A herd of beefy, long-horned tauros are to be released into a Highlands rewilding project to replicate the ecological role of the aurochs, an extinct, huge herbivore that is the wild ancestor of cattle.

The tauros have been bred in the Netherlands in recent years to fill the niche vacated by the aurochs, which once shaped landscapes and strengthened wildlife across Europe.

Trees for Life, the rewilding charity, is planning to create the first British herd of up to 15 of the animals on its 4,000-hectare (9,884-acre) Dundreggan estate near Loch Ness, in a scientific research project aimed at enhancing biodiversity, education and ecotourism.

“Introducing the aurochs-like tauros to the Highlands four centuries after their wild ancestors were driven to extinction will refill a vital but empty ecological niche – allowing us to study how these remarkable wild cattle can be a powerful ally for tackling the nature and climate emergencies,” said Steve Micklewright, the chief executive of Trees for Life.

The heaviest of Europe’s land mammals after the woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, aurochs disappeared from Britain around 1300BC. Habitat loss and hunting led to their extinction, with the last female having perished in Poland in 1627. The DNA of aurochs survives in some ancient cattle breeds.

Since the early 2000s, scientists in the Netherlands have sought to bring aurochs back to life by interbreeding ancient cattle breeds that are genetically closest to the aurochs. This has been aided by the first sequencing of the aurochs’ complete genome, in 2011. Tauros have been “back-bred” to genetically replicate, resemble and behave like aurochs as closely as possible.

While classified as domestic cattle, tauros are similar in size to aurochs. Bulls can reach up to 180cm, compared with the 120cm maximum height of a Highland cow.

European studies have found that tauros are more active than other cattle, moving across landscapes in social groups and creating a mosaic of diverse habitats. Rutting tauros form “bull pits”, bowls of bare earth carved out by bulls’ horns and hooves, with the mighty beasts also strengthening their neck muscles by smashing their heads against one side of the pit. Such microhabitats support ground-dwelling invertebrates and pioneer plants.

Micklewright added: “Our tauros project is about looking forwards while learning from the past as we restore nature-rich landscapes that support wildlife and people, and are resilient to future environmental challenges. We also want to give people the chance to experience in a safe way the awe and wonder of getting close to an animal that feels really wild.”

An earlier attempt to breed an aurochs lookalike, Heck cattle, was developed by Lutz and Heinz Heck in the 1920s. This aggressive breed – originally associated with Nazi Germany – has been deployed in some rewilding projects, although the rewilder Derek Gow got rid of his British-based herd because they were too difficult to handle.

According to Trees for Life, tauros are said to be placid towards people and have been bred from six ancient cattle breeds that are naturally unaggressive.

Global wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 73% in 50 years, a new scientific assessment has found, as humans continue to push ecosystems to the brink of collapse.

Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the steepest average declines in recorded wildlife populations, with a 95% fall, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial Living Planet report. They were followed by Africa with 76%, and Asia and the Pacific at 60%. Europe and North America recorded comparatively lower falls of 35% and 39% respectively since 1970.

Scientists said this was explained by much larger declines in wildlife populations in Europe and North America before 1970 that were now being replicated in other parts of the world. They warned that the loss could quicken in future years as global heating accelerates, triggered by tipping points in the Amazon rainforest, Arctic and marine ecosystems, which could have catastrophic consequences for nature and human society.

Matthew Gould, ZSL’s chief executive, said the report’s message was clear: “We are dangerously close to tipping points for nature loss and climate change. But we know nature can recover, given the opportunity, and that we still have the chance to act.”

The figures, known as the Living Planet Index, are made up of almost 35,000 population trends from 5,495 birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles species around the world, and have become one of the leading indicators of the global state of wildlife populations. In recent years, the metric has faced criticism for potentially overestimating wildlife declines.

The index is weighted in favour of data from Africa and Latin America, which have suffered larger declines but have far less reliable information about populations. This has had the effect of driving a dramatic top line of global collapse despite information from Europe and North America showing less dramatic falls.

