As world leaders gathered in Colombia this week, they also watched for news from home, where many of the headlines carried the catastrophic consequences of ecological breakdown. Across the Amazon rainforest and Brazil’s enormous wetlands, relentless fires had burned more than 22m hectares (55m acres). In Spain, the death toll in communities devastated by flooding passed 200. In the boreal forests that span Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, countries were recording alarming signs that their carbon sinks were collapsing under a combined weight of drought, tree death and logging. As Canada’s wildfire season crept to a close, scientists calculated it was the second worst in two decades – behind only last year’s burn, which released more carbon than some of the world’s largest emitting countries.

In global negotiations, climate and nature move along two independent tracks, and for years were broadly treated as distinct challenges. But as negotiations closed at the Cop16 biodiversity summit in Cali on Saturday, ministers from around the world underscored the crucial importance of nature to limiting damage from global heating, and vice versa – emphasising that climate and biodiversity could no longer be treated as independent issues if either crisis was to be resolved. Countries agreed a text on links between the climate and nature, but failed to include language on a phase out of fossil fuels.

The UK environment secretary, Steve Reed, said that attending the summit in Colombia had brought home the links between climate and biodiversity. “One of the other things that’s really struck me coming here and speaking to the Colombians in particular is how for them the nature crisis and the climate crisis are exactly the same thing. In the UK, perhaps more widely in the global north, we tend to talk a lot about climate and particularly net zero, and much less about nature – perhaps because we’re already more nature-depleted. But those two things connect entirely,” he said.

The Cop16 president, Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, has sought to put nature on a level with global efforts to decarbonise the world economy during the summit, warning that slashes to greenhouse gas emissions must be accompanied by the protection and restoration of the natural world if they are to be effective. Her presidency has repeatedly described nature and climate as “two sides of the same coin”.

“There is a double movement humanity must make. The first one is to decarbonise and have a just energy transition. The other side of the coin is to restore nature and allow nature to take again its power over planet Earth so that we can really stabilise the climate,” she has said throughout Cop16 and during the buildup.

The shift toward a more intertwined view of climate and biodiversity was also reflected in the negotiations at last year’s Cop28 climate summit in Dubai. Countries agreed to update their next generation round of climate plans in line with their commitments on nature. It comes amid growing scientific concerns about how forests, oceans and other natural carbon sinks are responding to global heating, with new research indicating a collapse in the amount of carbon absorbed by land – as a net category – in 2023, the hottest year on record.

The planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions, shielding humanity from the full effects of fossil fuel pollution. Without this, warming would rapidly accelerate.

Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to enormous areas of the Amazon and Congo basin rainforests respectively, pushed for greater recognition of the climate-stabilising effects of the ecosystems they house, both of which are threatened with destruction.

Ève Bazaiba, DRC’s environment minister, said that her country’s forests helped sustain rainfall as far away as Egypt and were critical to the health of the planet, calling for better international recognition of its importance. Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, who has once again overseen a sharp drop in deforestation under the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said that more money for forested countries was required.

“Brazil has a commitment to zero deforestation by 2030. We know that the reasons why biodiversity is destroyed have to do with several factors, one of which is certainly overwhelmingly the issue of deforestation. Another that is closely associated with the serious problem of climate change that is destructive to our biodiversity.

Smaller forested countries were also keen to underscore the importance of natural ecosystems to mitigating climate breakdown. Jiwoh Abdulai, the environment and climate change minister of Sierra Leone, said he was concerned that land sinks had absorbed less carbon in 2023. “That’s why we’re here. We have these assets which are essentially globally critical infrastructure,” he said.

The degradation of forests is already affecting rural communities that depend on rain-based agriculture as weather patterns are no longer predictable, resulting in lower yields, a drop in income and more food insecurity. As land becomes less fertile, people are increasingly encroaching into the forest.

Abdulai added: “Our countries host these forests. Our local communities are the custodians, but the benefits of having these forests are shared globally.”

Others were concerned that the loss of their forests could undermine climate progress. In Nigeria there has been a 13% decrease in forest cover since 2000. “The rate of forest loss in Nigeria is one of the highest in the world,” said the country’s environment minister, Iziaq Kunle Salako.

He added: “The role that forests need to play in net zero targets is particularly significant. If you look at the UN convention on climate change, on biodiversity, and on desertification, the forest is central. So this is an area that is very, very concerning in Nigeria.

