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Investors in Emblehope Moor will get their financial returns – and then it will be given to community or charity owners

It is difficult to find the most remote place in England. There is no public transport, no roads and no sign of any human habitation. Online route finders mistakenly direct cars up a grassy track. But miles along gravel forest roads in the far north of Northumberland is the largest contiguous rewilding site under single ownership in the country.

The vast glacial bowl of 7,500-acre Emblehope Moor has been bought for £8.5m by Restore, a nature restoration company that works with landowners across Britain.

Indonesian authorities intensify operations as fires continue to burn across Sumatra and Kalimantan, with haze spreading to Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines

Microbats and wombats among the most common species found in buildings, with some discovered in letterboxes or air conditioning systems

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Possums in the roof, bats in the curtains and ducks on the balcony: new research has revealed how native animals are making themselves at home in our houses.

Researchers have analysed a decade of wildlife rescue reports and found brushtail and ringtail possums make up half of all cases of animals in buildings, followed by microbats and bare-nosed wombats.

Climate scepticism is common at the Reform party conference, but many also criticise Labour for failing to protect Britons from hot weather

On the second day of the Reform UK conference, in the wake of an undercover investigation alleging party officials plotted to evade the law on foreign donations, the deputy leader, Richard Tice, addressed the audience. Within minutes, a banner appeared behind him reading: “Collect £5m, burn the planet.”

It was taken down promptly and Tice, who has repeatedly called on people to enjoy the summer’s five successive heatwaves and record drought, rolled on. As Reform members at the Birmingham venue applauded Tice, there was plenty of agreement with his views. “I enjoyed the heat this summer,” said Jeanette Bowden, of Bexley. “I don’t think people need telling to take care of themselves.” Her partner, James, added, without scientific backing: “Carbon dioxide was much higher in the past, it was 10 times higher than this during the ice ages. It’s not a human problem.”

Experts say invasive species are creating ‘pollinator deserts’ and could have serious impact on food security

British beekeepers have called for a national awareness campaign about the impact of Asian hornets as they warned the invasive species was creating “pollinator deserts” and threatening food security.

Native to south-east Asia, the yellow-legged hornet is thought to have arrived in Europe in 2004 and has continued to spread ever since, its numbers probably boosted by increasingly warm springs and summers.

Isle of Lismore, Argyll: They skim over the surface like stones, making such a hullabaloo you could hear them a mile away

I hear them before I see them: a wailing, or something more like ululation. High-pitched, repeated vocalisations that are neither man nor cat, but somewhere in between. I throw open the cabin door, unsure what to look for, and for a moment see nothing new: only the rocky strand and the sweep of dark wrack high above the shoreline.

The strange, warbling sound comes again. Ai-ai-ai-ai. Not quite screaming, not quite howling, not quite trilling, but all of those things at once.

It’s one of the easiest ways for households to save money and cut emissions. Australian experts share tips that will have you singing efficiently in the shower

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Australians love getting into hot water. About 15% have four or more showers a day, while nearly a third say they shower at least twice daily, a national survey by the Water Conservancy finds.

Most people’s showers last five minutes or more, and one in five will spend between 10 and 15 minutes under the mist, sending up to 135 litres of water down the drain in the process.

A mysterious island has emerged in Williston Lake in Canada. A local resident shared a video of a floating 'island' with trees growing from it – which has appeared, disappeared and appeared again within two months. Satellite imagery has confirmed its existence and disappearance, and experts say the rising water level has set free trees that have been growing on woody debris on the shore

Energy secretary could recommend new North Sea drilling next week, as ministers also consider approval for Rosebank oilfield

Ministers are poised to approve a controversial new gasfield in the North Sea this month, according to government sources, and are considering approving a major oilfield later this year.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, will give her recommendation to approve the Jackdaw field off the coast of Aberdeen as soon as next week, according to people close to the decision, and the formal approval could follow a week after.

In this week’s newsletter: The full scale of the disaster is still emerging, but as rescue efforts continue, scientists warn that a warming Himalayas could mean more deadly hazards

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At 8.37am local time last Wednesday, a huge mass of rock and ice sheared free from a mountain, sliding 1,200 metres to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 60km north of the country’s capital, Kathmandu.

Horrifying images and videos soon emerged of a torrent of mud, water and debris that swept down the Lhende Khola valley at speeds approaching 150km/h. Flowing down the Lhende Khola, Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers that run between Tibet and Nepal, the flood water swept away homes, roads, bridges and power plants. Along the Trishuli, water levels rose by as much as nine metres in half an hour. As of the time of writing, the death toll of the disaster approached 1,000 people, with more than 4,400 on both sides of the border missing.

