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Small pools don’t get the same attention as polluted rivers or seas. But they have a vital role to play in boosting nature

Frogs; newts; small fish such as minnows and sticklebacks; dragonflies; water boatmen and water snails: these are just a few of the hundreds of animal species that make their homes in Britain’s ponds alongside diverse wetland plants, some of which are endangered. Yet while small bodies of water are cherished by hobbyists as well as scientists, they have startlingly few protections – even at a time when the polluted state of rivers, lakes and coastlines is a key focus of environmentalists.

With a clean water bill expected soon, this official neglect of ponds should soon be consigned to the past. While rewilding projects have overseen the rediscovery of older “ghost ponds” as well as the creation of new, and householders are encouraged to create miniature ones in their gardens, charities including the specialist Freshwater Habitats Trust point to the growing body of international research that testifies to their ecological importance. In 1996 the first-ever national survey estimated that there were 228,900 ponds in Britain. Thirty years on would be an apt moment to grant them enhanced status.

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Exclusive: Uranium waste from Aukus submarines will be enriched to an estimated 80%: the same level as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima

Australia’s proposed nuclear submarine fleet will leave behind tonnes of weapons-usable uranium-235: radioactive for hundreds of millions of years, and capable of being processed into scores of warheads, nuclear experts have told a public inquiry into Aukus.

And a former White House national security adviser has told the Guardian that Australia’s Aukus deal – involving the transfer of highly enriched uranium to a non-nuclear weapons nation – sets a dangerous proliferation precedent that other countries such as Iran could try to exploit, weakening global control of the spread of weapons-usable nuclear material.

Approach focuses on rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity and restoring natural ecosystems

For the last few decades, the nutrient content of our crops has been declining. In the late 90s, the US Department of Agriculture found the vitamin C content of lemons had decreased by almost a third over the previous 22 years. Calcium in carrots, an important source especially for non-meat eaters, had reduced, on average, by more than a quarter. Vitamin A in bananas was down by 57%. The mineral content of wheat has declined by between 20-30% since the 1960s.

A number of reasons have been suggested for this worrying decline, ranging from new varieties of crop that are bred to grow quicker and bigger to the higher carbon dioxide levels in the air causing plants to produce more sugars and starches (they grow faster but they produce fewer nutrients). A wide range of fixes have been suggested, from GM crops to synthetic soil amendments, or underground farms.

Environmental groups are sounding the alarm over plans that threaten a desert spring that’s home to rare fish and turtles and sacred to the O’odham people

Quitobaquito Springs in south-west Arizona has been called a biological wonderland with few equals.

The springs are an oasis in the vast Sonoran desert along the US-Mexico border, held sacred by the O’odham people, who call it A’al Vaipia. Here, water flows out of an aquifer at the bottom of a hill, runs along a short concrete channel and collects in a pond.

A selection of the winners, runners-up and highly commended photos from the Mangrove photography awards, run by the Mangrove Action Project, which received 5,258 entries from 87 countries. In its 12th year, the awards continue to offer a window into landscapes viewers may otherwise never encounter

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

In this week’s newsletter: the archipelago at the centre of the extreme weather phenomenon could help scientists predict how other marine ecosystems will adapt to our warming climate

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The ocean waters around the Galápagos Islands are hot. Very hot. Observed for centuries in the Pacific by fishers, the El Niño weather phenomenon begins when the prevailing trade winds slow, allowing warm water to spread east along the coast of South America. Right now, the pattern is in full flow and will build from this year into next, likely bringing record temperatures to an already overheating world.

If 2026 is not the hottest year on record, 2027 surely will be – and the Galápagos archipelago is in the centre of this climate crisis.

‘It’s only going to get worse’: wildfires forcing firefighters to make impossible choices

Millions face long-term coastal flooding risk in UK without climate action, scientists warn

Slowdown in Arctic ice melt ends after largest winter decline on record

Reporting from some of the poorest seaside towns revealed how young people have been left isolated – but remain resilient and full of hope

If you were asked to summon up images of the coastline of England and Wales, you might think of sunny days, buckets, spades and carefree holidays. But for many young people growing up by the sea, decades of evidence tell a very different story. For them, rather than a picture-perfect horizon full of hope, the sea has become a boundary that swallows up opportunity.

With a 73% decline in funding for youth services in England over the past 12 years, and a lack of opportunities that has led to nearly 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds not in work, education or training (Neet), the situation for young people, especially in places of deprivation, has never seemed more desperate.

Deerness Valley, County Durham: For all its beauty, there is something sinister about honeysuckle, a vegetable boa constrictor lurking in the flora

An early morning walk before the heat of the day becomes oppressive. The woodland footpath lies in deep shadow, flecked with sunbeams. A familiar fragrance – honeysuckle – lingers in the cool, still air.

