The Guardian

Migratory birds, rutting stags and leaping salmon are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Roads minister Jesse Norman says government could push councils to do more to fight pollution and inactive living

The UK government could potentially consider providing subsidies for electric bicycles and electric cars as part of a concerted policy effort to get more people cycling, the roads minister, Jesse Norman, has said.

With the UK facing health crises from pollution and inactive living, other plans could include using electric cargo bikes to deliver packages from internet retailers rather than vans, Norman told the Guardian.

Big Moor, Derbyshire The stag ignores the passing lorries but isn’t ready for a photographic closeup

Running south from the old Barbrook reservoir, I found myself struggling against the strong south-westerly that had kept temperatures unusually high for several days and delayed wintering thrushes returning to the moors. The arrival of fieldfares and redwings is always sparkling compensation for the gloomy approach of winter but I would have to wait a little longer. At least the sun was out, turning the sprung shoulders of a kestrel to a vibrant caramel as it quartered the brook below me.

Almost as I reached the Baslow road the sunlight picked out a red deer stag standing tall some distance away, antlers raised, breath steaming from its flared nostrils. At the same time I caught sight of another beast advancing towards the stag with an enormous-lensed camera held to his eye.

National Geographic’s #TellYourPollutionStory asks readers to share their images to shed light on new evidence that pollution – air, water, soil and workplace – is the leading cause of death in the world

Landmark study finds toxic air, water, soils and workplaces kill at least 9m people and cost trillions of dollars every year

Pollution kills at least nine million people and costs trillions of dollars every year, according to the most comprehensive global analysis to date, which warns the crisis “threatens the continuing survival of human societies”.

Toxic air, water, soils and workplaces are responsible for the diseases that kill one in every six people around the world, the landmark report found, and the true total could be millions higher because the impact of many pollutants are poorly understood. The deaths attributed to pollution are triple those from Aids, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Researchers say UK’s enthusiasm for bird feeders compared with mainland Europe responsible for increase in beak length

The reason some birds in Britain have evolved bigger beaks over the past 40 years may be down to the country’s enthusiasm for feeding them in their gardens, researchers have said.

The report published on Thursday in the US journal Science compared beak length among great tits in Britain and the Netherlands, where bird feeders are less common.

Townsville and Rockhampton councils may pay millions more if company’s bid to sew up deal with traditional owners fails

Two local councils are paying $31m to build an airstrip for Adani’s Queensland coalmine – and could fork out millions more if the energy giant’s bid to sew up a deal with traditional owners hits a stumbling block.

Townsville and Rockhampton councils last week announced they would spend $15.5m each on the airport – hundreds of kilometres away – in a deal to secure Adani’s guarantee of 2,200 construction jobs for their residents.

After a new study showed an alarming decline in insect populations we asked you to share your pictures of the creatures, in celebration of all they do for global ecosystems. Here are some of our favourites

• Click to see more contributions and add yours
  

A new study finds alarming decline in insect numbers – we’d like your help celebrating what these creatures do for life on earth

A dramatic plunge in insect numbers reported in a new study has led scientists to predict what they are calling “ecological Armageddon”.

Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, the study says, with serious implications for all life on Earth.

David Yeo’s photography places naturally small species alongside animals that have been selectively bred to be tiny and cute, opening a troubling ethical debate

Hospital issues warning as ‘extraordinary’ spate of bird-inflicted injuries include a penetrated eye that required surgery

A penetrated eye that needed surgery is just one of an “extraordinary” spate of magpie-inflicted injuries in Melbourne, and one hospital has issued a warning about the swooping birds.

The number of eye injuries caused by the bird has risen significantly, according to the emergency director of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear hospital, Dr Carmel Crock.

Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, with serious implications for all life on Earth, scientists say

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.

Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

If you’re not familiar with the new genre of climate fiction, you might be soon.

Cli-Fi refers to “climate fiction;” it is a term coined by journalist Dan Bloom. These are fictional books that somehow or someway bring real climate change science to the reader. What is really interesting is that Cli-Fi books often present real science in a credible way. They become fun teaching tools. There are some really well known authors such as Paolo Bacigalupi and Margaret Atwood among others. A list of other candidate Cli-Fi novels was provided by Sarah Holding in the Guardian.