Hannah Wauchope, an ecology lecturer at Edinburgh University, said: “The weighting of the Living Planet Index is imperfect, but until we have systematic sampling of biodiversity worldwide, some form of weighting will be necessary. What we do know is that as habitat destruction and other threats to biodiversity continue, there will continue to be declines.”

Critics question the mathematical soundness of the index’s approach, but acknowledge that other indicators also show major declines in the state of many wildlife populations around the world.

In a critique of the index published by Springer Nature in June, scientists said it “suffers from several mathematical and statistical issues, leading to a bias towards an apparent decrease even for balanced populations”.

They continued: “This does not mean that in reality there is no overall decrease in vertebrate populations [but the] current phase of the Anthropocene [epoch] is characterised by more complex changes than … simple disappearance.”

The IUCN’s Red List, which has assessed the health of more than 160,000 plant and animal species, has found that almost a third are at risk of extinction. Of those assessed, 41% of amphibians, 26% of mammals and 34% of conifer trees are at risk of disappearing.

The index has been published days ahead of the Cop16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, where countries will meet for the first time since agreeing on a set of international targets to halt the freefall of life on Earth. Governments have never met a single biodiversity target in the history of UN agreements and scientists are urging world leaders to make sure this decade is different.

Susana Muhamad, Cop16 president and Colombia’s environment minister, said: “We must listen to science and take action to avoid collapse.

“Globally, we are reaching points of no return and irreversibly affecting the planet’s life-support systems. We are seeing the effects of deforestation and the transformation of natural ecosystems, intensive land use and climate change.

“The world is witnessing the mass bleaching of coral reefs, the loss of tropical forests, the collapse of polar ice caps and serious changes to the water cycle, the foundation of life on our planet,” she said.

Land-use change was the most important driver of the fall in wildlife populations as agricultural frontiers expanded, often at the expense of ecosystems such as tropical rainforests. Mike Barrett, director of science and conservation at WWF-UK, said countries such as the UK were driving the destruction by continuing to import food and livestock feed grown on previously wild ecosystems.

“The data that we’ve got shows that the loss was driven by a fragmentation of natural habitats. What we are seeing through the figures is an indicator of a more profound change that is going on in our natural ecosystems … they are losing their resilience to external shocks and change. We are now superimposing climate change on these already degraded habitats,” said Barrett.

“I have been involved in writing these reports for 10 years and, in writing this one, it was difficult. I was shocked,” he said.

As Florida braced for its second major hurricane in two weeks, the US president, Joe Biden, criticised Donald Trump for spreading an “onslaught of lies” about how the federal government is handling the damage from Hurricane Helene. Biden spoke as Hurricane Milton – which the president earlier said “is looking like the storm of the century” – was on the verge of making landfall in Florida.

“Quite frankly, these lies are un-American,” Biden said from the White House. “Former president Trump has led this onslaught of lies.”

Biden said that Donald Trump and his allies had misrepresented the response and resources of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). The president singled out the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who claimed the federal government could control the weather.

Biden was joined in his rebuke by a Republican congressman representing areas devastated by Hurricane Helene, who issued a scorching rebuttal of misinformation and conspiracy theories spread by Trump and his supporters about the storm and the government’s response. Chuck Edwards, the member for North Carolina’s 11th district, contradicted criticism from Trump, and others, of the Biden administration’s handling of the disaster by voicing praise for “a level of support that is unmatched by most any other disaster nationwide”.

Trump kept up his campaign schedule even as the storm threatened to overshadow the presidential race with fears that it would cause catastrophic damage in Tampa and other parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast. He offered his prayers to those in Milton’s path while continuing to insult his rival and other women – saying he had no interest in stopping even if it turned off female voters.

