The Guardian

Photographer Matthew Staver and writer Oliver Milman visited the US National Wildlife Property Repository, where illegal wildlife products, from stuffed tigers to worked ivory, are stored and counted

If the US had a national house of horrors, it would probably be the federal government compound that lies on the fringes of Denver, Colorado, incongruously set within a wildlife reserve where bison languorously dawdle against a backdrop of the snow-crowned Rockies.

The National Wildlife Property Repository, operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), is a warehouse of the macabre. It’s a Noah’s ark of protected deceased biodiversity that smugglers attempted to get into the US before being caught by FWS staff at airports and ports.

Wolsingham, Weardale The grasshoppers are singing, dragging the little pegs on their hind femurs across the edges of their long membranous wings

In the 40 years that I have followed this steep, stony, path leading down to Tunstall reservoir, one moorland edge bank of fescues, betony and bell heather has always been a reliable spot for grasshoppers. Facing south-west, sheltered from wind by a larch plantation it’s a perfect place to sit on a sunny afternoon and listen to their soundtrack of summer.

You would need more finely tuned ears than mine to distinguish all 13 of our grasshopper species by their songs, but here I have only ever found two; the meadow, Chorthippus parallelus, and the common green, Omocestus viridulus.

First global analysis of all mass–produced plastics has found humans have produced 8.3bn tonnes since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or oceans

Humans have produced 8.3bn tonnes of plastic since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or polluting the world’s continents and oceans, according to a new report.

The first global analysis of all mass–produced plastics has found that it has outstripped most other man-made materials, threatening a “near permanent contamination of the natural environment”.

Australian Conservation Foundation asks environment and energy minister to revoke Carmichael mine approval

A fresh legal challenge could be brewing for Adani’s planned Carmichael coalmine. New advice has found the federal environment minister’s approval of the mine may have been unlawful in light of new scientific evidence of its impacts on the endangered black-throated finch.

As a result, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has asked the federal minister for the environment and energy, Josh Frydenberg, revoke the approval and ask Adani to resubmit its plans for consideration.

Brexit department warns EU counterparts it will ‘return waste to its country of origin’ if an agreement on nuclear cooperation cannot be reached

Britain has warned the EU that it could return boatloads of radioactive waste back to the continent if the Brexit talks fail to deliver an agreement on nuclear regulation.

In what is being taken in Brussels as a thinly veiled threat, a paper setting out the UK position for the negotiations stresses the right “to return radioactive waste … to its country of origin” should negotiations collapse.

Neart na Gaoithe project on east coast likely to go ahead after long-running court battle despite claim it threatens seabirds

A £2bn offshore windfarm in Scotland looks set to go ahead after the RSPB lost a long-running legal challenge against the plans, which the conservationists said threatened puffins, gannets and kittiwakes.

The Scottish government gave its consent to four major windfarms in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay in 2014, but the RSPB launched a judicial review, saying it was extremely concerned at the impact on seabirds.

Catholic order builds chapel in middle of cornfield in attempt to use religious freedom protections to block Atlantic Sunrise pipeline

Catholic nuns in Pennsylvania are resisting plans to build a $3bn pipeline for gas obtained by fracking through its land by creating a rudimentary chapel along the proposed route and launching a legal challenge, citing religious freedom.

The Adorers of the Blood of Christ order has filed a complaint against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in a bid to keep the pipeline off their land. The nuns’ lawyers argue in court papers that a decision by FERC to force them to accommodate the pipeline is “antithetical to the deeply held religious beliefs and convictions of the Adorers”.

The wall of Republican climate denial is starting to crack; who will be the Neo that accelerates the process?

Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt wants to hold televised ‘Red Team/Blue Team’ climate science ‘debates.’ The idea is that a ‘Red Team’ of scientists will challenge the mainstream findings of ‘Blue Team’ scientists. That may sound familiar, because it’s exactly how the peer-review process works. But climate deniers have lost the debate in the peer-reviewed literature, with over 97% of peer-reviewed studies endorsing the consensus on human-caused global warming, and the few contrarian papers being flawed and failing to withstand scientific scrutiny.

So Scott Pruitt is trying to put his thumb on the scale, giving the less than 3% of contrarian scientists equal footing on a ‘Red Team.’ John Oliver showed how to do a statistically representative televised climate debate (so brilliantly that it’s been viewed 7.4m times), but it’s probably not what Pruitt had in mind:

Flooding in Cornish coastal village of Coverack described as horrendous, and further deluges possible further north

Much of England and Wales has been warned to prepare for more stormy weather and localised flooding after several people in Cornwall had to be rescued from flash floods overnight.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms caused “devastating” flooding in the coastal village of Coverack in Cornwall on Tuesday, with about 50 homes and businesses affected. Met Office forecasters put in place a yellow warning, the lowest of the three weather warnings, for most of the rest of Wednesday and said that as much as two-thirds of a month’s average rainfall could come down in a few hours.