There are a few Lonicera periclymenum flowers at eye level, but most of the sweet, clove-like perfume comes from thousands of inflorescences that smother the crowns of a hazel and an oak overhead. Lit by glancing rays of the rising sun, they glow golden against a cloudless sky. It’s the finest display of honeysuckle blossom I’ve ever encountered. I trace its origin to a thick, gnarled old stem, rooted at the base of the hazel, ramifying up through its branches.

Black-crowned night heron one of many species thriving at Holnicote Estate where river ‘reset’ has transformed area into lush oasis

A rare black-crowned night heron has been spotted on an estate in the south-west of England where an innovative river “reset” is transforming the area into an oasis for birdlife.

The heron was caught on camera in a jungly corner of the Holnicote Estate, where conservation experts have been restoring the landscape by allowing a river to return to its natural course.

Since I started doing search and rescue five years ago, I have found seven survivors. Sadly, the number I find dead is higher

In 2012, I was a student and had arrived in Taiwan from the Czech Republic. I soon discovered something that interested me far more than my studies: the mountains of Taiwan. I would leave the campus to explore untouched trails near Taipei. I was obsessed with old maps, often looking for routes that had vanished from modern ones, and hiking paths that no one had taken for decades.

I stayed in Taiwan because of my love for the mountains – there are more than 250 peaks that exceed 3,000 metres. Among the local hiking community, I became known for my speed and knowledge of remote regions.

France asks EU for help while Spain declares national emergency around Madrid, as marine heatwave sees parts of Mediterranean Sea 5C hotter than normal

Brutal heat torching southern Europe has forced about 30,000 people to flee wildfires in France and Spain as a marine heatwave scalds the Mediterranean and researchers warn that “Dantesque” scenarios cannot be ruled out as infernos worsen.

France has requested assistance from ⁠the European Union to help it deal ⁠with a ⁠major ​wildfire near the country’s Atlantic coast, while Spain has declared a national emergency in the Madrid region and in the province of Avila, because of several wildfires burning out of control.

Local people and tourists were evacuated from the Arcachon Bay area overnight into Thursday after a huge fire engulfed more than 3,400 hectares (8,400 acres) of forest. Pushed by the wind, with flames reaching 10 metres high, the fire is still spreading towards the Cap Ferret peninsula. On Tuesday, two firefighters died battling another nearby fire close to Bordeaux airport

• Thousands flee wildfires in France as temperatures reach extreme levels in southern Europe

Sadiq Khan’s heat-ready plan for London is a sensible strategy for adaptation that should provide a roadmap for other cities

“Our ability to trust that our homes will keep us safe from the outside is under threat,” the geographer Sam Johnson-Schlee writes in Hot House, his recent book on how heat has transformed domestic life. This summer, high temperatures have become inescapable. People have coped with makeshift solutions: keeping curtains drawn, placing foil over windows or – for those who can afford one – plugging in an air-conditioning unit. Planning experts warn that, with only about half of councils requiring new buildings to include cooling strategies, many homes will become “death traps” as temperatures rise.

Britain’s homes weren’t built to cope with this. The country’s historically mild climate allowed developers to build houses without insulation, while industrialisation supplied plentiful coal to burn when temperatures dropped. Many homes are consequently draughty in winter and sweltering in summer. Unlike those in Mediterranean climates, British homes lack shutters and shaded communal spaces. While Ildefons Cerdà, Barcelona’s masterplanner, was designing housing blocks with cool courtyards and chamfered edges to allow breezes to flow, Britain’s Victorian builders were throwing up rows of terrace houses – many without cross-ventilation – and giving little thought to the movement of the sun.

Experts weigh in on wellness culture’s obsession with natural fibers and the growing trend of people shunning plastic-based clothing

A few months ago, Lane Koch made a decision: she would purge her family’s closets of all plastic-based fabrics and replace them with natural fibers, such as cotton and linen.

Koch, a longtime Republican political strategist who was a senior staffer on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign, has long avoided processed foods and rid her kitchen of plastic cookware about a decade ago. But, for all that she cared about what she put in her body, she told me she had paid little attention to what she put on her body.

I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago on the streets of Cardiff – and it felt alarmingly wrong

When the wind is warm, you know something is up. Naturally, I have been well aware of the awful reality of the climate crisis, but it has taken the warmth of the wind to really panic me. Not the endless 30C+ days, the desiccated garden, the tap slowing to a drip. No, it is the warm wind blowing on me. I can just about manage in punishing heat, even though it is particularly suffocating when the air is still. But I thought I had a tacit agreement with the British climate that at least when there was a breeze it would cool me down a bit. When a breeze warms me up, here in the UK anyway, it feels nothing less than un-British, and I wonder if we really are getting into the end of days.