“I don’t want to be nice,” Trump said in Scranton at his first of two rallies of the day in the pivotal battleground state of Pennsylvania. “You know, somebody said, ‘You should be nicer. Women won’t like it.’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’”

Trump also announced that he would not debate Harris again before the election, a few hours after Fox News invited the two presidential contenders to participate in a possible second debate on either 24 October or 27 October. “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “SO THERE IS NOTHING TO DEBATE.”

The vice-president and Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, flew to the swing state of Nevada, with its six electoral college votes, but first attended a briefing on the storm and the federal response that Biden also received at the White House.

In an interview on CNN, Harris condemned Trump’s comments on aid, saying: “It is dangerous – it is unconscionable, frankly, that anyone who would consider themselves a leader would mislead desperate people to the point that those desperate people would not receive the aid to which they are entitled.”

Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, meanwhile, called for an end to the electoral college system, saying it “needs to go” and be replaced by a popular vote principle. He made his comments to an audience of party fundraisers. While most American voters are in favour of abolishing the electoral college, Harris has not adopted a position on the matter.

Walz had earlier made similar remarks at a separate event in Seattle, where he called himself “a national popular vote guy”, while qualifying it by saying: “That’s not the world we live in.”

Elsewhere:

• The FBI arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State terrorist organisation and was plotting an election day attack targeting large crowds in the US, the justice department said. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City, told investigators after his arrest on Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with election day in November and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

• Harris campaign and organisations that support her have raised $1bn in donations since she launched her presidential campaign in July. The haul, confirmed to Reuters by a source familiar with the vice-president’s fundraising, went to her campaign, the Democratic national committee and Pacs supporting her run. Trump has raised about $853m in 2024, according to a New York Times tally of public campaign statements. With less than three weeks to go until voting day, the Harris campaign and the Democrats had $404m cash on hand to the Trump campaign’s $295m.

• The Florida health department sent cease-and-desist letters to local news stations over an advertisement urging people to vote in favour of a ballot measure – an issue voted on by people in a given state on election day – that would expand abortion rights in the state.

• A judge ruled that three voting rights groups in Georgia who want voter registrations reopened haven’t proven that internet and power disruptions from Hurricane Helene unfairly deprived people of the opportunity to register. She set another hearing for Thursday to consider evidence and legal arguments. Georgia’s presidential race was decided by only 12,000 votes in 2020. State officials and the state Republican party argue it would be a heavy burden on counties to order them to register additional voters.

• Early in-person voting began on Wednesday in Arizona, making it the first of this year’s presidential battleground states where all residents can cast a ballot at a traditional polling place ahead of election day. Biden defeated Trump in the state in 2020 by just 10,457 votes. Early voting, particularly by mail, has long been popular in Arizona, where nearly 80% of voters submitted their ballots before election day in 2020, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, a report has found, rising ​​from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022.

“This shocking increase in aid funding to fossil fuels is a wake-up call,” said Jane Burston, CEO of nonprofit the Clean Air Fund, which conducted the research. “The world cannot continue down this path of propping up polluting practices at the expense of global health and climate stability.”

International public funding “does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge” and often does not reach the most affected people, said Adalberto Maluf, national secretary of the urban environment and environmental quality in Brazil, which holds the G20 presidency and will host the Cop30 climate summit next year.

“Even as countries pledge to reduce their emissions, increase their climate change ambitions and transition away from fossil fuels, the figures tell a different story,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The report found the top five funders of fossil fuel projects between 2018 and 2022 were the Islamic Development Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank.

The G20 group of nations have made pledges to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies as far back as 2009. In 2022, the G7 group of nations agreed on stronger language to end taxpayer funding to projects that create energy by burning coal, oil and gas.

While some fossil fuel aid goes to projects that lack clean alternatives even in rich countries, such as making fertilisers or cement, they also include projects in the energy sector for which renewable sources are readily available. The cost of capital for clean energy projects in poor countries is more than double that in rich ones, according to the International Energy Agency, with high upfront costs and poor loan terms forcing poor countries to keep burning fossil fuels.