Exclusive: As millions of people face hosepipe bans, many companies are not required to report, let alone cut, use of public supply

Less than 1% of businesses in England use more water than the daily needs of 10 million people, as millions of households face hosepipe bans and three-quarters of the country is in drought.

Businesses across England use 2.6bn litres a day from the public water supply, which includes potable and non-potable water provided by water companies. In total, businesses account for about 30% of public supply use, with two-thirds of their consumption in water-stressed areas, according to Mosl, the organisation that operates England’s business water market.

Scientists will be able to estimate the amount of heating and destruction caused by the gas ultimately drawn from the Beetaloo

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A giant chunk of glacier-covered mountain has collapsed with catastrophic effect and, whatever the mechanics of the disaster in Nepal’s Langtang national park, this is what human-caused climate crisis looks like. The likelihood of it happening again will rise as temperatures increase and the ice within rock and soil formations melts.

Anthony Albanese was in Palau for the Pacific Islands Forum, speaking with the leaders of countries that could lose some or all of their homelands this century due to sea-level rise driven by emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Exclusive: Angela Eagle urges UK citizens to be ‘a bit more resilient’ as they plan for national emergencies

British people have been urged to have enough food and water on hand to survive a few days without power or water, as the UN said the El Niño climate phenomenon was “supersizing before our eyes”, exacerbating extreme weather events worldwide.

Forecasters say they are braced for the biggest El Niño in 1,000 years, bringing wildfires and floods to parts of the world, and the threat of a wet, stormy winter for the UK.

As the British government plans a campaign urging citizens to prepare for national emergencies, Angela Eagle told the Guardian the likelihood of a wild winter showed the importance of keeping supplies at home.

Although it's scientific consensus that the climate crisis is happening, climate change denialists have found support in the highest office during the second Trump administration and significantly influenced current climate and environment policies. The Guardian's fossil fuel and climate reporter Dharna Noor explains why such rhetorics could be dangerous for our planet

As graduates of an online training course gather from across the continent, the consensus is overwhelming: computers and saving animals go together

On a bitingly cold night in Lapalala Wilderness nature reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo province, Duncan Kanyakera watches as instructor Jacques Viljoen deploys a thermal drone in search of a lone cheetah. Once the drone has disappeared into the inky sky, Kanyakera, from Tsavo in Kenya, and 20 other conservation professionals from across Africa turn their attention to the open-air screen in anticipation.

Many of the students – from 11 African countries as far flung as Benin, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar – witnessing the demonstration have earned their places at Lapalala after performing well on an online training programme for protected area technicians (PAT) run by the Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF). Also on the course, are five members of Peace Parks staff in training.

Small changes are what I’m aiming for – 10-minute workouts, cleaning out my handbag. Then I’m less likely to have failed come October

Are you a January resolutions or a September reset person? The latter has always felt more propitious to me, light of the exhaustion of Christmas and with the weather still on our side. Last week, when the Pavlovian response to buying new stationery (for my kids) kicked in, I found myself following a rote impulse to sort my life out by replacing the bag in the vacuum cleaner and committing to an unsustainable course of personal change. This is it! The beginning of a new way of life, driven by sharp pencils and the crispness of autumn.

I mean, it won’t last. But while most of us have read enough advisories cautioning against new year resolutions as durable, somehow September still promises the earth. I can’t shake it. As soon as the breeze picks up and the leaves start to turn, I feel my pilot light ignite – and the urge to sign up to unaffordable personal training sets in. It feels like an ancient response. I’m not writing this while leaning on a dry stone wall or managing my sheepdogs, but still; the sensory changes brought in by autumn surely activate latent energies in all of us. If you can avoid pumpkin spice and survive the costume search for Halloween, September triggers good feelings of renewal via the psychic memory of our serf forebears bringing in the harvest.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

The race to study the North Water between Canada and Greenland before it changes has led to a bold plan for an Inuit-run protected area

Electric-blue meltwater sprays up under Terry Noah’s snowmobile as he races across sea ice extending out from Canada’s northernmost public community: Grise Fiord in Nunavut, a hamlet of 144 people closer to Murmansk in Russia than the Canadian city of Toronto. The bay’s cliffs loom higher and higher like stone icebergs as he approaches his destination across the bay.

Noah pulls his sled carefully over a seal’s breathing hole, about the circumference of a basketball. Using a custom-made winch, he lowers a submersible instrument into the sea below the ice.

I will calmly read all the threatening letters and await the court case against me. But I will take a stand even if our government won’t

I can’t even remember when I decided to stop paying the sewage element of my Thames Water bill. It might have been after reading this headline from the Guardian in July 2025: “Serious pollution incidents by English water companies rose 60% last year,” with the subheading: “Environment Agency records 75 serious incidents among total of 2,800, with Thames Water being worst offender.”

