The Guardian

The pub chain’s decision to do away with straws is expected to stop 70m of them ending up in landfill or the sea every year. Here are some other plastics we perhaps could do without

Drinkers heading to Wetherspoon’s for a tipple will have to do without plastic straws from the end of this year as the cheap (and occasionally cheerful) high-street pub chain does its bit to tackle the problem of global plastic pollution.

Following on the heels of companies such as Tesco, which last month announced it would stop selling its 5p single-use plastic bags, Wetherspoon’s senses the tide is turning against unnecessary plastics and claims that the move will stop 70m plastic straws finding their way into landfill or the world’s oceans every year.

Campaigners welcome U-turn on Renca reserve but threat still exists as Brazil president has close ties to mining industry

Amazon conservation groups have hailed a victory as the Brazilian government announced a U-turn on plans to open up swaths of the the world’s biggest forest to mining corporations.

President Michel Temer had sparked outrage in August when he announced a decree to abolish the Renca reserve, an area of 17,800 square miles – roughly the size of Switzerland – that is an important carbon sink and home to some of the world’s richest biodiversity.

• Trump administration reversed ban in August despite environmental protest
• Activists say plastic is biggest threat to environment after climate change

A ban on bottled water in 23 national parks prevented up to 2m plastic bottles from being used and discarded every year, a US national park service study found. That is equivalent to up to 326 barrels of oil worth of emissions, 419 cubic yards of landfill space and 111,743lb of plastic, according to the May study.

Despite that, the Trump administration reversed the bottled water ban just three months later, a decision that horrified conservationists and pleased the bottled water industry.

Neglected by most conservation groups, the Burmese python has a champion in Shariar Caesar Rahman.

Here’s a fact that illuminates many of the realities of global conservation: we know more about Burmese pythons in Florida – where they are a destructive invader – than about their lives in their natural range in Southeast Asia, where their numbers are plummeting and their very long-term survival may be up in the air.

Armed with a shoestring budget and a love for mega-snakes, Shariar Caesar Rahman is trying to rectify this incongruent reality by doing something no one has done in Bangladesh before. He’s attaching radio transmitters to snakes – really, really big snakes.

Plant and animal species that are the foundation of our food supplies are as endangered as wildlife but get almost no attention, a new report reveals

• Comment: Chips, chocolate and coffee – our food crops face mass extinction too
  

The sixth mass extinction of global wildlife already under way is seriously threatening the world’s food supplies, according to experts.

“Huge proportions of the plant and animal species that form the foundation of our food supply are just as endangered [as wildlife] and are getting almost no attention,” said Ann Tutwiler, director general of Bioversity International, a research group that published a new report on Tuesday.

It’s not just animals, many seed crops are also endangered. So why is agrobiodiversity so overlooked? This valuable source of affordable, nutritious food could disappear if we don’t act

• Read more: Sixth mass extinction of wildlife also threatens global food supplies

A “sixth mass extinction” is already under way, scientists are now warning us. Species such as the Bengal tiger and blue whale are vanishing at an alarming rate, and mournful eulogies are being written on how those born in 20 years’ time may never see an African elephant. But who is writing the eulogy for our food? Huge proportions of the plant and animal species that form the foundation of our food supply – known as agrobiodiversity ­– are just as endangered and are getting almost no attention.

Take some consumer favourites: chips, chocolate and coffee. Up to 22% of wild potato species are predicted to become extinct by 2055 due to climate change. In Ghana and Ivory Coast, where the raw ingredient for 70% of our chocolate is grown, cacao trees will not be able to survive as temperatures rise by two degrees over the next 40 years. Coffee yields in Tanzania have dropped 50% since 1960.

Sandy, Bedfordshire Once full of lambs, today the field is a thigh-high forest of vegetation and saplings rise above the jungle

Down by the river is a place that five springs ago was a field full of lambs. I had spent a couple of years there acting as “lookerer” (or volunteer shepherd) for a flock of Southdown sheep, and on one blossom-filled morning of cuckoo flowers and lesser celandines, I helped the shepherd with a difficult birth.

Related: Country diary: Sandy, Bedfordshire: The best midwife in his field – a shepherd gets to grips with lambing

We should use our collective purchasing power to send a clear message to businesses threatening communities across the globe, says Ruth Chambers

John Vidal shines a light on communities across Africa, Latin America and Asia fighting to protect their land, water and livelihoods (Land defenders call on UN to act against violence by state-funded and corporate groups, theguardian.com, 21 September). The efforts of these land rights defenders benefit us all. The forests and land they fight to protect provide globally important carbon stores, havens for wildlife, life-saving medicines and clean water for millions. But these lands are often sacrificed to grow crops or mine metals that end up in our everyday lives. As consumers, we should use our collective purchasing power to send a clear message to businesses that these lands – and their people – matter, and they should be protected.
Ruth Chambers
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

A Highway Code prompt aimed solely at cyclists – not to the road users that caused more than 99% of deaths on UK roads last year – has nothing to do with improving safety

On Friday, transport minister Jesse Norman wrote to cycling leaders asking them to remind their members to follow the Highway Code. The letter came less than 48 hours after the announcement of a review on whether the law should be changed to tackle dangerous cycling.

Right-wing media outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh echoed the Mail’s “significantly misleading” and now censured climate story

Back in February, the conservative UK tabloid Mail on Sunday ran an error-riddled piece by David Rose attacking Noaa climate scientists, who had published data and a paper showing that there was never a global warming pause. The attack was based on an interview with former Noaa scientist John Bates, who subsequently admitted about his comments:

I knew people would misuse this. But you can’t control other people.