The report precedes a climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, in which negotiators hope to agree new financial promises.

The Clean Air Fund called on negotiators not to neglect air quality. Outdoor air pollution kills 4 million people each year, but clean air projects receive just 1% of foreign aid, the report found.

“Tackling air pollution is essential – not only for protecting our climate, but for safeguarding public health,” said Burston. “The stakes couldn’t be higher.”

The Indian business tycoon and former Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata has died, aged 86.

Tata, who had headed India’s largest conglomerate for over 20 years, had been receiving intensive care at Mumbai hospital, according to Reuters.

He was famous for making large acquisitions, including buying the British tea firm Tetley in 2000 for $432m and the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13bn, which at the time was an unprecedented takeover of a foreign firm by an Indian company. Tata Motors then acquired two of Britain’s most recognisable car brands: British Jaguar and Land Rover, from Ford Motor Co.

“It is with a profound sense of loss that we bid farewell to Mr Ratan Naval Tata, a truly uncommon leader whose immeasurable contributions have shaped not only the Tata Group but also the very fabric of our nation,” the company said.

Tata was described as a “a visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being” by the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

In a statement announcing Tata’s death Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons, said: “On behalf of the entire Tata family, I extend our deepest condolences to his loved ones. His legacy will continue to inspire us as we strive to uphold the principles he so passionately championed.”

After gaining a degree in architecture from Cornell University in the United States, Tata returned to his homeland in India and, in 1962, began working for the company his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.

Three decades later, Ratan Tata took over from his uncle JRD Tata, ushering in a global outlook and an era of high growth. He shook up the company’s hierarchy by enforcing retirement ages and promoting young people to senior positions.

Tata oversaw the construction of the Indica, the first car model designed and built in India. He also oversaw the design of the Nano, which was promoted as the world’s cheapest car, contributing initial sketches for both models.

The Indica was a commercial success. The Nano, however, was discontinued after safety issues and a poor marketing campaign. It ended Tata’s dream of producing an affordable car for all Indians.

He was an licensed pilot, and was known for being quiet, modest and an animal lover. “My love for dogs as pets is ever strong and will continue for as long as I live,” the industrialist, who never married, said in a 2021 interview.

“There is an indescribable sadness every time one of my pets passes away, and I resolve I cannot go through another parting of that nature. And yet, two-three years down the road, my home becomes too empty and too quiet for me to live without them, so there is another dog that gets my affection and attention, just like the last one.”

In 2008, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second-highest civilian honour.

Feeding wild raccoons around her home had seemed harmless enough, if odd, for one woman in the north-west for 35 years – until about 100 of them surrounded her home and demanded food.

The woman, who has not been named, was essentially trapped in her home near Poulsbo, Washington, and scared as the animals can be aggressive. She called the sheriff’s office, saying the raccoons were around her place day and night after their population “exploded” about six weeks ago.

“Somehow, the word got out in raccoon land and they all showed up to her house expecting a meal,” Kevin McCarty, a spokesperson for the Kitsap county sheriff, told local NBC station 9News.

He sent deputies to help the woman.

“They were shocked. They had never seen that many raccoons in one place. Nobody ever remembers being surrounded by a swarm of raccoons. This was a first,” he told the TV station.

The sheriff’s office even posted about it on social media with some extraordinary footage, showing the raccoons as if they had decided to hold a convention in a back yard.

Neighbors have not exactly been thrilled about the animals, who can be threatening and are often nicknamed trash bandits, for their dark fur color across the eyes making them look like masked thieves, or trash pandas, for their proclivity to dive into trash cans looking for scraps.

“I’d say it’s been about the last month or so I’ve noticed it,” Wendy Cronk, who lives nearby, told 9News. “I’ve had several raccoons in the yard recently. My dogs have gotten in a scuffle several times with a raccoon. I’ve even had to take one of my dogs to the vet after tussling with a raccoon. And I’ve also noticed there’s been a lot more hit raccoons up on the main road here.”

