The Guardian

From epic vistas to the churn of industry, 19th-century American photographers captured a country beginning to define its identity

Mild winter, cold spring and late summer lead to fall in numbers as 40 of 57 species struggle to cope with fluctuating weather

Butterflies in the UK have suffered one of their worst years on record, with 70% of all species experiencing a decline in numbers over the past year, according to conservationists.

The annual UK butterfly monitoring scheme (UKBMS) found that 40 out of the 57 species studied saw numbers drop between 2015 and 2016, making 2016 the fourth worst year on record for the insects.

Croft Castle, Herefordshire The noble parasite is an actor in the uncanny drama of life feeding on life

She looks like a fly in a fur coat; her wings made of clear cellophane with black bat markings; her syringe proboscis not for piercing flesh but sipping nectar; she is either a blur of speed or a full stop. The bee-fly is a chimera of contradictions and as true a sprite of spring as any of the animals associated with the season.

Sunlight forms pools under the ancient trees in the park at Croft Castle in Herefordshire. The great trunks of sweet chestnut trees, grown according to legend from chestnuts captured from Spanish ships at the Battle of Trafalgar, spiral on a bank above an oak that is a thousand years old. Its massive trunk, broken, bulging with the fearlessly mischievous expression of Pan himself, still sprouts living branches.

Call for Palaszczuk government to allow crocodile-hunting safaris in far north Queensland follows string of recent attacks

Queensland’s Katter Australian party MPs are threatening to block the upcoming state budget, unless the Palaszczuk government culls crocodiles.

The Mount Isa MP, Robbie Katter, said he and fellow KAP MP Shane Knuth will block the budget unless the government supports their legislation to establish crocodile safaris in far north Queensland, along with other management strategies.

Company should not receive $900m loan for rail line because it claims project is viable without it, shadow minister for resources says

Adani should not receive a $900m concessional loan for a rail line from its proposed Carmichael mine because the company claims the project is commercially viable without taxpayer funds, Jason Clare has said.

Speaking on Radio National on Wednesday, the shadow resources and northern Australia minister said it would be “terrific” if the project went ahead and created jobs but it should “stand on its own two feet”.

Australia’s Climate Council is calling for further action to protect the world’s coral reefs. It has released a report putting the value of the marine environments at an astounding $1tn based on the estimated 500 million people they support in 50 countries. Damage to coral caused by warming oceans threatens tourism and other industries

• Loss of coral reefs caused by rising sea temperatures could cost $1tn globally

Loss of Great Barrier Reef alone could cost north Queensland 1m visitors a year, imperilling 10,000 jobs and draining $1bn from economy

The loss of coral reefs caused by rising sea temperatures could cost $1 trillion globally, a report from Australia’s Climate Council has projected, with the loss of Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef alone costing that region 1m visitors a year, imperilling 10,000 jobs and draining $1bn from the economy.

The longest global coral bleaching event on record, which began in 2014 and has affected some reefs in consecutive years, has given reefs little chance to recover, and should be a “wake-up call” to act to save the natural and economic assets, the Climate Council’s Lesley Hughes said.

Corey Arnold is a fine art photographer and a commercial fisherman, working the stormy waters of the Bering Sea by Alaska. His latest work documents life in this remote wilderness, both at sea and on the shore, capturing trawlers, foxes, eagles and the grandeur of the scenery. Aleutian Dreams can be seen at Charles A Hartman Fine Art in Portland, Oregon, until 27 May

Prime minister also confirmed company would seek $1bn government loan to fund rail line for $16bn project, after meeting Gautam Adani in New Delhi

Malcolm Turnbull has assured the Indian billionaire hoping to build Australia’s largest coal mine in Queensland, Gautam Adani, that native title issues will not stop the $16bn project.

The prime minister, who is halfway through a four-day visit to India, also confirmed the Adani Group would seek a $1bn government loan to fund a rail line for the Carmichael mine project, but said Adani understood the request would be independently assessed.

Bert Van Manen opposes federal loan to Indian miner for Carmichael coalmine, saying government or rail company should build the link instead

A Coalition backbencher has broken ranks with senior colleagues by declaring Adani should not receive a $1bn federal loan to build a railway for its Carmichael coalmine.

Bert Van Manen, MP for the south-east Queensland seat of Forde, said he supported opening up the Galilee coalfields but the government or a rail company should build and run the rail link to port, not the miner.

New arachnids found in Queensland include brush-footed trap-door spider, which looks like a funnel web and can walk up glass doors

More than 50 new species of spider, including a peacock spider with a “wonderful courtship behaviour, like dancing”, have been discovered in Queensland Australia’s Cape York region, during a 10-day trip by scientists from the Queensland Museum.

The new arachnids, which are now being formally classified, include a brush-footed trap-door spider, a large black creature that looks like a funnel web with the added power of being able to walk up glass doors; a new species of swift spider, with fuzzy black and white front legs; and several new species of ant spider.

Red list entries swell to 67 species as conservationists call for urgent action to save birds of Britain including warblers, curlews and puffins

More than a quarter of UK birds, including the puffin, nightingale and curlew, require urgent conservation efforts to ensure their survival, according to a new report on the state of the UK’s birds.