A record 60,000 people took part in the Big Butterfly Count but each participant saw on average only 11 butterflies, the lowest since the count began in 2010

Summer’s washout failed to dampen the prospects for the red admiral, one of the UK’s most popular butterflies, whose numbers rose by 75% compared with last year, according to the annual Big Butterfly Count.

Other butterfly species were less fortunate, however, with declines seen across the three common species of white butterflies. The green-veined white and both the large white and small white were down more than a third on last year, reflecting difficult weather conditions.

Allendale, Northumberland I count 50 butterflies working the double row of sedums spilling their sticky scent onto the early morning air

There’s an urgency to the swallows’ flight as they hurtle low over the field, snatching flies that the restless cattle have disturbed. With a late brood just fledged from the barn, they have a keen need for food. There’s also a sense of limited time in the frenzy of bees and butterflies rummaging through late flowers within the walled enclosure of the garden. This little domain within the valley provides them with an end-of-season smörgåsbord. Most of the plants I grow are for both day- and night-flying insects, chosen for their pollen and nectar or as food plants for caterpillars.

The sun has only been up for half an hour. A butterfly is pressed against the house wall to absorb warmth after the night. A red admiral with pristine wings. I inch up slowly so I can study its striped antennae, its black-haired body, its legs braced against the stone. It is one of many, drawn by the mass of sedums that are spilling their sticky scent onto the early morning air. I count 50 butterflies slowly working the double row planted either side of the path. As the day heats up they will become a restless throng, jostling with the numerous bumblebees, flies and honeybees among the deep pink flowers.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 28 September 1917

Though the Food Controller may consider that the supply of fresh-water fish is not of great importance, the cormorants evidently hold a different opinion. There were two busily sampling what they could catch on one of the Delamere meres; they thought a big, lazy bream well worth diving for. Was it this idea which attracted a passing shag – the smaller and much rarer green cormorant – to see what it could find on the canal near Mossley? Probably it was either lost or fagged out when migrating, for it allowed itself to be caught, and when I last heard of it, three days ago, was thriving well in captivity. The big cormorant often wanders inland for a little fishing, but the shag is seldom met with far from the sea.

India was once home to 100,000 rice varieties, but high-yield, less hardy hybrids have taken over encouraging farmers to safeguard more resistant strains

India is rice country: the cereal provides daily sustenance for more than 60% of the population. Half a century ago, it was home to more than 100,000 rice varieties, encompassing a stunning diversity in taste, nutrition, pest-resistance and, crucially in this age of climate change and natural disasters, adaptability to a range of conditions.

Today, much of this biodiversity is irretrievably lost, forced out by the quest for high-yield hybrids and varieties encouraged by government agencies. Such “superior” varieties now cover more than 80% of India’s rice acreage.

Health minister responds to Abbott’s hint that his party kept him from scrapping the RET, saying 33,000GwH was the minimum the Senate would accept

Tony Abbott wasn’t kept from reducing the renewable energy target by his colleagues while he was leader, one of his former ministers has claimed, despite the former prime minister appearing to point the finger at his own party.

Abbott reignited the Coalition’s energy debate last week, by going on the attack against any further move by the Turnbull government towards renewables, threatening to cross the floor if it headed towards the “unconscionable” direction of encouraging further investment in the renewable market.

Let’s banish bleach – it really isn’t a healthy way to clean the loo, and there are perfectly good green alternatives

It seems obvious that exposure to powerful cleaning products, including bleach, isn’t ideal, but now there’s powerful evidence of just how harmful they can be.

Using them just once a week could increase a person’s chances of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by nearly a third, according to a recent 30-year study from Harvard University and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. This isn’t the first time a link has been shown between serious health problems and everyday spray products. The culprit used to be phosphates, once the heroes of gleam, and omnipresent in laundry and dishwasher detergent. But in water, phosphates caused toxic bacteria growth. They were stopped, primarily by us – revolting consumers (in every sense).

New Forest Octopus-like tentacles are stained with what appears to be congealed blood and there’s a stink of rotting flesh

Naturalists need good contacts, and generalists such as me depend on observant friends to pass the word when they see anything that might be of interest. A phone call alerted me. My friend had spotted a photographer at work, and enquired what he was taking. He had been tipped off that there was a rare fungus nearby and had come to get some pictures of it. Jeremy thought I should know.

Health comes from the ground up, Charles Massy says – yet chemicals used in agriculture are ‘causing millions of deaths’. Susan Chenery meets the writer intent on changing everything about the way we grow, eat and think about food

The kurrajong tree has scars in its wrinkled trunk, the healed wounds run long and vertical under its ancient bark. Standing in front of the homestead, it nestles in a dip on high tableland from which there is a clear view across miles and miles of rolling plains to the coastal range of south-east Australia.

Charles Massy grew up here, on the sweeping Monaro plateau that runs off the eastern flank of Mount Kosciuszko, an only child enveloped by the natural world, running barefoot, accompanied by dogs and orphaned lambs. Fifth generation, he has spent his adult life farming this tough, lean, tussock country; he is of this place and it of him. But when his friend and Aboriginal Ngarigo elder Rod Mason came to visit he discovered that a lifetime of intimately knowing the birds, trees and animals of this land wasn’t significant at all.

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A selection of the best photographs from around the word including Milan fashion, the autumn equinox and some herdsmen in lederhosen