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Reversal of ban shows ‘corporate agenda is king and people and environment are left behind’, say campaigners

The Trump administration’s decision to reverse a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles in some of America’s most famous national parks, such as the Grand Canyon shows “the corporate agenda is king and people and the environment are left behind”, campaigners have said.

Related: Day of doom for national monuments is approaching

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Created by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the Cascade-Siskiyou monument protects Oregon’s extraordinary biodiversity, from butterflies to trout. But a Trump review threatens to open the landscape to the timber industry

Dave Willis, a grizzled woodsman and backcountry outfitter, has spent decades laboring to protect the mountains of southwestern Oregon, one of the most beautiful, biodiverse regions in the country.

Through grassroots activism, Willis and his conservationist allies have won the support of two US presidents. In 2000, Bill Clinton created the roughly 52,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, proclaiming it an “ecological wonderland”. Located just outside of Ashland, it was the first such monument established solely for its extraordinary species diversity. It’s a place that harbors rare lilies and endemic trout, Pacific fishers and goshawks, black bears and a stunning array of butterflies.

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Farmers are starting to grow new crops in winter, when their fields usually lie fallow. Meanwhile, air pollution, which contributes to climate change, is weakening India's solar energy production.

(Image credit: Julie McCarthy/NPR)

The mining giant will give a critical results presentation this week, with activist investors lobbying impatiently for divestments

It has been a turbulent few years for BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining and petroleum company.

First came the Samarco tragedy in Brazil, when the collapse of a dam at its iron ore mine unleashed a flood and killed 19 people. The company is still facing the prospect of criminal charges and a potential $47bn settlement over the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history.

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Don’t get spooked by the pro-fossil fuel lobby: when we abandon petrol and diesel, our whole world is going to change

When it comes to cars, I had a bit of luck this summer. No, I wasn’t loaned the new Tesla Model 3. My street underwent a pavement improvement scheme. All the parking bays were suspended and minicabs no longer idled their engines during the night. I found myself living in an accidental Low Emissions Zone. It was wonderful.

The best I can say about the anti-EV campaign is that it lacks imagination

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I reckon it is time to post about replacing my truck battery.  That is the best way for me to remember the last time I did it (in case it shits the bed before the warranty expires).  Seems the last one I bought only lasted a little over 3 years.  This one just started getting sluggish on starting about a week ago.  My guess is that if you need a 100 watt solar panel to get you going, it is probably time for a new battery.  As long as I was at it - I added a new positive terminal to the mix along with a healthy dose of di-electric grease and battery terminal protector spray.  I wonder how many suggestions I will get as to what battery I should have purchased and what I should have done to protect the terminals...  82,94,69, .03",B

Populations of gannets, puffins and other marine birds are in freefall, but a crucial scientific study to pinpoint the causes is being blocked, say experts

Bempton Cliffs bird reserve was in fine fettle last week. The last of its population of puffins had departed for the winter a few weeks earlier, while its thousands of young gannets were still being cared for by their parents on the chalk cliffs of the East Yorkshire nature site. For good measure, kittiwakes, cormorants and fulmars were also bathing in the sunshine.

Related: We must stop seabird numbers falling off a cliff. After all, we’re to blame | Adam Nicolson

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Pressure is mounting against multi-faceted smugglers but the legal case, though strong, is enormously complex

Late on 6 June 2014 Kenyan police, acting on a tip-off, raided a used car lot in Mombasa’s industrial area. Inside Fuji Motors East Africa Ltd, in one of the lock-ups, they found two tonnes of ivory.

Days earlier a white Mitsubishi truck, its paperwork claiming “household equipment” but in fact carrying more than 300 elephant tusks secreted beneath a tarpaulin, had pulled into the yard on Mombasa Island’s dirty northern fringe, far from the tourist hotels and beaches for which the city is famous.

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Federal government calls for more areas to be placed in reserve to protect the huge crayfish, the world’s largest invertebrate

The federal government has called for more areas of north-west Tasmania to be placed in reserve as part of a conservation plan designed to protect the endangered giant freshwater crayfish.