Living in London means that my supplier is Thames Water, which makes a profit out of pollution. I decided that if the government wouldn’t act, I could at least do my part and not pay for this travesty.

Jenny Jones is a Green party peer

Ever since the earliest known recording of whale song was made in 1949, researchers have been captivated by the wails, rumbles, clicks, grunts and squeals of their communication. As technology improves, scientists are decoding the intricate patterns that make different species’ vocalisations distinctive. Madeleine Finlay hears from Emma Bryce, a journalist who has spent months investigating human efforts to understand whale song. She explains how this knowledge could help us better protect whales from human-made harms.

Credits:

1. Copyright 1978 National Geographic Society and 1977 Capitol Records, Inc. Commentary by Dr Roger Payne

2. Valeria Vergara/Raincoast Conservation Foundation

3. Footage courtesy of Raincoast Conservation Foundation - Obtained for research under SARA permit XMMS 4 2026

4. Video by Amanda Cotton/Project CETI

5. Footage courtesy of Valeria Vergara and GREMM. Obtained for research under SARA permits QUE-MM02-2016 and QUE-LEP-001-2018

6. Project CETI

7. Project CETI

How decoding beluga whales’ chitchat may save them – and teach us more about ourselves

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

The chicken liver sponge has sailed through a test of its ability to filter pollutants in a harbour in Spain’s Costa Brava

In the polluted waters of Marina Palamós on Spain’s Costa Brava, Manuel Maldonado, a sponge biologist, noticed something unusual last month: red starfish had started settling in the area.

Nearly two years earlier, the Spanish National Research Council scientist and his colleagues had begun transplanting sea sponges into the port to study whether they could survive in its polluted waters.

From humpbacks learning the latest songs to sperm whales’ ‘clan codas’, drones and AI learning are helping reveal another dimension to the concept of culture

Podcast: Could humans ever communicate with whales?

In 2015, the whale researcher Valeria Vergara pitched a small tent at the icy water’s edge on Somerset Island in the remote Canadian high Arctic, shrouded in a freezing fog so thick she struggled to see her own hands. She trailed a cord out to the coast and plopped a hydrophone into the water to record the calls of belugas.

As many as 1,000 of the whales, accompanied by their newborn calves, frequented the surrounding bay. Belugas’ ceaseless chatter, made up of dozens of unique sounds, is crucial to keeping these creatures connected in the dim, turbid waters of the Arctic.

Bears killed 13 people in Japan last year, as a lack of forest foods increased human-wildlife conflict. But the controversial cull in response has raised concerns with conservationists

Every summer, millions of people escape the heat and humidity of Tokyo by heading to the tranquil resort town of Karuizawa in Japan’s Nagano prefecture – just an hour by bullet train from the capital. Here, at the foot of Mount Asama, visitors stroll bamboo-lined pathways, cycle in verdant highlands, and practise the wellness ritual of shinrin-yoku, bathing among the cool hinoki forests. It would be the ideal nature retreat – if it wasn’t for the bears.

From June to August, bears often move close to Karuizawa, feeding on the mulberries, ants, leaves and cherry blossoms that grow near the town. Unlike nuts, these foods are low in calories, spurring the bears to seek out further sustenance. “They’re more likely to get close to residential spaces to see what they can find,” says Amelia Hiorns, a British zoologist who previously worked with Picchio Wildlife Research Centre in the town. “This combines with the busiest season for tourists.”

Henry Astor looked back to his grandfather’s time for the inspiration to find older varieties that could help nature on his Cotswold farm

It is the earliest harvest Henry Astor can remember. But walking through the scorched wheatfields of his Cotswolds farm, signs of life are everywhere – swarms of insects, kaleidoscopic wildflower meadows, bushy hedgerows several metres wide. A yellowhammer perches on a nearby tree.

There are 18 other red-listed birds on the farm, says Astor, who this year ringed 23 barn owls, three kestrels, two little owls as well as goshawk chicks. “Last winter we had clouds of goldfinch, chaffinch and greenfinch,” he says. Britain has lost 73 million birds since 1970; but at Bruern Farms, a small but welcome reversal is taking shape.

Novice gardeners James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz wanted to try something new when they moved out to the suburbs. Little did they know they were joining a nationwide movement

When James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz first decided to replace their lawn with native plants, they did not really know what they were doing. As former city-dwellers who had moved from Chicago out to the suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, they had never done much gardening together beyond growing some planters of herbs and flowers on their balcony.

But for McGuire, an avid birder who did not want to live with a sea of turf that does “absolutely nothing for the environment”, figuring out an alternative to the suburban status quo was imperative.

Crystal Fritz and James Reed McGuire’s Highland Park front garden before they transformed it with native plants