What makes a Cli-Fi novel good? Well in my opinion, it has to have some real science in it. And it has to get the science right. Second, it has to be fun to read. When done correctly, Cli-Fi can connect people to their world; it can help us understand what future climate may be like, or what current climate effects are.

Legal NGO ClientEarth to take the government back to court if it fails to set out a new range of measures to tackle Britain’s toxic air

Environmental campaigners are set to take the government back to court over what they say are ministers’ repeated failings to deal with the UK’s air pollution crisis.

ClientEarth, which has already won two court battles against the government, has written a legal letter demanding that the environment secretary Michael Gove sets out a range of new measures to address air pollution which contributes to the deaths of 40,000 people across the UK each year.

St Dominic, Tamar Valley Black Rocks and Crimson Queens and Green Chisel pears – colourful fruit with colourful names on show at Cotehele’s Apple Day

Sheltered from rain, inside the display tent at Cotehele’s Apple Day, the perfume of juice and ripe fruit pervades the damp air. Examples of different varieties are pinned to a board and Mary and James (my sister and brother-in-law) have laid out a lavish array from their orchard of local varieties, gathered on rare dry days during recent weeks.

A basket of pears, decorated with swags of rose hips and sloes, includes the large Aston Town (originally found in a pub garden at Launceston), Green Chisel (possibly the Hastings pear), green sweats, various harvest pears, grey and red Catterns, all awaiting the results of genetic tests to confirm their identities.

The killing of two activists who successfully campaigned to shut down a mine has shocked environmentalists in Turkey who fear their deaths will embolden others to kill to protect their profits

• Interactive: recording the deaths of environmental activists around the world

Cedar branches whisper in the Anatolian breeze. Twigs crunch underfoot. A truck rumbles from a distant marble quarry. The crack of a hunter’s rifle echoes through the forest.

The sounds of tranquility and violence intermingle at the remote hillside home of Aysin and Ali Büyüknohutçu, the Turkish beekeepers and environmental defenders whose murder in Finike earlier this year has sent a chill through the country’s conservation movement.

A ceremony at the Natural History Museum, London, will reveal the winners of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition on Wednesday. Two overall winning images have been selected from the winners of each category, depicting the incredible diversity of life on our planet. They are on show with 99 other images selected by an international panel of judges at the 53rd exhibition, which opens at the museum on Friday.

• Researchers find alligators preying on small sharks in Atlantic and Gulf
• ‘The frequency of one predator eating the other is really about size dynamic’

American alligators are frequently seen ambling around golf courses in Florida as players warily compete their rounds. But new research suggests the reptiles partake in a far more outlandish habit when away from the greens – eating sharks.

Related: ‘I don’t want to imagine a world without giant snakes in it’

“Walsall was never a pretty town”, according to Roy Boffy (Letters, 16 October); this may be true now but has not always been the case. Its handsome villas and public buildings were remarked on in 1834 by William White in The History, Gazeteer and Directory of Staffordshire and he believed it needed to yield to no other town in Staffordshire in beauty and elegance. During the 19th century, Walsall added more civic buildings, many built to help improve the life of working people. The 20th and 21st century have not been kind to the town but that is not a reason to forget its history.
Cathy Schling
London

• Regarding Paula Cocozza’s article on “the resource that could power the world” (G2, 15 October), let us not forget that wind has indeed already powered the world in the political and economic sense, powering the sailing ships of naval and merchant fleets that set up the European empires that dominated the pre-20th-century globe.
Beth Cresswell
Hightown, Merseyside

New bill omits key ‘precautionary’ principle requiring developers and industry to prove actions will not harm wildlife or habitats as well as ‘polluter pays’ protections

• Interactive: How will Brexit affect British wildlife?
  

The cornerstones of wildlife and habitat protection have been quietly left out of the withdrawal bill ripping the heart out of environmental law, campaigners say.

A key principle under EU law which provides a robust legal backstop against destruction of the environment – the precautionary principle - has been specifically ruled out of the bill as a means of legal challenge in British courts.