Every winter thousands of giant Australian cuttlefish gather to breed in a stretch of shallow, rocky water off Point Lowly in South Australia. The phenomenon, known as an aggregation, is the only known instance of cuttlefish gathering in such large numbers – it is estimated there can be more than 150,000 in a 10km stretch of water – and has become a tourist as well as scientific attraction. This video, taken by mpaynecreative.tv, captures male cuttlefish as they display their brightest pigments in a bid to attract females. It is not known why the giant Cuttlefish aggregate in this area particularly but it is believed they are likely attracted to the shallow rocky area along the coast as it provides optimal habitat to lay their eggs. Video courtesy of mpaynecreative.tv

Four re-introduced beavers in Scotland engineered a network of dams, canals and ponds that left the landscape ‘unrecognisable’ from the original drained pasture

The extraordinary ability of eager beavers to engineer degraded land into wildlife-rich wetlands has been revealed by a new study in Scotland.

Scientists studied the work of a group of four re-introduced beavers over a decade and found their water engineering prowess created almost 200m of dams, 500m of canals and an acre of ponds. The result was a landscape “almost unrecognisable” from the original pasture that was drained over 200 years ago, with the number of plant species up by nearly 50% and richly varied habitats established across the 30 acre site.

June 2017 was beaten only by June in 2015 and 2016, leaving experts with little hope for limiting warming to 1.5C or even 2C

Last month was the third-hottest June on record globally, temperature data suggest, confirming 2017 will almost certainly make a hat-trick of annual climate records, with 2015, 2016 and 2017 being the three hottest years since records began.

The figures also cement estimations that warming is now at levels not seen for 115,000 years, and leave some experts with little hope for limiting warming to 1.5C or even 2C.

A recovery from near total collapse has led North Sea cod stocks to be labelled as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council for the first time in 20 years

Fish and chip lovers can now enjoy North Sea cod with a clear conscience, after the fishery was awarded sustainable status by the Marine Stewardship Council on Wednesday.

Stocks of cod in the North Sea were once one of the world’s great fisheries but plummeted by 84% between the early 1970s and 2006. They came perilously close to the total collapse seen in the Grand Banks fishery off Canada in the early 1990s, which has still not recovered.

Trevone to Padstow, Cornwall From higher land the ocean appears even more azure, like the sky now streaked with cirrus

Beneath the clearing sky, people gravitate from car park and cafe towards the life-guarded beach. By Roundhole Point, kayakers paddle and huddle around their instructor, and further west, low tide reveals the expanse of sand in Harlyn Bay.

Close to the shore alexanders along a track are clustered with an abundance of little stripy snails along the bare stems and among the umbels of black seeds. Perhaps these snails relish the celery flavour and thrive in the mild seaside weather, but (as with the tourists and sun-seekers) their numbers diminish away from the sea.

Water pours through a sea wall in the Cornish village of Coverack on Tuesday after the area was hit by flash flooding. Emergency workers attempt to clear debris to allow water to flow back down to the ocean. Six people were trapped in a house in the village due to the flood waters but no injuries have been reported

• Homes evacuated as Cornwall hit by flash floods

Elephant Action League’s sting operation shows how horns are trafficked from Africa and enter into China via Vietnam, alleging official complicity

Rhinoceros horn can be easily bought in China despite it being illegal since 1993. The rhino horn products in antiques shop are far from antique. They are new and most likely been illegally trafficked from Africa to Vietnam and then into China.

A new report from Elephant Action League (EAL), Grinding Rhino: An Undercover Investigation on Rhino Horn Trafficking in China and Vietnam, shows how rhino horn makes its way into shops in China, the largest illegal market for rhino horn in the world. EAL’s 11-month investigation, called Operation Red Cloud, targeted the supply chain, exposing the players, the networks, and the means by which rhino horn is trafficked into China.

Demand for cheaper food and lower production costs is turning green fields into industrial sheds to process vast amounts of meat and poultry

• UK has nearly 800 livestock mega farms, investigation reveals
  

Since the days of the wild west frontier, the popular image of American farming has been of cowboys rounding up steers on wide open ranches, to whoops, whips and hollers. Today, the cowboys on their ranches under wide open skies have been replaced by vast sheds, hulking over the plains, housing tens of thousands of animals each, with the noises and smells spreading far beyond their fences.

The US has led the world in large-scale farming, pioneering the use of intensive livestock rearing in hog farms, cattle sheds and sheep pens. There are now more than 50,000 facilities in the US classified as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), with another quarter of a million industrial-scale facilities below that threshold.

Heavy rain in Turkey’s biggest city have caused substantial flooding on its roads and Metro network. Commuters attempting to get to work captured the scenes as rainwater invaded the city’s underground transport system, submerging rail tracks and rushing down flights of stairs. Rainfall is expected to decrease in the next 18 hours

More than 140 products including crisps and popcorn put in smaller, redesigned packets with reduced air pocket, but same amount of food

A major UK supermarket has slashed the amount of packaging used for its popular snacks such as crisps and popcorn by reducing the pocket of air at the top of the bag.

As a result of so-called ‘Project Thin Air’, more than 140 of Marks & Spencer’s best-selling products have been redesigned and repackaged in smaller, less bulky packets containing the same amount of food as before.

Air pollution is ‘the tobacco of the 21st century’ says report, which calls on government to introduce radical measures to improve air quality

Dangerous levels of air pollution in towns and cities across the north of England are threatening the health of hundreds of thousands of people and stifling economic growth, according to a new report.

The analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) North describes air pollution as “the tobacco of the 21st century” and says that while there has been a growing concern about the problem in London, many residents in regional towns and cities are unaware of the threat to their health.