The Guardian

As more urban trees face the prospect of being felled – now at a rate of almost 60 a day – we asked Guardian readers to share their pictures of trees in their neighbourhoods. These are a few of our favourites

Akademgorodok is a science centre situated in a remote Siberian forest. Photographer Pablo Ortíz Monasterio gained access to marvel at its brightly coloured chemistry labs and nuclear particle accelerators

Petersfield, Hampshire Bags of picnic rubbish littered the lakeside, and rats were helping themselves to bread left for the ducks

After enduring weeks of overcast skies and squally showers, hordes of visitors had evidently spent the day at the heath, making the most of the long-awaited sunshine.

A confetti of carelessly discarded sweet and ice lolly wrappers littered the path to the 22-acre Heath Pond. The bins were overflowing with bottles, cans and fast food packaging, but rather than taking their rubbish home people had resorted to dumping bags of picnic detritus beside them.

Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions last financial year were the highest since 2011, despite the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power plant

Emissions from the electricity sector in the three months to June dropped by the biggest amount on record, as the effect of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station closure is seen for the first time in quarterly projections produced exclusively for the Guardian.

But even that drop wasn’t enough to stop Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions from continuing to rise. Emissions from almost every other sector – industrial energy, transport, industrial heat and agriculture – all rose. They are the highest levels seen since before the carbon tax was repealed, according to projections by consultants at Ndevr Environmental.

Joe Corré accuses multinational petrochemical company of ‘bully boy tactics’ to prevent legitimate protest against its fracking activities in the UK

An environmental campaigner is challenging the legality of a wide-ranging injunction obtained against protesters by a multinational firm that he criticised as being “draconian, anti-democratic and oppressive”.

Joe Corré accused petrochemical giant Ineos of using “disgusting bully boy tactics” against campaigners who want to protest against the firm’s fracking operations.

Northumberland coastline famed for Arctic terns and Atlantic puffins granted greater protection by Natural England

A stretch of coastline which is one of the most important sites in the UK for seabirds such as Arctic terns and Atlantic puffins has been given greater protection.

The newly-designated Northumberland marine special protected area (SPA) stretches 12 miles from the coast into the North Sea, covering an area larger than 120,000 football pitches, government conservation body Natural England said.

It came without warning, and without equivalent. Now a flash drought is fueling fires and hurting the lives of those who work the land

When Rick Kirn planted his 1,000 acres of spring wheat in May, there were no signs of a weather calamity on the horizon. Three months later, when he should have been harvesting and getting ready to sell his wheat, Kirn was staring out across vast cracked, gray, empty fields dotted with weeds and little patches of stunted wheat.

“It’s a total loss for me,” said Kirn, who operates a small family wheat farm on the Fort Peck Reservation, an area of north-eastern Montana that lies right in the heart of the extreme climactic episode. “There’s nothing to harvest.”

Government data reveals Tesco deducted administration costs from plastic bag sales, unlike other major supermarkets, angering senior MPs

Millions of pounds in administration costs were deducted from the charitable donations made by Tesco using funds generated from the plastic bag tax, government data has revealed. No other major supermarket made any such deductions, leading senior MPs to urge Tesco to follow their lead.

The 5p charge for plastic bags was introduced in England in October 2015 and has led to an 83% reduction in their use, equivalent to 9bn fewer bags. It is also credited with a drop by nearly half in plastic bags found littering beaches.

What would the world be like if we weren’t dependent on oil? Photographer Richard Allenby-Pratt imagines a deserted Dubai in which the wealthy have fled, leaving giraffes and zebras to wander the alien landscapes

London-based designer Ryan Yasin used his background in aeronautical engineering to develop sustainable clothing to fit babies through to toddlers

An origami-inspired range of children’s clothing made from a durable pleated fabric that expands to fit growing babies and toddlers has won its 24-year-old designer a prestigious James Dyson award.

Ryan Yasin devised the material using scientific principles he studied for his aeronautical engineering degree, after noting the lack of sustainability in the clothing industry and being frustrated by how quickly his baby niece and nephew outgrew garments he bought for them.

