Claire Bass says animal welfare is a blind spot for the government. Plus, Chris Phillipson on the libraries operating as ‘cool spaces’, Mick Beeby on lido restoration, and Dr Julian McDonough on NHS pressuresTue 11 Aug 2026 12.57 EDTShare

Your article rightly highlights the strain heatwaves place on farming (Adapting to global heating: which UK public services are struggling in hot weather?, 5 August). But the government’s thinking on climate adaptation has a troubling blind spot down at the farm: animal welfare.

The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 requires ministers to consider animals as sentient beings when developing policy, yet current discourse on heatwaves and farming treats animals almost entirely as economic assets: deaths are framed as “reduced productivity”, rather than as sentient individuals enduring terrible suffering.

During the June heatwaves, French media reported that between 1 and 3 million birds died in a single week as temperatures hit 44C – deaths preceded by hours of panting, heat stress and organ failure. Pigs and poultry can begin suffering from heat above 27C, and when temperatures exceed 35C, British farms and livestock transport systems are pushing against the limits of what conventional cooling systems can contend with.

As the Met Office warns of UK temperatures reaching 45C by 2056, climate adaptation plans for farming must look beyond balance sheets, recognising that what’s at stake is not just the bottom line, but the suffering of millions of sentient beings.
Claire Bass
Senior director, campaigns and public affairs, Humane World for Animals UK

 You are right to highlight the importance of libraries operating as “cool spaces” within communities. Such a facility will almost certainly become increasingly important for groups vulnerable to heat-related stress.

Yet, since 2016, over 180 libraries in the UK have been closed or turned over to volunteers, with deprived communities four times more likely to lose their library as compared with richer ones. However, poorer areas are precisely those with least access to green and blue space, tree cover and other sources of protection from extreme heat.

Given the crucial role of libraries in society – with relief from climate change now added to their many other vital functions – a programme of reversal of a decade of cuts is long overdue.
Chris Phillipson
Emeritus professor of sociology and social gerontology, University of Manchester

As heatwaves hit Britain, spare a thought for farm animals | Extreme heat | The Guardian

Naina Rao

11 Aug 2026Asia

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There’s no conservation motive or benefit behind the Uzbekistan government’s recent releases of more than 2,000 captive-bred Asian houbara bustards across its desert regions, according to an expert on the threatened species.

The government has touted the releases over the past three months as a wildlife restoration effort, but Nigel Collar, a conservation biologist at BirdLife International, suggested the birds are meant to serve as quarry for hunting parties.

“In reality both areas [where they were released] are hunting concessions for Gulf State falconers and these are birds being put out in the wild simply to provide ‘sport,’” Collar, who also co-chairs the Bustard Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, told Mongabay by email.

“[T]here is no conservation strategy related to these releases, because they are not intended for conservation except in the sense that they can absorb some of the hunting pressure on wild populations,” he added.

Neither Falcon Hunting Solutions LLC nor Uzbekistan’s National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change, both involved in the releases, had responded to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time this story was published.

The Asian houbara (Chlamydotis macqueenii) is listed as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN’s Red List. It migrates between Central and South Asia and the Middle East, and is hunted intensively across this range.

Uzbekistan released nearly 900 of the birds in the Aral Sea region of Karakalpakstan in May this year, followed by some 670 birds in June, according to statements from the National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change. An additional 778 birds were released in July in the Navoiy region.

The released birds were all raised at breeding centers in the United Arab Emirates, the government statements note. They add the releases were carried out under the supervision of specialists from the committee and “Falcon Hunting Solutions” LLC. The latter, according to its website, focuses on “trophy hunting development as an ecotourism segment of Uzbekistan.”

The statements also say the birds’ release into the arid ecosystems of Karakalpakstan and Navoiy contributes to the restoration of ecological balance and the conservation of the region’s unique biodiversity.

“There are already wild houbara in both regions, so it would not be a reintroduction but a reinforcement,” Collar said.

He added the releases “will not contribute to any knowledge” since no information is being gathered on the baseline population of the birds, how many are hunted, what levels of hunting would be acceptable, or what reinforcement would be appropriate.

Collar said the fundamental threats to the species remain entirely unaddressed. These include an 800-kilometer (500-mile) overhead power line across the birds’ desert habitats, which poses severe collision risks.

He said long-term survival requires running power lines underground, reducing human contact during rearing, and implementing the Convention on Migratory Species’ (CMS) Bustards Multispecies Action Plan approved by signatory countries, including Uzbekistan.

Banner image: An Asian houbara bustard in Talagang tehsil, Punjab, Pakistan. Image by Sahibzada tariq hameed via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Uzbekistan’s houbara releases serve hunting, not conservation, expert says

Volunteers are on the lookout for sick birds as outbreak shatters ‘fairytale belief’ that disease would not reach Australia

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• Jean hoped bird flu wouldn’t come to Australia. Then it arrived – and she saw a tern ‘trembling and swaying’ | Bird flu | The Guardian

Kat WongMon 10 Aug 2026 11.00 EDTShare

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Bird enthusiast Jean Turner hoped avian flu would never arrive at her doorstep.

At her home on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, bossy fairy wrens chirp at her from the deck, grey currawongs clumsily fall into her bird bath, and fluffy, hooded plover chicks emerge from speckled eggs in front of her binoculars.

But online, images of Argentinian coastlines strewn with dead seal pups and researchers lining up rows of dead seabirds on Antarctic islands offered a warning of what could come.

So when South Australia confirmed its first case of the deadly H5 bird flu strain, just over 200km away at Robe on the Limestone Coast, Turner was prepared to become a different kind of birder.

“We had this fairytale belief that maybe we wouldn’t get it here,” she says.

“But it’s here and now things are going to get harder and more confronting.”

She is one of more than 120 volunteers who have signed up for the Bird Observers Network, which allows birders to contribute to the state’s bird flu response.

The partnership between the South Australian government, Conservation Council SA, Birds SA and Birdlife Australia trains volunteers to identify and report sick birds that may be showing signs associated with H5 bird flu.

Since the network’s first session, Turner has already reported a sick greater crested tern, which was resting at the edge of a flock.

While the other birds shuffled or flew around as she tried to get a better look, the sick animal didn’t respond.

“It was standing on the jetty, trembling and swaying a bit,” Turner says.

“It didn’t look well, it just looked really miserable.”

Compared with the non-bird-obsessed general public, birders can offer greater detail when reporting potentially infected birds, says Steven Langley, the president of Birds SA.

They can often recognise species more accurately, use their binoculars to observe possible abnormalities within a flock, and notice when birds they might see on their routine walks go missing.

“We all just want to be able to do whatever we can to make a difference,” Langley says.

“When you see these distressing images from overseas, you’re implanting them into your mind and onto the places and the birds that you have got a great deal of affection for.”

Volunteers generally don’t receive further correspondence after they’ve made a submission, but multiple crested terns found on Kangaroo Island have been tested and returned confirmed positive results for H5 bird flu since Turner’s report.