The crayfish, Astacopsis gouldi, can weigh up to 6kg and live for 60 years. Commonly called the giant freshwater lobster, it is the largest invertebrate in the world and endemic to the cool rivers of northern Tasmania, although habitat restriction and poaching have forced it to retract to areas west of Launceston.

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Throughout human history, solar eclipses have been seen as having great religious significance, often as omens or signs of divine warning or punishment. Major and minor religions alike have their own understandings.

The move reverses an Obama-era policy put in place to encourage national parks to end the sale of bottled water. The aim was to cut back on plastic litter.

(Image credit: Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald/Getty Images)

A police insider has told the Guardian that the killers of Wayne Lotter may have been following him

Police believe Wayne Lotter’s killer may have followed and targeted the conservationist when he was shot on Wednesday, according to inside sources.

Lotter was stopped and then fatally shot while travelling by taxi from Dar es Salaam airport to a hotel. He had been working in Tanzania for many years, exposing and jailing wildlife poachers and traffickers, and he had received a number of death threats. Tanzania’s director for criminal investigation, Robert Boaz, said a murder investigation was underway.

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Clouds cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back to space and also trap heat and radiate it back to Earth. In a Yale Environment 360 interview, physicist Kate Marvel discusses the double-edged effect clouds have on rising temperatures

Clouds perform an important function in cooling the planet as they reflect solar energy back into space. Yet clouds also intensify warming by trapping the planet’s heat and radiating it back to Earth. As fossil fuel emissions continue to warm the planet, how will this dual role played by clouds change, and will clouds ultimately exacerbate or moderate global warming?

Kate Marvel, a physicist at Columbia University and a researcher at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is investigating the mysteries of clouds and climate change. And while she and her colleagues would like to offer definitive answers on this subject, the fact is that few now exist. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, she discusses what is known about the behaviour of clouds in a warming world (they are migrating more toward the poles), why strict controls need to be imposed on geoengineering experiments with clouds, and why she is confident that science and human ingenuity will ultimately overcome the challenge of climate change.

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Brown bears fishing, a rare white moose, and a puma found in a São Paulo office block are among our images from the natural world this week

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Lib Dem leader Vince Cable questions UK’s commitment to environmental projects after GIB sale to Australian bank Macquarie

The government is facing renewed criticism after pushing through the “disastrous” sale of the Green Investment Bank (GIB) to the Australian bank Macquarie, as fresh concerns are raised over its commitment to environmental projects.

A consortium led by Macquarie agreed to buy the GIB, which was established in 2012 by the coalition government to fund green infrastructure projects such as windfarms and a waste and bioenergy power plant. The consortium also includes Macquarie’s in-house infrastructure fund and the Universities Superannuation Scheme, a pension fund for British higher education institutions.

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Fresh herbs are some of the most perishable items in the produce section. And yet, shoppers must buy amounts that are bound to go wasted at home.

(Image credit: Matthew Leete/Getty Images)

The small Louisiana town of Cameron could be the first in the US to be fully submerged by rising sea levels – and yet locals, 90% of whom voted for Trump, still aren’t convinced about climate change

In 50 years, the region near where I grew up, Cameron Parish in south-west Louisiana, will likely be no more. Or rather, it will exist, but it may be underwater, according to the newly published calculations of the Louisiana government. Coastal land loss is on the upswing, and with each hurricane that sweeps over the region, the timeline is picking up speed.

As a result, Cameron, the principal town in this 6,800-person parish (as counties are called in Louisiana), could be the first town in the US to be fully submerged by rising sea levels and flooding. So it’s here one would expect to feel the greatest sense of alarm over climate change and its consequences.

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On a sunny day, California gets up to 40 percent of its energy from solar power. Monday's total eclipse isn't just a scientific spectacle, it's a major concern for the state's power grid.

(Image credit: Marcus Yam/LA Times via Getty Images)

As Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash face high court cases over citizenship, the constitution says parliamentarians cannot be ministers if not validly elected

Labor has opened a new front in the Turnbull government’s citizenship crisis, raising the prospect that ministers may be unable to validly execute their ministerial duties under the constitution while there is a question about whether they have been validly elected.

Stephen Jones, the shadow minister for regional communications, wrote to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on Friday, demanding that he ask the deputy Nationals leader, Fiona Nash, to stand aside while her case is before the high court.

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