“If the forest is not sequestering [carbon], it’s not playing the primary role it has to play, and it will be challenging for the world to reach the target of zero emissions.”

With less than 48 hours to go in the US election and more than 77.6m votes already cast, new polling shows Kamala Harris leading among early voters in the country’s battleground states.

The Democratic candidate has an 8% lead among those who have already voted, while her opponent, Donald Trump, is ahead among those who say they are very likely to vote but have not yet done so. The poll, from the New York Times and Siena College, also found Harris was slightly ahead in three swing states, with Trump up in one and the other three too close to call.

With only hours of campaigning left, Harris was speaking in Michigan, while her Republican opponent used a rally in Pennsylvania to complain about gaps in the bulletproof shields surrounding him and suggested he would have no concerns about reporters being shot at if there were another assassination attempt against him.

“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news and I don’t mind that so much,” he said, adding the press were “seriously corrupt people”. Trump’s communications director claimed in a statement the comments were supposedly an effort to look out for the welfare of the news media.

Here’s what else happened on Sunday:

Donald Trump election news and updates

• The Trump campaign claimed the NYT polling and Saturday’s Selzer poll of Iowa for the Des Moines Register were designed to suppress Trump voter turnout by presenting a biased, bleak picture of Trump’s re-election prospects. “No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.

• In Pennsylvania, Trump told supporters that he should have stayed in the White House, despite his losing the 2020 election. “We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said.

• At a rally in Macon, Georgia, Trump kept up anti-migrant rhetoric and again suggested he would give a role on health policy to Robert F Kennedy Jr. Trump said he told Kennedy: “You work on women’s health, you work on health, you work on what we eat. You work on pesticides. You work on everything.”

• After RFK Jr proposed removing fluoride from drinking water on the first day of a new Trump administration, the former president appeared to approve the idea. “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me,” Trump told NBC News. “You know, it’s possible.”

• Trump also spoke in Kinston, North Carolina, where he criticised Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader. “Hopefully we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” Trump said. Republican voters in Kinston told the Guardian they are ready to fight a “stolen election”.

Kamala Harris election news and updates

• In her final rally in Michigan, Harris pledged to do everything in her power to “end the war in Gaza”, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population. Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the administrations stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.

• Harris dodged a question on whether she voted for a controversial tough-on-crime measure that would make it easier for prosecutors to imprison repeat shoplifters and drug users to jail or prison, after submitting her ballot in California. Proposition 36 would roll back provisions of Proposition 47, which downgraded low-level thefts and drug possession to misdemeanours.

• At Michigan’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional church of God in Christ in Detroit, Harris told the congregation that God’s plan was to “heal us and bring us together as nation” but that they “must act” to realise that plan.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail

• A US government communications regulator has claimed that Harris’s appearance on Saturday Night Live violates “equal time” rules that govern political programming. Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the federal communications commission (FCC), said “the purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election.”

• Iowa can continue challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens, a federal judge has ruled. The state has targeted illegal voting but critics said the effort threatened the voting rights of people who have only recently become US citizens.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

The Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek has revealed he has been diagnosed with bowel cancer.

Despite the diagnosis, the 47-year-old said there was “reason for optimism” and that he was “feeling good” as he made the announcement in an interview with the US outlet People.

The star made his name playing Dawson Leery in the US teen drama series from 1998 to 2003 and is due to appear in a US Fox special called The Real Full Monty, which is based on the 1997 British film and will see a group of male celebrities strip down to raise awareness for cancer awareness and research.

He told People: “I have colorectal cancer, I’ve been privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it, with the support of my incredible family. There’s reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good.”

The Connecticut actor has continued to work, appearing in an episode of Walker, the reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger, on the US network The CW, and will appear in Sidelined: The QB And Me, a Tubi original film which will be released on 29 November.

He told People he had been prioritising time with his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, and their children Olivia, Joshua, Annabel, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Jeremiah.

Van Der Beek is also known for his roles as a fictional version of himself in Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, in CSI: Cyber as the FBI agent Elijah Mundo, and as Matt Bromley in the first season of the FX drama Pose.

Bowel cancer can develop in the rectum or colon and is one of the most common types of cancer in many parts of the world. It is sometimes known as colorectal cancer because it affects the large bowel, which includes the colon and rectum. Symptoms include pain in the rectum or anus, a change in appearance or shape of faeces, blood or mucus in the stool, unexplained anaemia or a change in normal bowel habits.

