Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 20 February.

Top stories

Conservationists are calling for more transparency and accountability in species management systems in Australia. They say less than 40% of endangered nationally listed threatened species have active recovery plans to secure their long-term survival, and close to 10% of listed threatened species are identified as requiring plans, but the documents are either unfinished or haven’t been developed. Research by Guardian Australia found fewer species were being granted the stronger protections of a recovery plan and some critically endangered animals were not receiving this level of protection.

“Many recovery plans are just fantasy documents because they’re not implemented,” said Prof Lesley Hughes from the department of biological sciences at Macquarie University. The Wilderness Society’s national director Lyndon Schneiders said: “Nobody seems to have ultimate responsibility for protecting them. We have this almost zombie-like system … it’s like a giant machine that generates no action.”

The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee has suggested that Robert Mueller may still present evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Adam Schiff, a frequent foe of Donald Trump, told WNYC that a web of collusion had already been established. “It’s very clear from this 37-page indictment that this was a massive Russian operation and part of its design was to promote the campaign of Donald Trump,” Schiff said. Meanwhile Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort is under increasing pressure to cooperate with criminal prosecutors after reports that his chief lieutenant will testify against him.

The government of Myanmar is bulldozing over the site of a Rohingya mass grave in an effort to destroy evidence of a massacre committed last year by the military, according to a rights monitoring group. The Arakan Project provided the Guardian with a video of the grave site before its destruction. The footage shows half-buried tarpaulin bags in a forest clearing, with a decaying leg visibly protruding from one of them. Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project said private companies were doing the bulldozing under the orders of the government.

Labor is about to be in the unusual position of being the target of a campaign by the progressive activist group GetUp, in an attempt to persuade it to oppose the proposed ban on foreign donations and other electoral law changes. GetUp is calling it the “biggest week-long campaign” in its history. In a mass email the group asked its members to take one 15-minute action a day until the opposition determines its position on the electoral funding and disclosure bill early next week.

For the Greens, the former ACTU president Ged Kearney is that most dangerous of adversaries: a former nurse with an excellent bedside manner, writes Calla Wahlquist. But with the Liberals refusing to run a candidate in the Batman byelection, Bill Shorten’s star candidate has an uphill battle for Labor to keep a seat it has held for 84 years. “I can’t tell you what a huge difference it is to have a nurse putting her hand up for parliament,” Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, tells Guardian Australia. “Politicians aren’t necessarily particularly well regarded by the general public but nurses are, and she was a nurse for 20 years … That is, for most people, a sign of character.”

Sport

A judge has described former youth football coach Barry Bennell as “sheer evil” for subjecting junior players from Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra to hundreds of sexual offences. Bennell received a sentence of 31 years for child sexual abuse crimes spanning decades.

At the Winter Olympics, the Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky has been formally charged with a doping offence after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium. He is now likely to be stripped of his mixed curling bronze medal, won with his wife, Anastasia Bryzgalova.

Thinking time

Up in a glass tower on Perth’s St George’s Terrace, there are desks scattered with empty water bottles and cold brew coffee next to a bank of controls. A a guy in noise-cancelling headphones sits at a desk, facing the skyline. He is one half of Supple Fox, the team behind the ethereal sound art piece, Siren Song. Brigid Delaney reports on the 500 speakers attached to buildings in the CBD that, at dawn and dusk, broadcast music made by human voices as a helicopter with speakers attached to its underside circles the city. The song features chants and incantations by vocalists including Carolyn Connors and Deborah Cheetham; their concert hall is the skyscrapers and architectural canyons of the city.

The South Australian election is heating up – and it’s a pretty rare contest for Australian politics in that it is a genuine three-horse race. Nick Xenophon’s SA Best is running candidates in most seats, and polling suggests the party will do well. If SA Best is polling neck and neck with the two major parties, they would likely come in the top two in a large number of seats, and possibly win enough seats to break down the two-party system in the state parliament, writes Ben Raue.

The Reserve Bank of Australia thinks we can’t take on any more debt – so what else will drive the economy? When the governor of the RBA, Philip Lowe, appeared before the House economics committee he said something that seemed innocuous but has a significant impact on how our economy will run, writes Greg Jericho.

What’s he done now?

CNN has compiled a list of the nine most un-presidential things Donald Trump tweeted over the president’s long weekend. They include attacking CNN, Oprah Winfrey and the FBI. “Cooped up at Mar-a-Lago – Trump didn’t play golf either Saturday or Sunday out of concern for how it might look when funerals were ongoing for the victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.”

Media roundup

The Australian Financial Review reports that National party figures are in “crisis talks” regarding the future of Barnaby Joyce, and that leadership has become untenable. One party official speaking anonymously said Joyce’s best option was to resign from the leadership and ministry and retreat to the backbench. The West Australian says more than 600 cyclists received insurance payouts after being hit by cars on WA roads. The ABC has a photo essay on conditions at the Indigenous One Mile Dam settlement close to Darwin’s CBD.

Coming up

South Australia’s would-be premiers, Nick Xenophon and Stephen Marshall, and the current premier, Jay Weatherill, face off in an election debate about environmental issues hosted by Conservation SA.

Tasmania’s premier, Will Hodgman, and the Labor opposition leader, Rebecca White, will go head-to-head in a leader’s debate tonight.

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