Environment

Test relies on visual inspection of ash to then check soil for toxins, which is ‘unlikely to give a complete picture’ of contamination

A plan to test for toxic dioxins near the site of a February train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, is flawed and unlikely to find the dangerous substances, independent chemical pollution researchers in the US who reviewed the testing protocol told the Guardian.

Initial soil testing already revealed dioxin levels hundreds of times above the threshold that Environmental Protection Agency scientists have found poses a cancer risk, but that sampling was limited in scope.

Arcadis will largely rely on visual inspections of the ground to find evidence of dioxins, instead of systematically testing soil samples that may contain the compounds, which is standard protocol.

The plan does not say how low the levels of dioxin the company will check for will be.

Testing will only be conducted up to two miles from the accident site when ash has been found up to 20 miles away.

The testing is limited to soil and does not include food or water.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a rescued sloth, a baby nutria and a patient frog

Exclusive: Report says 435,000 hectares have been degraded through logging since 2000, affecting 244 threatened species

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More than half of the forests and woodland in New South Wales that existed before European invasion are now gone and more than a third of what’s left is degraded, according to new research.

Despite the loss of 29m hectares of forest since 1750 – an area larger than New Zealand – continued logging since 2000 had likely affected about 244 threatened species.

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Report also suggests migration could help ensure UK has necessary skills to meet government’s 2050 net zero target

New climate visas should be created to allow victims of natural disasters to come to the UK, and to bring in skilled workers needed for the transition to net zero, a Conservative thinktank has argued.

Onward, whose co-founder Will Tanner recently became Rishi Sunak’s deputy chief of staff, is urging the government to prepare for the likely increase in global migration as a result of the climate crisis.

Accounts of global impact of floods, droughts and storms at New York meeting add to pressure to make water central to Cop28

Water is at the heart of the climate crisis, with an increasingly dire carousel of droughts, floods and sea level rise felt “making our planet uninhabitable” the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned.

On the second day of the first UN water conference in almost half a century, countries lined up to describe how they are suffering from water disasters linked to human-made global heating. “We seem to either have too much water, or too little,” said Senzo Mchunu, South Africa’s water minister. “We will fail on climate change if we fail on water.”

With the domestic market in long-term decline, whalers and restaurants are working with the Japan travel bureau in a bid to win over skeptical visitors

The anticipation is building in the private, tatami-mat room at Murasaki, a restaurant in Osaka. At one end sit a handful of Japanese journalists; on the other, executives from the country’s biggest whaling company and officials from the travel industry.

In the middle, six hand-picked social influencers from Thailand, France, Russia and South Korea take their places around a hori-zataku table and wait for the first of several courses devoted to Japan’s most controversial cuisine: whale meat.

Being part of the People’s Plan for Nature, it was illuminating to see how people could reach consensus

The People’s Plan for Nature, launched on Thursday, sets out the public’s recommendations for reversing massive declines in Britain’s nature. One hundred people were invited to come together, in a citizens’ assembly, to agree on a plan for how to renew and protect nature. Their recommendations include calls for access to nature to be a human right, the urgent restoration of rivers, transparency from supermarkets and a cross-party commitment to farming for nature. One of the assembly members, Sara Hudston, here shares her views on taking part in the process.

I first heard of the People’s Plan for Nature early last autumn, but I didn’t intend to take part because I thought it looked too simplistic. It began with a national callout for ideas about how nature might be renewed, which I felt lacked urgency and wasn’t enough given the scale of biodiversity loss in the UK.

Community members react after a town meeting at the Menindee civic hall which was held to address concerns relating to the cleanliness and security of the water of the town following the deaths of millions of fish in the Darling-Baaka river.  'A lot of the people who were here wanted answer to why another fish kill occurred. Why solutions weren't put in place after the last fish kill,' says the NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, who attended the meeting

• Menindee residents ask officials to drink town’s water as reassurance after massive fish kill
• Flood and heat: why millions of fish are dying in western NSW

The discovery of the endangered Italian alpine newt in a disused mine has shone a light on the biodiversity hiding in the Carrara marble quarries of Tuscany

The heart of the Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Italy, is home to one of the biggest marble mines in the world, with about 160 active quarries in the Massa Carrara and Lucca areas. Since Roman times, creamy-white Carrara marble has been dug out of these mountains. It is the most sought-after marble in the world, and has inspired artists and architects everywhere.

But the Apuan Alps also host an ecosystem that is home to the Italian alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris apuana). In November, Manuel Micheli, a photographer working with the Apuane Libere organisation, stumbled across the newt in Crespina 2, a decommissioned quarry.

Independent senator attempts to step up to podium after Pauline Hanson speaks in support of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull. Follow the day’s news

• ‘I’m here to change the country’: Albanese launches an uncompromising Indigenous voice plan
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Mark Butler says part of the issue is that vaping was allowed to “explode” so it’s a case of putting the genie back in the bottle – but he says the government is determined to do it, so the tobacco industry doesn’t win.