“As Republicans, we are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

The startling comment came from a mother of five and grandmother of two, Vikki Westbrook, as she lined up on Sunday outside an aircraft hangar in rural North Carolina. She had come to hear Donald Trump make one of his last pitches of the 2024 presidential election.

Westbrook, 55, wasn’t entirely joking with her “locked and loaded” remark. Nor was she being entirely frivolous.

She does own guns, she said, though she wouldn’t specify how many.

Personally, she intended to avoid any trouble that might erupt in the wake of Tuesday’s election, she said. “I have kids, I can’t afford to go to prison. And I don’t like orange.”

It’s her fellow Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters whom she fears might be tempted to take action should the former president lose the election. “At this point, a lot of Republicans aren’t going to take it any longer. They won’t let the election be stolen from us twice.”

Westbrook remains convinced that the 2020 presidential election was snatched from Trump. Now she is equally certain that should Kamala Harris win on Tuesday, it will be for one reason only.

“Only if they cheat. I’m absolutely positive of that.”

Trump has been studiously nurturing such passions for years, his rhetoric rising in intensity in recent days. He has repeatedly refused to confirm that he will accept the results of the vote count, and earlier on Sunday he told supporters in Pennsylvania that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House four years ago.

A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute recorded that one in four Republican Trump supporters believe that were Trump to lose the election, he should declare the results invalid and do “whatever it takes” to retake the White House. That’s a sobering finding, but a grossly understated one, judging from the mood at Trump’s Kinston rally.

“People will riot if Trump doesn’t win,” said Cedric Perness, 38, an African American Trump supporter. He said it would be too dangerous for him to participate in any post-election unrest – “I’d get killed right there.”

Instead he does what he can, he said, to help Trump by selling merchandise on his campaign’s behalf. He has a stall of hats and T-shirts, some saying: “You missed bitches. Two times!”

In the final stages of the 2024 race, Trump has been whipping up the passions of his millions of devoted followers to a fever pitch. In the last three days of campaigning alone he has made four stops in North Carolina, a battleground state which the Democrats have won only twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the other time being Barack Obama in 2008).

Trump must hold North Carolina to have a clear shot at returning to the White House.

In these frantic last hours, he has pursued a two-pronged strategy to fire up his followers. On the one hand, he has been raising their expectations by claiming that he is well ahead in the polls.

“We’re going to have on Tuesday a landslide that’s too big to rig,” a tired and hoarse-sounding Trump told the Kinston crowd. “We have a big lead. We have a big lead. The fake news, they don’t tell you this. We have a big, beautiful lead.”

In fact, poll trackers suggest that he and Harris remain neck-and-neck in North Carolina and the other six critical swing states.

On the other hand, Trump has also been laying the foundations of a renewed conspiracy, should he need it, to subvert the election results by alleging widespread fraud. He touted the false accusation at the Kinston rally that Democrats are enabling non-citizens to vote in vast numbers, accusing the Biden administration of pursuing an open-border policy on the southern border with Mexico “maybe [because they] want to put them on the voting rolls. That’s probably the reason.”

Supporters at the rally faithfully parroted the lie on Sunday.

“That’s why they opened the border, to allow all the illegals in so they could vote for Democrats,” said a woman in the line who declined to give her name. “There’s always been corruption in this country, but I had no idea it was this bad. America has been run into the ground – anyone with half a brain can see that.”

Almost as pervasive as the supporters’ belief in the demonic intentions of Democrats was their frustration at what they could do about it. Last time around, such toxic emotions culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

The Kinston rally goers, following Trump’s lead, universally dismissed January 6 as a “set up” in which peaceful and patriotic Americans were lured into a dastardly deep-state trap. Westbrook, the “locked and loaded” grandmother, admitted to having been present at the Capitol that day.

Hundreds of Trump supporters, driven to distraction by the then president’s “stop the steal” rhetoric, stormed the heart of American democracy on that day. In the violent clashes that ensued, approximately 140 police officers were assaulted.

That’s not how Westbrook sees it. “It wasn’t what they said happened. The only people causing trouble were antifa, they were put into us to cause problems.”

This is a lot for any American voter to be carrying. The 2020 election was stolen from her candidate of choice, she firmly believes, and now she’s worried that Tuesday could see a repeat performance.

