News

Appearance of a western reef heron in north Wales is unlikely to be the last, as heating temperatures mean species can survive Britain’s winter, say experts

It is a tropical bird typically encountered between west Africa and India, but last week a western reef heron arrived in north Wales in what is believed to be the first ever sighting in the UK.

The heron was first spotted in Foryd Bay at the weekend before flying to nearby Caernarfon harbour where it fed among the boats.

Exclusive: Fighting Dirty taking legal action against government over proposal it says could import weaker standards

An environmental campaign group is taking legal action against the government over proposals that it claims could fast-track chemical hazard classifications from other countries with lower standards into UK law.

Fighting Dirty claims proposals to change the classification and labelling of potentially hazardous chemicals could result in the UK weakening standards on cancer-causing substances.

Wolsingham, Weardale: These stunning butterflies are here in incredible numbers this year, yet what’s most remarkable is their multigenerational migration

There’s a painted lady basking on the footpath. Her orange, black-tipped, white-spotted wings, a little worn after her long journey, blend with shadows and sun-flecks on heatwave-baked mud, so she’s almost under our feet before she takes flight. And here’s another, nectaring on a dandelion; and another; then several more. I can’t recall ever seeing so many so early in the year.

Waiting for the arrival of these migrant butterflies is akin to anticipating the first swallow. Tantalising mid-April sightings from Wales and Cumbria were reported on social media, but we waited until mid-May before finding our first in Weardale.

Photosynthesis does not always result in wood growth, a key factor in carbon dioxide sequestration

Trees may not be able to store as much planet-heating carbon as hoped, a study suggests, with researchers finding photosynthesis does not always lead to wood growth.

Scientists studied 137 sites across the US and found trees stopped growing months before the point in the year at which photosynthesis stopped.

The Australian PlantBank is like no other place on Earth

• See more of Jess Harwood’s cartoons here

Exclusive A vast area of the Bellingshausen Sea should be covered by sea ice by now, with one expert calling the loss of ice ‘depressing’

Antarctica’s west coast is missing an area of winter sea ice the size of France, sparking concerns for threatened penguins other marine life and global sea levels.

One expert said the loss of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea was “depressing” and the failure of ice to form could have intensified a heatwave over the continent’s peninsula last week that saw daytime temperatures peak at 15.4C which is more than 20C above average.

Despite plunging border crossings, the Trump administration is circumventing laws to expedite building in a vast, pristine wilderness

The Trump administration has waived a slew of environmental and historical preservation laws that would allow it to build a towering border wall that cuts through Big Bend national park, a vast protected wilderness in south Texas.

Congress poured a whopping $46.5bn for border wall construction into the “Big, Beautiful” bill last year, supercharging Donald Trump’s ambition to wall off the southern border with Mexico. The longest unwalled stretches lie along a roughly 500-mile (800km) section of west Texas that Customs and Border Protection calls the “Big Bend sector”.

While La Calera faced severe water rationing, local springs were being drained by the drinks giant’s franchise. So the residents fought back

When a severe drought struck La Calera near Bogotá, many of its residents lost their water for drinking, cooking and farming and faced up to 15 days of strict water rationing each month. Yet the area is home to Chingaza reservoir, which supplies about 70% of the drinking water for Colombia’s capital.

As the drought stretched from April 2024 to April last year, people began to look more closely at how their water was being managed.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Imperial College scientists analysed health records before and after introduction of air pollution reduction zones

Low emission and clean air zones attract controversy whenever they are proposed, but there is growing evidence that they work in improving air quality. The Bradford zone was followed by a reduction of about 25% in GP visits for heart and breathing problems and survey data shows that the central London zone was followed by a reduction in the likelihood of a person taking sick leave.

Now analysis of health records has found emergency admissions to hospital reduced after the introduction of the T-charge and ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) in central London.

More than 20,000 votes cast in Butterfly Conservation’s poll of 60 native species to find nation’s favourite for first time

The votes are in on Britain’s favourite butterfly, and it is one of the most ubiquitous yet spectacular backyard beauties that has flown to victory.

With its lavender, yellow and maroon eye spots and luscious rusty red and black colouration, the peacock butterfly is both beautiful and commonplace, flying throughout spring, summer and autumn in all corners of the British Isles.

As the US shuts its doors to most refugees, there’s little hope of a new system to help those forced from home by climate impacts

• Trump targets migrants from countries hit most by climate shocks

Millions of people around the world are having their lives upended by floods, storms and heatwaves worsened by the climate crisis. Those forced to flee their home countries, however, are finding that the door to the US is more firmly shut than ever.

Neither US nor international law recognizes environmental hazards, such as climate-related displacement, as a valid cause to claim asylum or gain entry through other migration pathways, despite the mounting toll of disasters caused by an overheating planet.

We’re thinking about the crisis facing pollinators all wrong. And we’ve come to a crucial moment

Last winter, commercial beekeepers lost more than 60% of their colonies – their worst losses on record. We tend to blame bee losses on separate, singular threats: pests, pesticides, habitat loss or extreme weather. But we’ve been thinking about bee losses wrong.

The real culprit is our industrial food system.

