The Guardian

Mule deer, pronghorn and other animals rely on unbroken migration routes for food and survival, a necessity now in jeopardy as Trump pushes for development

The life of a Wyoming mule deer is a tough one. In order to survive, thousands of the deer undertake an arduous 150-mile migration twice a year to find food. Manmade and natural hazards abound on this two-month trek.

“It’s not just about getting from point A to B, they have to forage all along the way,” said Matt Kauffman, a University of Wyoming zoologist. “These animals are slowly starving to death all winter. If winter is long enough or they are held up, the animals will die.”

Collapsing ice shelves will further accelerate global sea level rise

Very soon, a large portion of an ice shelf in Antarctica will break off and collapse into the ocean. The name of the ice shelf is Larsen C; it is a major extension from of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and its health has implications for other ice in the region, and sea levels globally.

How do we know a portion is going to collapse? Well, scientists have been watching a major rift (crack) that has grown in the past few years, carving out a section of floating ice nearly the size of Delaware. The speed of the crack has increased dramatically in the past few months, and it is nearly cracked through.

Exclusive: Walking or cycling to school is better for children’s health as cars are ‘boxes collecting toxic gases’ says David King

• Opinion: Smoking in cars is banned. But children still inhale toxic fumes in backseats

Children are at risk of dangerous levels of air pollution in cars because exposure to toxic air is often far higher inside than outside vehicles, a former government chief scientific adviser has warned.

Prof Sir David King, writing for the Guardian, says walking or cycling to school would be much better for children’s health. The warning comes as the UK government faces a third legal defeat for failing to tackle the country’s illegal levels of air pollution. Air pollution is known to damage children’s developing lungs but recent research also indicates it harms children’s ability to learn at school and may damage their DNA.

Epping Forest Yellow rattle steals nutrients from grasses, releasing butterfly-friendly plants from the oppression of shade

The poet John Clare crossed here 180 years ago seeking the “furze and clouds” of Buckhurst Hill, but I’m happy to linger on Whitehall Plain amid its dazzling drifts of buttercups. Natural grasslands are now rare in southern England – 98% of them were destroyed in the 50 years after 1945 – and too often seen as easily replicated green space. Not here in Epping Forest, though. Beneath its surface gloss of buttercups, this old pasture, which straddles London’s boundary with Essex, is complex and dynamic.

Related: Yellow rattle: the meadow-maker's helper

Originally published in the Guardian on 17 June 1967

DARTMOOR: The best way to see the country of the high moorland is, I am now convinced, from horseback. A docile eight-year-old mare carried me for three hours over Holne Moor and along the thickly wooded valley of the Dart and provided a morning of great delight. Early in the ride, descending from the moor to the river valley, we started a buzzard from the heather. The bird rose into the air and crossed the valley in gracious soaring and gliding. The silhouette of the buzzard is particularly appropriate to its function as a bird of prey – a menacing dark brown shape with broad wings upturned at the tips. Its loud mewing call which echoed in the confined valley was an eerie warning to small creatures on the ground.

Related: Dilemma on the moor: The truth about pony slaughter on Dartmoor

Engineers call them nano-particles, and close to congested roads and busy airports, we inhale them in astonishing numbers

In 1996, the Scottish scientist Anthony Seaton put forward a new theory about the health problems from modern air pollution. Throughout our evolution, we have always lived with dusts, but Seaton suggested that the problems from modern air pollution were due to the sheer number of tiny pollution particles that we are now exposed to.

Related: Time for the oil industry to snuff out its flares

The world’s biggest companies, from Starbucks to Victoria’s Secret, use prisoners to work on their products. Is it helpful work experience or sheer exploitation?

We are all, at heart, ethical consumers. I’ve never met anyone actively looking for a dose of slave labour with their teabags, window frames or underwear.

71% of companies surveyed in 2015 believed their supply chains might contain some form of slavery

Salmon farmers have been accused of playing dirty by using fish caught in the wild to clean lice from Scottish fish farms. Marine conservation experts say that shipping tonnes of English-caught wrasse a year – to tackle lice infestations in salmon pens north of the border – is endangering natural stocks. English anglers have also warned wrasse is becoming harder and harder to find in local waters.

However, salmon farmers have rejected the charge. They say the use of wrasse as a “cleaner” fish is part of a long-term plan to replace chemicals – which are currently administered to pens to control lice infestations – with sustainable, biological controls.

South Uist The dominant hue will change gradually, as first one then another wildflower species comes to the fore on land left to lie fallow

The continuation of traditional crofting methods ensures that the island’s machair is still celebrated for the spectacular profusion of wildflowers that occurs in the summer. Yellows, whites, purples and blues are all present, though the dominant hue will change gradually, as first one then another species comes to the fore on the land left to lie fallow. But where, after their period of rest, different areas are put back under cultivation, there are other changes in colour.