“Four years ago I felt angry, very angry. This time I will be even more angry.”

Should her worst fears come to pass, and Trump lose, where will all that powerful emotion go?

“If he loses, I’m scared,” the grandmother said.

Donald Trump said with two days until the presidential election that he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot, dredging up grievances that overshadowed his attack lines against Kamala Harris.

The closing themes of the former president’s campaign at a rally in Lititz in the battleground state of Pennsylvania brought him full circle with his 2016 campaign that went after the news media and his 2020 campaign that was defined by his attempts to overturn the result.

Trump stayed on message for the first part of his remarks but could not resist reverting to resentments he has held on to for years, describing Democrats as demonic and lamenting about the 2020 election that polls badly and his aides thought they had convinced him to let go.

“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off.

The remark reflected what Trump told aides and allies in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat, a loss he has never conceded, and how he sat in at least one meeting at the end of his first term where he mused about refusing to leave the White House, a person familiar with the matter said.

Trump at one point also praised himself for going-off script, a startling moment that reflects how he has become increasingly uninhibited, perhaps as the fatigue of doing multiple rallies a day has inexorably taken its toll.

Once Trump started on the 2020 election, he could not stop. He revived debunked conspiracy theories from 2020 and suggested anew that voting machines would be hacked, and efforts to extend polling hours in Pennsylvania – what his own team has pushed for – amounted to fraud.

Trump also spent time at the rally lashing out at a series of recent polls, notably a Des Moines Register poll in Iowa that put him four points behind Harris in the state of Iowa. Harris is universally not expected to win Iowa, but it could be indicative of her momentum in the final days.

“You really do inflict damage, like you do with this person in Iowa,” Trump said of the Selzer poll done for the Des Moines Register on Saturday. “It is called suppression. They suppress. And it actually should be illegal.”

The Guardian has reported that Trump’s aides are bullish on his chances, even though they concede they have no real idea how must-win states like Pennsylvania will break on election day. Part of the confidence is coming from internal polls that has Trump possibly winning five out of seven battlegrounds.

The trail of grievances extended to reviving an old favorite that he debuted when he was in office: castigating the news media and suggesting that he would have no concerns about reporters being shot at if there were another assassination attempt against him.

“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, because, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” Trump said from behind panes of bulletproof glass, as some supporters in the crowd laughed and jeered.

Hours after the rally, as Trump traveled to Kinston, North Carolina, for his second of three campaign stops of the day, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung claimed in a statement that the comments were supposedly an effort to look out for the welfare of the news media.

“President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two assassination attempts on his own life, including one that came within 1/4 of an inch from killing him, something that the media constantly talks and jokes about,” the statement said.

“President Trump was stating that the media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said,” it said.

Donald Trump has passionately disputed a shock Iowa poll that found Kamala Harris leading the former president in the typically red state 47% to 44%.

“No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT.”

Trump continued, in all caps: “I love the farmers, and they love me. And they trust me.” More than 85% of Iowa’s land is used for farming and it produces more corn, pigs, eggs, ethanol and biodiesel than any other state.

On Saturday, the Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed the vice-president ahead of her Republican rival by three points. Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa; she shot to polling fame in 2008 when she predicted that a virtually unknown senator, Barack Obama, would beat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.

If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.

The pollster told MSNBC on Sunday that Harris was leading in early voting in Iowa “because of her strength with women generally, even stronger with women aged 65 and older. Her margin is more than 2-to-1 – and this is an age group that shows up to vote or votes early in disproportionately large numbers.”

Earlier on Sunday, Trump’s campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and its chief data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier” and saying that an Emerson College poll – also released Saturday – more closely reflected the state of the Iowa electorate.

The Emerson poll found 53% of likely voters support Trump and 43% support Harris, with 3% undecided and 1% planning to vote for a third-party candidate.

The Trump campaign, which many Democrats believe is setting the stage for a series of legal challenges to poll results, also said in an email that the Des Moines Register poll and a subsequent New York Times swing state poll that found Harris ahead in four of the seven states, is “being used to drive a voter suppression narrative against President Trump’s supporters.

“Some in the media are choosing to amplify a mad dash to dampen and diminish voter enthusiasm,” the statement added.