A parent told us last week that they found in their very young child’s pencil case, not a 16/17-year-old but a very young child’s pencil case, a vape that was deliberately designed to look like a highlighter pen. I mean, these things are insidious.

They are causing very real damage not just to the health of very young children but to behavioural issues at schools as well.

This is now the biggest behavioural issue in primary schools. I mean, this is this is an industry shamelessly marketing, not just to teenagers but to young children. When you look at these things, with pink unicorns on them and bubblegum flavors, these aren’t marketed to adults.

This is an industry that is trying to create a new generation of nicotine addicts so they get around all of the hard work. Our country and other countries have done over recent decades to stamp out smoking.

Greens in internal negotiations over backing down on demand for ban on new coal and gas projects in Labor’s climate policy

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Labor could agree to treat existing non-fossil fuel industries – such as cement, aluminium and steel – differently to new coal and gas developments in a bid to reach agreement with the Greens on a signature climate policy.

But it is unclear whether the possible compromise on the design of the safeguard mechanism would be enough to win support for the Albanese government’s plan, which requires major industrial polluting sites to reduce emissions intensity onsite cuts or buy carbon offsets.

University of British Columbia researchers develop silica-based material with ability to absorb wider range of harmful chemicals

Researchers at a Canadian university have made a breakthrough they hope will dramatically shorten the lifespan of the thousands of toxic “forever chemicals” that persist in clothing, household items and the environment.

Scientists at the University of British Columbia announced on Wednesday that they had developed a new silica-based material with ability to absorb a wider range of the harmful chemicals, and new tools to break them apart them.

Secretary general urges countries to tackle ‘vampiric overconsumption’, water guzzling industries and climate crisis

The United Nations opened its first water conference in almost half a century in New York on Wednesday, with a plea for countries to work together to tackle overconsumption, water guzzling industries and the climate crisis – or else face more hunger, conflicts and forced migration due to worsening water scarcity.

A quarter of the world’s population still does not have access to safe drinking water while half lacks basic sanitation, and despite some progress in recent years, the climate crisis is making the situation worse.

Rescuers unable to save cetaceans after mass stranding event at Sea Isle City

Eight dolphins have died after being stranded on a beach in New Jersey, a rehabilitation center said.

According to the New Jersey-based Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC), the pod of eight dolphins were caught in a “mass stranding event” in the state’s southernmost city, Sea Isle City, on Tuesday morning.

Protesters cut up credit cards and march to Washington branches of JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo

Hundreds of older Americans gathered in Washington on Tuesday to protest against four of the country’s largest financial institutions, cutting up their credit cards in an act of defiance meant to condemn the banks’ funding of oil and gas projects.

The protesters marched to the downtown DC branches of the four targeted “dirty banks” – JPMorgan Chase, CitiBank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo – before staging a “die-in” to symbolize the global threat posed by fossil fuels. In a nod to the age of the protest’s participants, demonstrators sat in painted rocking chairs as they chanted “Cut it up!” to those slashing their credit cards outside the banks’ branches.

The Australian Museum’s new multimedia exhibition, The Birds of Australia, traces the journey of the 19th-century naturalist and ornithologist John Gould and his wife, illustrator Elizabeth Gould, as they travelled through New South Wales and recorded the unique birdlife, identifying hundreds of species new to western science

• The Guardian and Birdlife Australia’s bird of the year returns later in 2023
• The common and scientific names in brackets reflect the current taxonomy

Exclusive: Roark Capital and Silver Lake Management showed to have a web of connections to the Atlanta police foundation

A new investigation has uncovered connections between private equity firms and the contentious development of a sprawling police and fire service training complex in Atlanta known as “Cop City” and the police force which fatally shot an environmental activist.

Private equity refers to an opaque form of financing away from public markets in which funds and investors manage money for wealthy individuals and institutional investors such as university endowments and state employee pension funds.

Authors of paper accepted for publication in Harvard Environmental Law Review argue firms are ‘killing members of the public at an accelerating rate’

Oil companies have come under increasing legal scrutiny and face allegations of defrauding investors, racketeering, and a wave of other lawsuits. But a new paper argues there’s another way to hold big oil accountable for climate damage: trying companies for homicide.

The striking and seemingly radical legal theory is laid out in a paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. In it, the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention”.

The Vjosa River in Albania teems with more than 1,000 species, while rare vultures and Balkan lynx visit its banks. It has seen off the threat of a surge in barriers, but the shadow of development persists

The fast-moving Vjosa River in Albania curves and braids, sweeping our raft away from the floodplain towards the opposite bank, and back again. The islands that split the waterway in two are temporary, forming, growing, then dissipating so that this truly wild river, one of the last in Europe, never looks the same.

“There’s a saying, ‘you can’t step in the same river twice’,” says Ulrich Eichelmann, the head of Riverwatch, a Vienna-based NGO for river protection, who is paraphrasing the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. “A river is a living, dynamic thing, an architect of its surroundings. It changes all the time. That’s its beauty.”