This spring the grassland down at the end of the track that reaches the sea came under the plough, its green replaced by an expanse of pale open ground. Stretches of machair ready for planting are nothing like prepared fields seen elsewhere in Britain.

Marine mammal experts make ‘really tough decision’ after rough sea conditions hinder rescue attempts

• Australian volunteers help keep animal breathing – video

A juvenile humpback whale that has been beached on the New South Wales mid-north coast for more than a day will be euthanised.

Rough sea conditions had put a hold on attempts to rescue the whale on Sataurday.

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 stalking tiger, playful long-eared owl chicks and a rare dormouse are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

A directeur sportif must juggle route navigation, team communication, tactics and technical backup – all while driving at high speed. Amy Sedghi hitches a ride on the women’s Tour de Yorkshire to see how it’s done

“I need a bike change”. The urgent call comes after about 45km.

Another rider has hit Audrey Cordon-Ragot’s rear wheel in women’s Tour de Yorkshire and the radio crackles with her call for a replacement to be brought forwards. The Wiggle High5 team’s directeur sportif, Donna Rae Szalinski, has her foot on the accelerator and a hand on the horn, beeping a warning at the other support cars as she zips up the right hand side at 70kmh to deliver a new bike.

The highly anticipated Finkel review on the future of the national electricity market was released on Friday. Its weak emissions target breaks Australia’s Paris commitments, but the review may well end the deadlock on carbon emissions that has plagued politics for over a decade

Voluntary initiative marks first time companies from Asia, Europe and US have joined together to stop overfishing, illegal catch and use of slave labour

Nine of the world’s biggest fishing companies have signed up to protect the world’s oceans, pledging to help stamp out illegal activities, including the use of slave labour, and prevent overfishing.

The initiative will be announced on Friday, as part of the UN Ocean Conference this week in New York, the first conference of its kind at which member states are discussing how to meet the sustainable development goal on ocean health.

Helpers endure the rain and swell to look after a whale that became stuck on a beach in New South Wales, Australia. The group used guide ropes to keep the animal upright as the tide fell, enabling it to breathe. The animal, which is nine metres long and weighs about 18 tonnes, will remain beached at least until the high tide arrives in the evening, experts said.

Rescuers will try to refloat the 9m-long juvenile, which weighs up to 18 tonnes, at Sawtell on Saturday morning

Rescuers are working to save a young humpback whale that washed onto a beach on the New South Wales mid-north coast on Friday. The animal, which is nine metres long and weighs around 18 tonnes, would remain beached at least until the high tide arrives in the evening, experts said.

Beachgoers spotted the whale in the surf at Sawtell Beach south of Coffs Harbour early on Friday and it washed closer to shore at about 7am.

Trump’s climate stance is blatant and extreme but just as damaging is the daily denial that goes unchallenged, from airport expansion to pub patio heaters. A first step to change is to call it out #DailyClimateDenial

You know things are bad when it takes Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement for climate change to be discussed during the UK election. His climate denial is of the extreme and obvious variety: pages were removed from the Environmental Protection Agency website explaining its causes and consequences when he came into office.

Equally if not more damaging, however, is the daily climate denial that passes mostly unremarked all around us. The Institute of Directors recently proposed not one, but two new airport runways for London in a report called Let’s push things forward. It made no mention of the effect on rising emissions and a better title might have been “Let’s push things over the edge”. The oil company BP’s irony free sponsorship of the British Museum’s Sunken Cities exhibition merely highlighted how removed climate now is from our everyday cultural imagination.

Chief scientist’s report flies in the face of previous recommendations on reducing electricity emissions

Less than two weeks ago, Alan Finkel told the Senate his landmark report would help Australia meet the commitments it made in Paris to reduce its economy-wide emissions by 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

But his recommendations on the future of the National Electricity Market, released today, appear to fly in the face of those very commitments.

Langstone, Hampshire Bees scouting the hawthorn unrolled their tongues to mop up the sticky fluid excreted by the greenfly

Since mid May the hawthorn next to my kitchen window has been covered with greenfly. The leaves and stems are plastered with clusters of the sap-sucking insects and a dandruff of white cast skins, which the sub-adults moult as they mature.

Reproducing asexually by parthenogenesis, these aphids give birth to live offspring born with the embryos of the next generation inside their bodies. Nymphs reach sexual maturity in as little as five days, and a reproductively active adult can produce up to 12 genetic copies of itself a day.