Last week, Trump said: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before” but did not provide evidence for the claim. A Harris campaign official said that the “cheating” claim was an example of how Trump was trying to sow doubt in the electoral system because he was afraid he would lose.

The claims come as a federal judge plans to rule on whether Iowa officials can continuing trying to remove hundreds of potential noncitizens from its voting rolls despite critics saying the effort could keep recently naturalized citizens from voting.

North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, a Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he is confident that Trump is “going to confidently win Iowa”.

Asked if Trump has a problem winning over women voters, Burgum said: “I’d be surprised, completely shocked if that comes anywhere close to being the fact in Iowa.”

Burgum pointed to national polling which shows Harris and Trump tied.

“I think that’s the feeling that I get on the ground. It’s a very tight race. It’s going to be decided on Tuesday,” Burgum added.

But speaking to MSNBC, Maryland governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, said the Des Moines Register poll putting Harris ahead Iowa, but still within margins of error, “lines up with what we’re seeing on the ground”, particularly among women voters.

Moore continued: “We’re watching an energy that I think has not been there for a while, where we continue to see where women understand firsthand, what is at stake, that they understand the dynamics and the distinctions between these two candidates literally could not be more stark about when you’re talking about a future vision for the country.”

On election day, Florida voters will decide whether to enshrine a constitutional right to hunt and fish in their state.

Amendment 2, proposed by Republican state lawmaker Lauren Melo, seeks to “preserve traditional methods, as a public right and preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife”.

Much is at stake. If the amendment succeeds, hunting and fishing would be considered the primary – and legally protected – conservation methods in Florida. Both activities are a huge part of the state’s multibillion-dollar recreational tourism economy. As of 30 October, backers of amendment 2 had raised nearly $1.3m for the measure, far out-fundraising the amendment’s opponents.

Lawyers, scientists and conservationists worry amendment 2’s vague language, particularly the passage about “traditional methods”, could supersede science-based wildlife management in unprecedented ways.

“That language is open to applying chicanery,” said David Guest, a retired Earthjustice lawyer based in Florida. “Does that mean that you can use explosives [in the destructive practice called “blast fishing”]? I mean, what in the world is this?”

Pushed by conservative-leaning organizations such as the National Rifle Association and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF), these “sportsmen’s bills of rights” view hunting as a cultural tradition and are meant to counter proposals to limit hunting and fishing.

“It’s a pre-emptive safeguard against the anti-sportsman agenda,” said Mark Lance, CSF’s south-eastern states senior director. The CSF and the the NRA apply that term to what they consider extremist animal-rights campaigns to end all hunting, epitomized by former Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle’s leadership.

The CSF drafted language for many of the measures nationwide, including Florida’s, along with the International Order of T Roosevelt, a hunting advocacy group named after the former president and hunting enthusiast Theodore Roosevelt. The CSF is also fighting a Colorado proposal that would eliminate hunting for mountain lions.

These campaigns to change constitutions have been effective at ballot boxes around the nation. Florida could become the 24th state and the last in the south-east to add hunting and fishing rights to its constitution. While Vermont was long the only state to constitutionally protect hunting and fishing rights – it did so for more than 200 years – these measures proliferated after Alabama residents approved one in 1996. To date, only one has failed, in Arizona. But in Guest’s analysis, “this is the one that’s the sloppiest” of other recent measures in states like North Carolina and Utah.

Guest and Sierra Club Florida chapter director Susannah Randolph both told the Guardian that the amendment’s nebulous language, particularly the “traditional methods” part, could harm wildlife populations and conservation efforts. There is no legal definition of traditional methods in court, Guest said. Nor is it defined in the amendment.

Advocates say this vagueness might enable worst-case-scenario possibilities, including use of steel-jaw leghold traps, which are considered cruel and outlawed in more than 100 countries; using hounds to hunt bears and other game, which is banned or restricted in several states; and more relaxed killing limits. A Florida Bar analysis also suggests that organized hunts are likely to become more common if the amendment passes. Others worry amendment 2 would backpedal on Florida’s 1995 gillnet ban, a constitutional amendment that outlawed commercial fishing nets that entangle marine mammals such as dolphins. Despite this concern, amendment 2 cannot repeal or impede the gillnet ban, Guest said, because both amendments can be applied in tandem.