Cronk said she hopes it gets resolved soon.

“I just hope that somebody steps in and helps her take care of this problem … and hopefully she’ll quit doing it,” said Cronk.

Tim Bradley (Letters, 1 October) and Adam Halawi (Letters, 7 October) are comparing apples and pears. Most heat pumps in the UK are used to heat water for radiators or underfloor heating. Tim’s heat pump is heating air that is being ducted throughout his Swedish property. Assuming his ducting was already in place, all that would have needed changing was the heat source. But Adam’s radiators will need replacing with larger units due to the lower operating temperature, and I suspect his insulation will need upgrading.
David Anson
Sheffield

Your report (Squeezed out: last accordion maker in France to close shop after 105 years, 5 October) reminded me of the definition of a gentleman: one who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.
Dr Richard Carter
Putney, London

Zoe Williams thinks that Labour politicians should wear a uniform to stop fashion sleaze (7 October). She is being ironic, I hope, as the 20th-century history of political uniforms didn’t go well.
John Davies
Lancaster

The Housemartins, Everything But the Girl, Mick Ronson, the Bootleg Beatles, Blur and Oasis were all mentioned in your sports pages in Tuesday’s print edition. Is this proof that sport is the new rock’n’roll?
Neil Cole
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

Re bitterns (Letters, 7 October), our Irish musical heritage includes a song lamenting the death of a bittern, still sung today: An Bunnan Buidhe (The Yellow Bittern).
Jim Morrison
New Barnet, London

Several Florida jails and prisons are refusing to evacuate their residents ahead of Hurricane Milton despite being in the evacuation zone of the storm.

Manatee county jail, which has 1,200 incarcerated people and is located on the south-east side of Tampa Bay, in the path of the hurricane that was roaring towards it across the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, will not be evacuating, a representative of the jail told Newsweek on Tuesday.

The jail falls within the Zone A evacuation area, the outlet further reported. Those in Zone A could face a storm surge of up to 11ft and are supposed to be evacuated first, according to the Manatee county evacuation guide.

“We do not issue evacuation orders lightly,” said the Manatee county public safety director, Jodie Fiske, Newsweek reported. “Milton is anticipated to cause more storm surge than [Hurricane] Helene. So, if you stayed during Helene and got lucky, I would not press my luck with this particular system.”

Hurricane Helene hit north-western Florida near Tallahassee less than two weeks ago and the impact in the state and in many states further north, especially North Carolina, remains massive.

But a deputy with Manatee county jail told Newsweek that the jail would reportedly be stocked with sandbags and other supplies and in the event of flooding residents would be moved to the top floor of the jail. The Guardian could not reach a representative of the jail for comment.

Multiple jails and prisons in hurricane-hit states have previously failed to evacuate incarcerated people during a natural disaster, despite being located in a mandatory evacuation zone.

In South Carolina, at least two prisons were not evacuated during Hurricane Florence in 2018. “In the past, it’s been safer to leave them there,” a spokesman for the South Carolina department of corrections said, the BBC reported.

During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hundreds of incarcerated people were left in the Orleans parish prison for four days during the deadly storm. Those incarcerated were left locked in their cells amid rising flood waters and without food or water.

Other Florida jails and prisons have also said they will not evacuate during Milton. Correctional facilities in the counties of Sarasota, Hernando, Pasco, Charlotte and Lee will also remain in place during the storm, according to 10 Tampa Bay, a local outlet.

Family members of those incarcerated are worried about their loved ones’ safety.

Julie Reimer, a Florida resident, told 10 Tampa Bay that she had relatives in both the Charlotte correctional institution and Hardee correctional institution.

Reimer, who is being identified by her maiden name due to fears of retaliation, said she was told by officials in both jails that they would not be evacuating. “They said their buildings are able to sustain a storm like this,” Reimer said to 10 Tampa Bay. “They seem to think this storm is not serious.”

