Cambridge scientists critique research that concluded the disease is no longer a threat to the species’ survival Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Cambridge researchers have challenged a previous study finding that a facial cancer that devastated the Tasmanian devil population was on the decline. Devil facial tumour disease, a fatal cancer spread through biting and sharing of food, first emerged in the 1980s. The spread of DFTD led to the species being listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2008. Sign up for Guard ..read more

Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers Many Europeans value the lives of elephants more than those of the people who live around them, the president of Botswana has said, amid tensions over potential trophy hunting import bans. Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies. The country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, said it would help people to understand human-wildlife confl ..read more

The Oscar-winner’s powerful documentary proves how fragile the earth’s ecosystems are. From angry hippos to salmon swimming on tarmac, it is truly valuable television Our Living World begins with a cheesy inspirational quote: “Realise that everything connects to everything else.” Leonardo da Vinci said that, possibly. Soon, this nature series has glowing blue lines running across the screen, and Cate Blanchett on the voiceover, authoritatively announcing that the planet’s species are dependent on each other in ways we cannot immediately see and might not have imagined. It sounds as if this pro ..read more

Notorious for drawing large crowds, Emerson was removed by officials who were surprised to find him back in Victoria in a week Last week, gun-wielding conservation officers stuffed a 500-lb elephant seal in the back of a van, drove him along a winding highway in western Canada and left him on a remote beach “far from human habitation”. The plan was to move the young seal far from British Columbia’s capital city, where over the last year, he has developed a reputation for ending up in “unusual locations”, including flower beds, city parks and busy roads ..read more

The songbird’s dramatic decline in an ancient Cambridgeshire woodland is a story repeated across the UK as human activity drives species towards extinction Richard Broughton has been nosing around this neighbourhood for 22 years. He gossips about inhabitants past and present, reeling off information about their relationship status, openness to visitors, brawls and neighbourly disputes. “They used to have a big punch up in spring here,” he says, pointing out where one family’s territory ends and the next begins. Some areas are eerily quiet, with popular old haunts lying uninhabited. “I always g ..read more

Anodyne children’s picture provides some gentle entertainment once you forgive the cloying anthropomorphism ‘Is that a butterfly fairy?” asks a confused seven-year-old who watches with me, pointing to the screen at the start of this Canadian animated tale. Nope. The purple creature with a humanish face and body, dressed in a hoodie, wings poking out of its back, is in fact the film’s rendering of a monarch butterfly. The film-makers behind this have really outdone themselves with their tackily revolting anthropomorphic butterflies. Still, if you can get past mutilating a wonder of nature, the ..read more

State government and Nature Conservancy jointly purchase Vergemont station, which contains habitat for endangered night parrots Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community A Queensland outback cattle station the size of Yosemite national park which includes key habitat for the elusive night parrot has been acquired for conservation after an anonymous donation of $21m. Vergemont station, 110km west of Longreach, was acquired in a joint purchase by the Queensland government and the Nature Conservancy, which brokered the de ..read more

The law will come into force in national parks within two years and in all of the country’s marine protected areas by 2030 Greece has become the first country in Europe to announce a ban on bottom trawling in all of its national marine parks and protected areas. The country said will spend €780m (£666m) to protect its “diverse and unique marine ecosystems ..read more

As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all Read more: World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco. He chose a spot near an old bigleaf maple. Many people loved this place: there was a creek and a scattering of picnic benches nearby. As a soundscape recordist, Krause had travelled around the world listening to the planet. But in 1993 h ..read more

The 2013 documentary Blackfish turned orca trainers into pariahs in the US. Now some are hitting it big in China Some people spend a long time deciding what they want to do in life. Hazel McBride feels lucky that she’s always known. As a child in Scotland, she watched a VHS tape of Free Willy on repeat. That was the first time she felt a connection with killer whales. The second time was at age eight, on a trip to SeaWorld Orlando in 2000. Shamu was the animal world’s greatest celebrity, and in the US, SeaWorld ads were ubiquitous. Kids wanted to see the killer whales, and after they saw them ..read more