But it’s unclear how courts could interpret such language. Guest pointed out that, in Wisconsin, the constitutional right to hunt and fish was upheld to support wolf hunting after the species was delisted from the Endangered Species Act. Florida wildlife advocates fear the same reasoning would apply to the black bear. On the other hand, Ryan Byrne, a managing editor at the nonpartisan website Ballotpedia, noted that courts have decided states can still regulate hunting and fishing in previous lawsuits.

Still, some Florida conservationists and activists think that amendment 2 could empower individuals to do what they please and ignore existing regulations. While the amendment does reiterate the authority of the state wildlife-management agency, the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC), the constitutional preference for hunting and fishing would mean there was no guarantee FWC’s authority would win out, said Devki Pancholi, a third-year University of Florida law student and vice-president of the local Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter. Courts will typically refer to the most recent amendment when resolving constitutional disputes.

The amendment’s vagueness is strategic. A CSF document distributed at a National Rifle Association convention and obtained by the NoTo 2.org campaign suggested that “by using a vague term like ‘traditional methods,’ it will be up to state agencies to determine what they include in their season as ‘traditional methods’”, such as trapping. The NRA’s lobbying arm has also published recommended language for state constitutional amendments to protect the right to hunt and fish.

Florida law already codifies hunting and fishing as statutory rights, which proponents of the constitutional measure argue can be easily reversed. Yet there have not been any significant attempts to outlaw hunting and fishing in the state.

“In order to change the statutory right to fish and hunt in Florida, you would need 61 House reps and 21 state senators to vote … to make hunting and fishing illegal,” said Chuck O’Neal, chair of the NoTo2.org political action committee. “It’s never going to happen, not in this state.” Melo and the state senator Jason Brodeur, the Republican lawmakers who introduced the bill in 2023, did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

Still, Lance, the CSF south-east regional senior director, argues that even without direct criminalization attempts in Florida, threats exist on a national scale. “We want to be ahead of attacks to hunting and fishing in Florida before it’s too late,” he said.

The bill’s supporters point to a failed 2021 Oregon ballot proposal that sought to redefine hunting and fishing as animal abuse as a leading example of nationwide threats.

“That’s a backhanded way to try to regulate hunting and fishing,” said Lane Stephens, a lobbyist who represents the Southeastern Dog Hunters Association, among others.

Stephens added that the attempt was aligned with the mission of the Humane Society, which contributed nearly $10,000 to the NoTo2.org campaign.

“We don’t want [animal-rights activists] trying to run something in our constitution or in state law that would limit our abilities to hunt and fish,” Stephens said, adding that many of Florida’s incoming urban residents don’t understand or agree with the hunting and fishing heritage Floridians enjoy.

He continued: “It’s up to FWC to decide when we have a season and what that season looks like.”

But Pancholi, the law student, and others question some of the procedures behind the measure getting on the ballot and FWC’s involvement with it. The bill was fast-tracked through the state legislature, O’Neal pointed out, with fewer hearings in the statehouse and senate than usual. And the FWC, which is responsible for regulating fish and wildlife, may be the measure’s most significant supporter.

In September, the FWC sent out a memo on official letterhead, written by chair Rodney Barreto. It directed those with questions about the amendment to a Yes on 2 campaign communications director. Barreto is also vice-chair of the Yes on 2 campaign and sits on the board of the Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, which contributed $250,000 to the Vote Yes on Amendment 2 political action committee. FWC commissioners Steven Hudson and Preston Farrior contributed $10,000 and $15,000, respectively, to the Yes on 2 campaign as well. Commissioners are gubernatorial appointees.

According to Florida law, government agencies are required to provide public notice in a public meeting before formally endorsing a ballot measure, but FWC did not hold public discussions about its position before announcing its support.

“From what I could tell, I wasn’t able to find any meeting notes,” Pancholi, the law student, said. Neither could the Guardian. If true, “that would be a violation of the law”, she added. FWC did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment by press time.

Conservation and science at odds

Yes on 2 supporters are united by a strong belief that hunters and anglers are the original conservationists.

“Hunting is a means of conservation by which animal populations remain under control,” said Stephens. “We need to make decisions based on the science and the data, and not on emotions.”

Yet scientists have argued that the amendment could do exactly the opposite, placing hunting and fishing higher than other management methods such as habitat restoration, raising vulnerable species in captivity for release, or “bag limits” that restrict the kind and number of animals people can kill or keep. Such an approach appears at odds with the basics of wildlife management, said Edward Camp, a professor of fisheries and aquaculture governance at the University of Florida.