Reimer told 10 Tampa Bay: “When my son was sentenced, he was not given a death sentence,” she said.

The category 5 Hurricane Milton is expected to double its wind field by the time it makes landfall in the US late Wednesday or early Thursday, with up to 15ft (4.5 metres) of storm surge along a low-lying stretch of the Florida coast that includes the cities of Tampa, St Petersburg and Sarasota.

Described as the “storm of a century”, with sustained winds still registering at 160mph (257km/h), Milton turned north-east overnight about 300 miles (480km) south-west of Tampa, aiming for heavily populated and highly vulnerable communities. It is expected to weaken slightly when it makes landfall to a category 4 with sustained wind speeds of about 130mph.

“Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the National Hurricane Center warned.

In an 8am update, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, said it was not clear exactly where the eye of the storm would come ashore but the impact would be “broader than that … absolutely every place on the west coast of Florida could get major storm surge.”

DeSantis later said 8,000 national guard members would be activated and he had spoken with Joe Biden about Florida’s needs. “Everything that we’ve asked for, the administration has approved,” he said.

“If you are in a single storey home that is hit by a 15ft storm surge, which means that water comes in immediately, there’s nowhere to go,” said the mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor.

“So if you’re in it, basically that’s the coffin that you’re in.”

Deanne Criswell, the director of Fema, said at a news conference that she would travel to Florida on Wednesday – and would send more agency personnel to the state. “I want the people to hear it from me directly: Fema is ready.”

Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders across 11 Florida counties with a combined population of about 5.9 million people and said anyone choosing to stay behind must fend for themselves.

Before Helene hit, residents staying behind were encouraged to write their name and social security numbers on their bodies for easier postmortem identification.

Under current projections, the surge is expected to hit Fort Myers Beach, an area still recovering from Hurricane Ian two years ago that smashed a causeway to outlying islands.

The area was also hit by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, raising concerns that discarded furniture, appliances and debris from that storm will become projectiles in this next one. DeSantis said the state deployed more than 300 dump trucks that had removed 1,300 loads of debris.

One resident said he had seen bull sharks swimming in the flooded streets after Helene.

No matter exactly where Milton comes ashore, the damage is expected to be extensive, with seawater funneling up through coastal channels inland. Cody Fritz at the US National Hurricane Center storm surge team told NBC News: “Florida’s west coast is very sensitive to storm surge. It doesn’t take much to push water over land that would be dry. It’s extremely vulnerable.”

Kara Doran, a US geological survey scientist, said the risk of permanent change to the coastline “cannot be overstated as I believe communities are more vulnerable to this storm’s impacts due to the erosion that occurred recently from Helene”.

Residents trying to leave have been faced with gas shortages and gridlocked roads. There are few hotels to shelter in and no flights out of the area. Ashley Khrais, a resident of Holiday, Florida, just inland from the coast, told NBC: “it seems very, very scary, but there’s no way to leave.”

Mark Prompakdee, 71, a resident of a trailer park near St Petersburg, said he planned to sit the storm out in a minivan parked on higher ground at a high school. “They’re saying, ‘Get out of here,’” he said. “Where?”

But many people appeared to have heeded the warnings. “If there’s any good news here, we toured Fort Myers beach yesterday [and] it looks like people have listened to those warnings,” said Jay Gray of NBC News.

Efforts to protect property with sandbags and by boarding up windows had been done “with the knowledge that this could be the most powerful storm many in this area have ever seen, and they’ve seen plenty”, Gray said.

The National Weather Service warned that as Milton began moving onshore on Wednesday “conditions will be favorable for tornado development, even far away from the expected landfall”.

With area airports now closed, operators said they would not reopen until damage had been assessed. A spokesperson for Tampa international airport told Scripps News that safety was critical for their operations and it could not act as a shelter for travelers stuck there since it is located in an evacuation zone.