who have their rubbish dumped illegally could face fines of up to £400, even if they do not personally engage in fly-tipping, under proposals being considered by ministers.

The measures are aimed at tackling people who charge householders to take away their rubbish and then dump it illegally. They build on existing powers to issue on-the-spot fines to save the hefty court costs often involved in pursuing offenders.

The government has pledged to review its long-term climate targets. Renewable energy, housing and and transport are just some areas where new policies could cut emissions fast

More wind farms, solar power and electric cars: these are likely to be the future of the UK, under government plans announced this week to seek a zero-carbon economy in the next 30 years.

Some of the less obvious effects could be just as transformative, however, involving innovations such as smart houses and smart roads, widespread changes to the countryside wrought by new tree-planting and new farming practices designed to conserve soils.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

A newly hatched turtle, a roaming peacock and egrets in China are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Former pro-cyclist Doug Petty has been bringing cyclists to the Balearic island for more than 50 years to ride the famous hairpin bends on its spectacular mountain roads

Mallorca attracts more than 200,000 roadies a year. Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome are usually credited for popularising winter riding on this Spanish Balearic island, but it’s two others who really put the island on the cycling map, one of them quite literally.

1950s pro cyclist Doug Petty has been bringing cyclists to Mallorca every year for 51 years, and he’s been able to keep them coming because of the lure of two twisting roads built in the late-1920s by local engineer Antoni Parietti, who built the snaking carreteres to attract motor tourists. Sports car drivers still head to the Coll dels Reis and the Cap de Formentor mountain road, but the majority of those now skimming Parietti’s curves are pedal powered.

The energy friendly agenda inside Trump’s interior department is revealed in records obtained by the Guardian and the watchdog groups Documented and the Western Values Project

The Texas hornshell is a sleek green-grey mussel that once thrived in the Rio Grande watershed, its habitat stretching from southern New Mexico down into the arid Texas borderlands. Some of its habitat happens to overlap with rich deposits of oil and gas.

Amid a long-term decline in its range, the Obama administration in 2016 proposed to declare the mussel an endangered species. Upon taking office, however, the Trump administration changed tack.

Return of Great Caledonian forest speeded up with fungi spores to help saplings flourish

The return of the Great Caledonian forest that once covered much of Scotland’s highlands is being boosted with a special mix of mushroom spores that should help saplings survive better on the hills.

Fungi living on the roots of trees play a vital role in the ecology, helping to break down nutrients in the soil. But trees were lost in much of the Highlands many years ago so the fungi vanished too.