“Does it influence how the best management advice is selected?” Camp said. “That’s, I think, at the heart of the issue.”

Amendment 2 may prioritize hunts as the solution to human-wildlife conflicts instead, pushing other scientific methods to the backseat. After a 2015 bear hunt killed nearly 300 bears over the span of just two days, for example, several Florida counties allocated money for bear-proof trash bins that helped reduce human-bear encounters.

Guest, the environmental lawyer, predicts that “the focus will be more on consumption of wildlife and less on conservation”.

Ballotpedia’s Byrne noted the widespread notion that ballot measures, regardless of topic, are sometimes “really just to stoke a cultural issue and try to affect turnout”.

With a much-publicized abortion measure also on the ballot in Florida and increasingly politicized judiciaries, Guest said the sportsmen’s bills of right are part of a national movement to advance the political agenda of the far right.

“The constitution is the social contract,” he said. “We should be more cautious in the way we write it.”

Thousands of blue-clad protesters have told the government to “stop poisoning Britain’s water” as they marched through London calling for action on the country’s contaminated coastal waters and rivers.

A coalition of more than 130 nature, environmental and water-sport organisations called supporters out on to the streets of the capital on Sunday afternoon, aiming to create the country’s biggest ever protest over water.

The broadcaster Chris Packham, the actor Jim Murray and Giles Bristow, the chief executive of the campaign group Surfers Against Sewage, led the march from the Albert Embankment in Vauxhall to Parliament Square, with banners reading: “Stop poisoning Britain’s waterways” and “Cut the crap, save our rivers”.

Behind them thousands of protesters clad in blue, many of them carrying the multicoloured flags of the climate activist movement Extinction Rebellion, followed dancing to samba bands and waving placards, most homemade.

Bristow said: “We’ve been campaigning for over 30 years – nearly 35 years, in fact – to end shit in our waters, because we are fed up of surfing, of swimming, of trying to enjoy our natural blue spaces but they’re being polluted in front of our eyes.

“So we’re joining in because it’s a march for clean water and we’re saying it’s time to cut the crap. We’ve got to get on, sort out this shit show.”

Charles Watson, the founder and director of the charity River Action, the lead organiser, said: “One of the key demands of this march is that this notion that it can be profitable to pollute has got to stop, that the laws have got to be enforced.

“And in order to enforce the laws, the bodies that are tasked to do that [have] got to be reformed, they’ve got to be taken to pieces and put back together again and most importantly they’ve got to be properly funded.”

The protest comes amid a crisis in the country’s water provision. Last year, raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas by England’s water companies, a 105% increase on the previous 12 months. At the same time, mass deaths of fish in England’s rivers have increased almost tenfold since 2020.

The UN rapporteur for the right to clean water, Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, last month singled out the privatised English water system for criticism, accusing the sector’s regulators of being ineffective and unaccountable.

Meanwhile, the water industry has extracted vast profits from customers, while saddling their companies with billions in debt. Last year, the Guardian revealed that more than a quarter of water bills in London and parts of the south of England have been spent paying the interest on the debt the companies hold.

Watson said: “The underlying cause of the problem is the fact the regulatory system that is there to enforce the law and hold polluters to account, has literally systemically failed.

“Ofwat, the water regulator, was supposed to be there to protect the environment, to protect customers from the privatised industry paying themselves too much. But they failed, over 70bn [pounds] of dividends has been stripped out of the industry, money that was desperately needed to be invested in making the system future-proof.”

The protest attracted huge numbers of supporters, affiliated to a diverse range of organisations including the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the GMB union.

Melissa Green, the chief executive of the WI, said: “Our members have been calling for action against water pollution unbelievably since 1927. That was the first time we raised the alarm with government about the quality of the water in our communities, and then we raised it again in the 60s, again in the 80s, and again in 2023.

“Our message for government is you’ve got the regulation, you’ve got the regulators, you need to hold people to account. We know that our water is being polluted wantonly, knowingly, for profit, and we can’t understand why the government are not taking more action.”

Hundreds of people have heckled Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia, as well as the prime minister and the regional leader of Valencia – throwing mud and shouting “murderers” – as the group attempted an official visit to one of the municipalities hardest hit by the deadly floods.