I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago on the streets of Cardiff. I turned a corner on St Mary’s Street and there it was, a strong gust of properly warm wind, right in my face and down into my lungs. Reeling, gasping a little, I looked around for the idling bus that had surely generated this unpleasant blast of air. But this wind hadn’t emanated from a bus’s rear, for there was no bus in sight. It was the weather and it felt alarmingly wrong.

Industrial poultry farming is killing our rivers. But rather than stop it, the government has been facilitating it. Will Andy Burnham end this ecocide?

There’s a slightly mean question I often ask British people with an interest in the living world: can you name the environment secretary? I don’t intend to show them up: it’s not them I’m testing. I watch the brows knit, a finger go up, the mouth open and close. “It’s, you know, the one who … no, they went, didn’t they? That other one …” It’s been like this for seven years.

Why? Because throughout this period, we’ve not had environment secretaries. We’ve had portals through which corporate lobbyists may pass. The last incumbent to represent the wider public interest (and I can scarcely bring myself to type these words) was Michael Gove. In his other roles, he’s widely remembered with loathing and disgust. Out of office, he continues to poison public life, as editor of the Spectator. But in this role, to general astonishment, he placed the public good above special interests.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close

Sperm whales produce a specific pattern of clicking noises when they hear the noise of boats, researchers have found. The pattern is so distinct that the scientists who identified it said they can now use it to predict when ships are nearby.

Researchers from Project Ceti (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), a non-profit research organisation working to decode sperm whale communication, spent four years tuning in on the calls of 15 sperm whales off the coast of Dominica.

For Japan, days where the mercury soars above 40C now have their own term – kokushobi (酷暑日), or ‘cruelly hot day’, as rising temperatures cause heatstroke deaths and impact on crop yields across the country

• Japan records its first ‘cruelly hot day’ as cities swelter in 40-degree heat

Experts warn increase in enhanced photos on birding platforms creating fake sightings, threatening credibility of tool used by scientists

For many birdwatchers, recording a species outside its normal range is the holy grail. In the UK, the discoveries often make national headlines. The western reef heron, for example, usually found in Africa and southern Europe, was spotted in a seaside town in north Wales in June, and widely celebrated on birding forums.

But a new scourge is threatening to disrupt the fun: AI slop.

Award-winning entomologist Dino Martins, known for his work on pollinators, shows in his latest book that even the most gruesome creatures have vital roles to play

Dino J Martins has never been able to resist the small things. The renowned entomologist and evolutionary biologist spent his formative years in biodiversity-rich western Kenya with his foster parents, Joe and Sarah Ellen, looking at birds, flowers and insects on Mt Elgon, and in Kakamega forest and Kerio valley.

He was especially transfixed by the miniature world beneath his feet – dung beetles rolling mounds of cattle dung; safari ants’ migrations across the plains; male butterflies that suck salt and other nutrients from the mud to produce “nuptial gifts” during mating; and bees pollinating the critically endangered African violet alongside crops in a farmer’s field.

Uncrewed systems are the future for armed forces and the Netherlands is leading the way ‘to keep people out of danger zones’

On each side of the target ship, a black vessel keeps a watchful distance. Defender 1 and Defender 2 are the eyes and ears of the navy – but they have nobody onboard, and their paths are controlled by a computer system.

This is the future of the Royal Netherlands Navy, according to Capt Sjoerd Feenstra, head of the expertise centre for unmanned systems. He is leading a five-week mission, off the coast of Den Helder in the north of the country, to test the limits of systems that operate without the human touch.

Canadian scientists visit remains of polar exploration vessels in ‘golden era for shipwreck investigating’

Moments after devouring the final glimmers of light, the seafloor offered nothing but darkness and silt. Then the bow appeared.

More than 1,000ft (305 metres) below the surface of the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Canada, the skeleton of the final ship used by the famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton appeared in its silty grave.

Covert footage obtained by the Guardian shows how crime networks are using souvenir shops to hide a booming wildlife trade targeted at a new influx of Chinese tourists

The shop is dark and deserted. Though the door is open, there is clearly no expectation of any customers walking in off the street. Visits are likely by appointment and from a specific clientele. This shop is part of an organised crime network. What is being sold is highly illegal and incredibly unethical.

Anyone wandering in would see large bags of specialist tea, local coffee, trinkets and cigarettes on the shelves. But the photographs of wild animals adorning the walls offer a clue to what is truly for sale here.

Chinese tourism is booming in Laos and the illegal wildlife trade is booming with it. Pangolin scales, rhino horn and elephant ivory are all being sold at secret shops and restaurants as a new high-speed rail line brings millions of visitors to the country. Working with Chinese activists, the Guardian goes undercover to investigate the criminal networks profiting from this trade and to reveal how wildlife trafficking is pushing the critically endangered pangolin ever closer to extinction