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For years, a booming long-nosed fur seal population has been devastating fishing businesses in the Coorong. But could the tables be about to turn?

Simon and Jasmine Dale spent six years building their home, which is now the subject of a crowdfunding appeal

An eco-home labelled the “cheapest house ever built in the western hemisphere” on the Channel 4 programme Grand Designs, has been destroyed by a fire.

The three-bedroomed house, which is based in the sustainable community of Lammas in rural Pembrokeshire, was featured on the TV programme in 2016 after its owners, Simon and Jasmine Dale, spent just £27,000 building it.

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Repeat bouts of warmer seawater are posing a significant challenge to the world's tropical corals.

Trying to keep cool this summer while not blowing the power bill? A new mobile game aims to encourage energy efficiency - and research shows it can be more effective than simple advertising campaigns. Rebekah Russell-Bennett, Social Marketing Professor, School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology Rory Mulcahy, Lecturer of Marketing, University of the Sunshine Coast Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The average time between bleaching events at the same reef has shrunk from an average of once every 25 to 30 years in the 1980s to once every six years since 2010.

Areas starved of oxygen in open ocean and by coasts have soared in recent decades, risking dire consequences for marine life and humanity

Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea.

Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas.

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Study of 100 tropical reef locations finds time between bleaching events has shrunk and is too short for full recovery

Repeated large-scale coral bleaching events are the new normal thanks to global warming, a team of international scientists has found.

In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers revealed a “dramatic shortening” of the time between bleaching events was “threatening the future existence of these iconic ecosystems and the livelihoods of many millions of people”.

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Hydropower policy to be rethought in face of environmental concerns, indigenous sensitivities and public unease, says surprise government statement

After swathes of forest clearance, millions of tonnes of concrete and decades of hydro-expansion, Brazil has raised hopes that it may finally step back from the construction of new mega-dams.

In a surprise statement, a senior government official said hydropower policy needed to be rethought in the face of environmental concerns, indigenous sensitivities and public unease.

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Quality and provenance must be the future of the British food industry, rather than lowering regulation or welfare standards, says environment secretary

The future of the British food industry after Brexit must focus on quality and provenance rather than weakened regulation, environment secretary Michael Gove has said.

“The future for British food is in quality and provenance and traceability and competing at the top of the value chain,” Gove told a packed auditorium at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. “And if we sign trade deals or lower our regulation or welfare standards in a way that means we’re no longer at the top of the value chain, then we undermine the growing strength of the very best of British food production.”

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José Napoleón Tarrillo Astonitas murdered for opposing land traffickers seeking to clear land in the Chaparrí Ecological Reserve, say local witnesses

A criminal gang involved in land trafficking has tortured and murdered a community leader in northern Peru, according to his wife and local villagers who witnessed the killing.

José Napoleón Tarrillo Astonitas, 50, was attacked by four men in his home on Saturday night. His wife, Flor Vallejos, told police he was bound by his hands and feet, beaten with a stick and strangled with an electric cable.

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A payment plan post-Brexit to reward planting wildflower meadows and woodland is to be delayed.

Claxton, Norfolk The front lawn has been contested territory between the humans who assume they own it and the tiny creature that truthfully has possession

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Gove will tell farmers that the current subsidy regime, which rewards land ownership, will be replaced by a scheme focused on supporting the environment

Farmers will get subsidies for turning fields back into wildflower meadows after Brexit, according to environment secretary Michael Gove.

More than 97% of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been destroyed since the second world war and their loss has played a significant role in the falling numbers of bees, birds and other wildlife.

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The 11,500-year-old bones of a child unearthed in Alaska shed light on the peopling of the Americas.

Scientists have unveiled the first bionic hand with a sense of touch that can be worn outside the laboratory.

Sue Roaf writes that evacuation plans for Hinkley Point would have to involve at least a million people; while Diarmuid Foley says that, in the modern world, the route to weapons-grade material is not taken through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle

Justin McCurry (Fukushima looms large as Japan plans to restart world’s biggest nuclear plant, 28 December) quotes critics of the proposed reopening of the 8.2GW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Japan, who say chaos would ensue if the plant failed and the 420,000 people who live within 20 miles of it had to be evacuated. But when the three Fukushima reactors failed on 11 March 2011, the radioactive plume spread over 40kms from the plant to the north-west, engulfing a large number of towns and villages. Everyone within 20kms of the plant was immediately evacuated. Iitate village, located 40kms away, and in the path of the toxic plume, was also evacuated. Many in the 20km zone may never return home but in the “return zone” villages they began to trickle back in early 2015. A 20-40km long radioactive plume issuing from the Hinkley nuclear facility could engulf both Cardiff (348,000 population) and Bristol (428,000 population), causing the evacuation of at least a million people from the region. The UK government is the only organisation brave enough to take on that level of catastrophic risk, with our money – happy to do so no doubt because the individuals who make the decisions on our behalf will be long retired when the cesium hits the fan.
Emeritus Professor Sue Roaf
Oxford

• David Lowry’s fact-finding mission to 1958 (Letters, 28 December) is correct – at the dawn of the nuclear age, the UK’s civilian nuclear fuel cycle was seen as a precursor to weapons-grade material. However, for technical and other reasons, it was soon realised that the route to weapons-grade material was not through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. In the current (and real) world, the peaceful use of civilian nuclear energy specifically, clearly and strictly breaks any such linkage. This is enshrined in IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group protocols.

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The natural world does indeed carry on functioning, writes Margaret Porter, but it is struggling. Plus Andrew Dean says robins are as happy in an old paint tin as a nesting box

Your correspondent June Lewis (Letters, 29 December), having referred to Country diary, says that the country – by which I think she means the countryside and nature – is “carrying on happily”. While the natural world does indeed carry on functioning regardless of politics (sometimes almost in spite of it), that world of nature struggles more than ever to maintain diversity of species with loss of habitat, environmental pollution, pesticides, climate change and human thoughtlessness. I mention just a few casualties: hedgehogs, butterflies, meadow flowers and some common birds, the numbers of all of which have declined over the last few generations in particular. Not a cause for rejoicing.
Margaret Porter
Gillingham, Dorset

• John Gilbey may not be right about the new nesting box location being more desirable (Country diary, Comins Coch, Ceredigion 30 December). Robins appear to like dry shelter regardless of nesting boxes. On acquiring an unoccupied house with a detached garage with a broken window, I wondered how many times generations of robins might have been nesting in an old empty paint tin on a shelf. All fledglings got away safely.
Andrew Dean
Exeter, Devon

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Fewer fires globally may help explain the recent change in atmospheric methane, a study says.

Fed up with motorway driving? Now you can switch to virtual reality thanks to a new driverless car from Renault.

If you’re planning to cycle to work as part of a new year’s health kick here’s our tips to make sure you enjoy the ride rather than endure it

Come the new year, it’s traditional for people to promise themselves that the next 12 months will be marked by a health kick, and this sometimes end up as a pledge to cycle to and from work.

In bike-unfriendly Britain, even if your commute is short enough, this can sometimes be a tricky prospect. But if it works out, the benefits – to your health, to your wallet, to your general sense of wellbeing – can be astonishing.

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