Crops and flowers rely on them for survival, but wild bees are declining – and crucial nutrients will go missing from our diets as a result

There are few ways in and out of Nepal’s Jumla district. The Karnali highway, considered one of the world’s most dangerous roads, provides the only land link, splicing through the Himalayas to connect Jumla’s terraced valleys to the rest of the country. As such, the 120,000 people that live there are almost entirely self-sufficient, with most of them eating and selling what they grow.

It’s a tenuous existence, plagued by food insecurity and malnutrition. In recent years, local beekeepers have bemoaned languishing hives and dwindling honey production, observing that roughly half of their bees seem to have vanished over the past decade. These concerns, however, ignore an even more insidious impact.

The net zero economy is booming, so claims that prosperity depends on oil and gas are bunkum – unless you’re a Reform backer with fossil fuel interests, of course

Really? You want to destroy a million jobs? Vote Reform UK for mass unemployment: is that your pitch? Hammer these questions home whenever you meet a supporter of the party. Or, for that matter, a Conservative, as their party now takes an almost identical line.

The figures are stark. They were compiled not by Just Stop Oil or the Green party, but by that bastion of conservatism, the Confederation of British Industry. They show that the net zero economy now directly employs more than 300,000 full-time workers, while supporting the jobs of 1.1 million. The net zero sector is worth £100bn to the UK already, and is likely to grow by hundreds of billions more. The rest of the green economy directly employs a further 600,000.

Conservationists say cherished creatures such as whales, dolphins and seabirds are being killed in large numbers by fishing tackle

Thousands of Britain’s most charismatic and protected marine wildlife, including whales, porpoises, dolphins, seals and seabirds are being killed as “collateral damage” by fishing vessels every year, according to the first-ever analysis of bycatch data.

The analysis, by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of voluntary conservation groups, reveals the devastating toll bycatch, the accidental capture and killing of non-target species by fishing vessels, is having on marine species.

The climate phenomenon is intensifying an already unequal global economy

The 12 finalists will be exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery during Beaker Street festival from 6 to 17 August, including images of newborn fish, a native wasp and satellite trails across the night sky

• The language of termites: Liss Fenwick’s The Colony – in pictures

Global effort needed to limit effects of pollution, industrial fishing and climate crisis, World Ocean Assessment says

The world’s oceans are under “severe and accelerating” pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations.

The “intensifying” stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under “severe strain”.

Footage captured by a diver shows a rare sighting of a great white shark in the Mediterranean Sea, spotted between Tunisia and Sicily.

The sighting happened during a mission, organised by the NGO Healthy Seas Foundation in partnership with Ghost Diving and the Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites, to remove abandoned fishing nets in the strait of Sicily.

Healthy Seas, which removes rubbish from seas, said the video was believed to be the first underwater footage captured of an adult great white shark in the Mediterranean in its natural habitat. The species has come close to extinction in the region, thought by Healthy Seas to be due to threats such as overfishing.

Experts say dismantling the ocean observation system will ‘severely degrade’ the accuracy of weather predictions

The Trump administration’s plan to dismantle an ocean observation system vital to understanding the climate crisis and marine ecosystems would “severely degrade” the accuracy of weather predictions and El Niño forecasts, with economic consequences for the US, European and American scientists have warned.

Decommissioning the US system, which plays a major part in a global ocean observation network, would lead to a massive increase in error in the annual estimates of ocean heating rates, according to research published last month.

Beluga whales, which Marineland threatened to euthanize in 2025, will be moved to aquariums in Spain or across US

Canada and an embattled marine park have reached a tentative deal on the future of 30 beluga whales, ending a saga that has captivated the public and angered animal rights groups.

The federal fisheries ministry announced this week that all of Marineland’s belugas would be shipped to either Spain or one of four locations in the US, ending whale captivity in Canada.

Electric shock is one of the biggest causes of death among wildlife in the country but a court ruling is a first step to making power lines safe

Peque, a small black howler monkey, scratches her head as she sits on a thick wooden branch in a wired enclosure with seven other orphaned baby howler monkeys at a rescue centre in Nosara, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

Last year, Peque was one of more than 100 animals to arrive at International Animal Rescue Costa Rica (IARCR) as a result of electrocution on power lines, which primates such as monkeys frequently mistake for trees and vines.

Seasonal wardens and netted fences are helping protect the rare ground-nesting birds that arrive each spring on the UK’s shores

On Ross Sands in Northumberland, a little tern has caught sight of a group of people and is sprinting across the beach. “It wants us to follow it,” says Andrew Craggs, senior manager at Lindisfarne national nature reserve. “It’s a diversionary thing – it’s got a scrape and it wants to take us away because it thinks we’re predators.”

Craggs is no predator, and he’s not after the scrape – a small pit the ground-nesting bird has dug into the sand to lay its eggs. He is a guardian of these little birds, as well as more than 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of sand dunes, saltmarsh and mudflats that make up this tranquil nature reserve perched on the tip of England’s north-east coast.

Investigators are still searching for what caused the recent deaths of a mother and her calf, but conservationists say the animal’s shrinking habitat may be the first place to look

The two elephants were found dead in the Indonesian province of Bengkulu, in an area of “production forest” in southern Sumatra. The mother and her calf were lying side by side with their tusks still intact.

Unlikely to be poachers, the cause of their deaths – and that of a tiger nearby – at the end of April is still being investigated but conservationists say this is not an isolated case. It is estimated that seven wild elephants have died in Bengkulu since 2018.