Australia’s politicians marked the country’s annual Threatened Species Day by welcoming a range of animals to Canberra – some of whom were more happy to be there than others. The day marks the death of the last Tasmanian thylacine in 1936

Federal funding for biodiversity conservation has dropped by 37% since 2013 and all MPs need to take greater action

Australia is rapidly losing its world-famous biodiversity. More than 90 species have gone extinct since European colonisation (including three in just the past decade) and more than 1,700 species are now formally recognised as being in danger of extinction.

Despite the pride many Australians feel in our unique natural heritage (and the billions of dollars made from nature-based tourism), the amount of federal funding for biodiversity conservation has dropped by 37% since 2013.

Parasites such as lice and fleas are crucial to ecosystems, scientists say, and extinctions could lead to unpredictable invasions

Climate change could wipe out a third of all parasite species on Earth, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date.

Tapeworms, roundworms, ticks, lice and fleas are feared for the diseases they cause or carry, but scientists warn that they also play a vital role in ecosystems. Major extinctions among parasites could lead to unpredictable invasions of surviving parasites into new areas, affecting wildlife and humans and making a “significant contribution” to the sixth mass extinction already under way on Earth.

Gliders listed as threatened by both state and federal governments, but they are not protected by legislation

Logging has begun in trees inhabited by the threatened greater gliders in a forest also inhabited by Victoria’s faunal emblem, the threatened Leadbeater’s possum.

Protections for the remaining Leadbeater’s possum population – believed to be fewer than 2,500 breeding individuals left in the wild – mean logging will be halted within 200m of known colonies. But no such protection exists for the greater gliders, which have been listed as threatened by both state and federal governments.

The victims were targeted by a criminal gang who wanted to use their lands to grow lucrative palm oil, according to local indigenous leaders

Six farmers have been shot dead by a criminal gang who wanted to seize their farms to muscle in on the lucrative palm oil trade, according to indigenous Amazon leaders in Peru.

Local leaders in the central Amazon region of Ucayali say the victims were targeted last Friday because they had refused to give up their land.

Developer TuNur has applied to build a 4.5GW plant in the Sahara and pipe enough electricity via submarine cables to power two million European homes

An enormous solar park in the Sahara could soon be exporting electricity to Europe if Tunisia’s government approves an energy company’s request to build it.

The 4.5GW mega-project planned by TuNur would pipe electricity to Malta, Italy and France using submarine cables in the grandest energy export project since the abandoned Desertec initiative.

Many UK councils are planning to restrict parking and idling near school gates, with fines of up to £130 in some cases

Parents across the country face tough restrictions – and even fines – over driving their children to the school gates, in a push by councils on road safety and pollution.

As the new academic year begins, a survey of councils shows many are enforcing laws preventing parking immediately outside the school gates, using CCTV cameras and mobile monitoring vehicles to crack down on parents flouting the rules.

Confectionery firm also launches M&Ms renewable energy campaign as part of a growing corporate backlash against the US’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal

The corporate backlash is growing against Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, with Mars launching a $1bn sustainability plan and an M&M’s campaign centred on renewable energy.

It is the latest climate move by the family owned firm, which emerged as a vocal critic of the US president’s decision to pull out of the 2015 climate pact, saying it was “disappointed” with the withdrawal and stressing that corporations could not go it alone when it came to tackling climate change.

Planning application for 5,000 houses in Kent is withdrawn following a long campaign but wildlife site remains at risk from future developments

One of the best sites in England for endangered nightingales will not be covered in 5,000 new houses after a long campaign by environmental charities.

The planning application to build on the former Ministry of Defence site of Lodge Hill, Kent, has been withdrawn ahead of a public inquiry into the controversial development.

New studies reveal that tiny plastic fibres are everywhere, not just in our oceans but on land too. Now we urgently need to find out how they enter our food, air and tap water and what the effects are on all of us

Sometimes a single revelation opens our eyes to a whole new view of the world. The contamination of tap water around the world with microplastics, exposed on Wednesday in the Guardian, unmasks Earth as a planet pervasively polluted with plastic.

What that means for the seven billion people who live on it, no one yet knows. All the experts can agree on is that, given the warning signs being given by life in the oceans, the need to find out is urgent.