The scenes playing out in Paiporta on Sunday laid bare the mounting sense of abandonment among the devastated areas and the lingering anger over why an alert urging residents not to leave home on Tuesday was sent after the flood waters began surging.

Much of the fury appeared to be directed at the elected officials, as calls rang out for the resignation of Pedro Sánchez, the country’s prime minister, and Carlos Mazón, Valencia’s regional leader.

Sánchez was swiftly evacuated as bodyguards used umbrellas to protect the group from the barrage of mud. “What were they hoping would come from this visit?” one furious local asked the newspaper El País. “People are very angry. Pedro Sánchez should have been here on day one with a shovel.”

The king insisted on continuing the visit, at one point meeting a man who wept on his shoulder. He was also confronted by a young man who told him that “you’ve abandoned us”, asking why residents had been left on their own to grapple with the aftermath of the deadly floods. “You’re four days too late,” he told the king.

The man also challenged the king on why the civil protection service, which is overseen by the regional government, had sent the alert hours after the state-run weather agency had warned of deteriorating conditions. “They knew it, they knew it, and yet they did nothing,” he shouted at the monarch. “It’s a disgrace.”

Spain’s royal palace later said that the king’s plans to visit a second hard-hit town in the region had been postponed.

The public rage came as the death toll from the floods climbed to 217. As the meteorological agency on Sunday again issued a red alert, forecasting further heavy rain in the area, mayors from the affected municipalities pleaded with officials to send help.

“We’re very angry and we’re devastated,” said Guillermo Luján, the mayor of Aldaia. “We have a town in ruins. We need to start over and I’m begging for help. Please help us.”

The town’s 33,000 residents were among many in the region grappling with the aftermath of the ferocious floods that rank as the deadliest in Spain’s modern history. The number of people missing remains unknown.

Luján said his town was in desperate need of heavy machinery to clear out the vehicles and debris piled up along the streets.

The municipality had yet to confirm the extent of the devastation, leaving Luján bracing for the worst. Aldaia has one of the region’s most visited shopping centres, with a vast underground car park that on Tuesday filled with water in a matter of minutes.

“Right now, the upper part of the centre is devastated and the lower level is a terrifying unknown,” Luján told broadcaster RTVE. “We don’t know what we’re going to find. We want to be cautious, but we’ll see. It might be heartbreaking.”

In Paiporta, the mayor, Maribel Albalat, described the situation as desperate. Days after the town’s ravine overflowed, unleashing a deluge of water that wreaked havoc on the 29,000 inhabitants, parts of the town remain inaccessible, she said. “It’s impossible because there are bodies, there are vehicles with bodies and these have to be removed,” she told the news agency Europa Press. “Everything is very difficult.”

Albalat said the number of deaths had climbed to 70 in the small town and was expected to climb in the coming days, as access was secured to underground garages. On Tuesday, in the absence of any sign that this storm would be different from any other, many residents had gone down to their garages to move their cars to higher ground.

In flooded towns such as Alfafar and Sedaví, mayors described feeling abandoned by officials as residents scrambled to shovel mud from their homes and clear streets. In some areas, residents were still trying to secure electricity supply or stable phone service.

On Friday, the catastrophic images emanating from these municipalities coalesced into a show of solidarity, as thousands of volunteers from lesser-affected areas trekked to the hardest-hit areas carrying shovels, brooms and food supplies. On Saturday, thousands more turned up at Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, which had been hastily converted into the nerve centre of the clean-up operation.

The mayor of Chiva, where on Tuesday nearly a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours, said the situation was a “rollercoaster” for the 17,000 residents.

“You see sadness, which is logical given that we’ve lost our town,” Amparo Fort told reporters. “But on the other hand, it’s heartening to see the response that we’ve had from everyone … there is a real, human wave of volunteers, particularly young people.”

Sánchez said 10,000 troops and police would be deployed to help with what he described as “the worst flood our continent has seen so far this century”.

He acknowledged that help had been slow in reaching where it was most needed. “I’m aware that the response we’re mounting isn’t enough. I know that,” he said. “And I know there are severe problems and shortages and that there are still collapsed services and towns buried by the mud where people are desperately looking for their relatives, and people who can’t get into their homes, and houses that have been buried or destroyed by mud. I know we have to do better and give it our all.”

Scientists say the human-driven climate crisis is increasing the length, frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe, experts have also said.