Since the last review in 2009, an additional 15 species of bird have been placed on the “red list”, a category that indicates a species is in danger of extinction or that has experienced significant decline in population or habitat in recent years. The total number of species on the red list is now 67 out of a total of 247.

Ebernoe Common, West Sussex Swedes call it ‘early cuckoo morning’ – the act of getting up just to enjoy the first birdsong

The sun is rising above the trees. I cross the meadow, passing gorse bushes bursting with yellow flowers, and enter the wood by the small gate. I walk up the narrow, winding footpath, and a couple of woodcock fly up from the ground, scattering the leaves where they were hiding. The two striped brown birds dart away through the trees in their panic, as if they’d been fired from a gun. I wait for the air to settle after the commotion, look up to the canopy and listen.

Birdsong is everywhere – a wall of sound pulsing through the wood. I pick out the birds, one by one, selectively listening to each song in turn: greenfinch, chaffinch, robin, blackbird, song thrush, nuthatch, great tit, blue tit, and so on.

Glut in Indian coal market, plans to phase out imports and lower than forecast energy demands cast doubt on future for exports from proposed Adani mine

Malcolm Turnbull is adamant that Australian coal will play “a very big role” in powering India’s future despite a glut in the local market and clear signals from Delhi that it aims to eliminate imports of the fossil fuel as soon as possible.

The prime minister touched down in New Delhi on Monday for his first official visit to the south Asian giant. Selling Australia as an attractive destination for Indian students and reviving negotiations over a free-trade agreement are high on the agenda as the government vies for a slice of the world’s fastest growing major economy.

Opposition says Turnbull government must not fund new coal-fired power plants because they are not value for money

Labor is calling on the Turnbull government to create a national framework for the “orderly exit” of ageing power stations, with a transition plan for thousands of workers who will lose their jobs from station closures in coming years.

It also says the Turnbull government must stop funding new coal-fired power plants because commonwealth funding does not represent value for taxpayer dollars.

Willaston, Cheshire Sorting through the bits and bobs, gathering leaf litter and twigs, they work in harmony like ants

There is a frisson of excitement, giggles and whispers, as the seven-year-olds file out of the school building, clutching bamboo canes and tiles, bits of corrugated cardboard and roofing felt, along with broken terracotta crocks.

Today Year 2 are making a bug hotel. A great way of recycling and giving homes to all kinds of creepy crawlies, their teacher had explained earlier in the week before sending them home to raid garages and sheds.

Windfarm commissioner’s first report says complainants may fail to seek medical advice ‘due to the possibly incorrect assumption’ that nearby turbines are to blame

The office of the national windfarm commissioner is concerned people are not going to the doctor because they are incorrectly attributing symptoms of illness to windfarms.

Commissioner Andrew Dyer published his first report to the Australian parliament on 31 March which revealed the office had received 90 complaint between November 2015 and 31 December 2016.

Back-to-back severe bleaching events, caused by warming oceans, have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found. Climate change is not the only challenge – runoff-affected water quality, reef-killing crown of thorns starfish and the destruction of Cyclone Debbie also threaten the reef’s health. Scientists are warning that Australia has little time left to act on climate change and save the world’s largest living structure.
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Originally published in the Guardian on 13 April 1967

NORTH DEVON: At the time of writing no oil from the Torrey Canyon has reached local beaches. On the other hand one has never had to look very far for oil waste in its coagulated state during recent years. It occurs in tiny pulverised fragments, indistinguishable from some of the constituents of shingle till it adheres to one’s foot, and in lumps up to the size of a football. The oiled carcass of a gannet or an auk is an only too familiar sight on the high water mark.

The Atlantic drift which brings oil on to our coastline also carries less objectionable material: seeds, skeletons and bodies of sea creatures, shells, many of which have travelled a very long distance. Among these are seed cases and fruit from trees which are native to the banks of the Amazon; the flat, purple Entada scandens, the Sacoglottis amazonica, Mucuna the fruit of a climbing plant; objects which are of the size of a marble or golf ball. At the other end of the scale whales and sharks in addition to ships are sometimes cast up. What appeared to its discoverers to be the exceptionally well-preserved bones of “an extinct prehistoric reptile” turned out to be the skeleton of a whale buried by locals, as the simplest method of disposing of its bulk, earlier in the century. And when an expert hurried out to inspect an “Elizabethan canon” uncovered by the tide, he found it to be the rusted end-section of an old sewer!

The big lie propagated by government and big business is that it is possible to turn things around for the reef without tackling global warming

Once upon a time, in the distant 60s and 70s, the Great Barrier Reef faced imminent destruction. Tenement applications for drilling and mining covered vast swathes of the reef, with both government and industry enthusiastically backing the plans for mass exploitation.

In the face of the reef’s impending doom a motley collection of ordinary Australians shared a common determination that something had to be done. But the odds didn’t look good. The poet turned campaigner Judith Wright wrote that “if it had not been for the public backing for protection of the reef that we knew existed, we might have given up hope”.