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Fresh efforts needed to protect critically endangered animals from hunters and habitat loss as population more than halves

Hunting and killing have driven a dramatic decline in the orangutan population on Borneo where nearly 150,000 animals have been lost from the island’s forests in 16 years, conservationists warn.

Related: Borneo orangutan found riddled with gunshots in latest attack

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Australia sells South Korea $6bn of coal a year, so Canberra unease over the governor’s anti-coal message is unsurprising

For a South Korean presidential hopeful, Ahn Hee-Jung is not what you would expect.

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The Hopi tribe is taking on an Arizona ski resort over its use of artificial snow: ‘People compare it to baptizing a baby with reclaimed water’

• As threat to America’s public land increases, so does our coverage

To the Hopi tribe, the San Francisco Peaks are sacred. The cluster of mountains rise dramatically from grasslands and ponderosa forests in northern Arizona, and the Hopi say they are home to spiritual beings called kachinas, believed to bring the rain and snow to their reservation.

But the tribe has been allowed to move forward with a lawsuit against a local ski resort over what the tribe deems to be a desecration of the holy mountains: spraying artificial snow made from treated sewage.

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Levels of powerful air pollutant rose by 3.2% from 2015 to 2016 according to government statistics

Emissions of ammonia have been on the rise in the UK, new statistics from the government show, even while the amount of other pollutants entering the atmosphere has fallen.

Levels of the powerful air pollutant rose by 3.2% from 2015 to 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available, according to a report published by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on Thursday morning. The rise came despite an overall fall of 10% in ammonia emissions since 1980.

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Nitrogen pollutants from motor vehicles fell 12% from 2012 to 2016, according to official statistics.

German energy giant Innogy enters Australia market, buying two large solar projects and on the lookout for wind projects and battery storage.

Green manifesto for 2050 includes measures for transport and clean energy but could put islands on a path to confrontation with Madrid

The Balearic islands’ government has launched a pioneering plan to phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, potentially setting itself on a collision course with the Spanish government.

Under the green manifesto, new diesel cars will be taken off the car market in Ibiza, Majorca, Menorca and Formentera from 2025 – the same year that all street and road lighting will be replaced by LEDs.

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But the networks need to improve reporting on climate events unrelated to Trump

In 2016, US TV network news coverage of climate change plummeted. News coverage was focused on the presidential election, but the corporate broadcast networks didn’t air a single segment informing viewers how a win by Trump or Hillary Clinton could affect climate change or climate policy. That followed a slight drop in news coverage of climate change in 2015, despite that year being full of critical events like the Paris climate accords, Clean Power Plan, and record-breaking heat.

The good news is that the annual analysis done by Media Matters for America found that in 2017, network news coverage of climate change soared.

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Eggs laid by white-letter hairstreak found on elm trees in Berwickshire

The microscopic eggs of an endangered butterfly have been found in Scotland, suggesting the insect has returned to breed in the country for the first time in more than 130 years.

Lepidopterists discovered white-letter hairstreak eggs on wych elm trees at Lennel, Berwickshire, this month after an adult butterfly was spotted last summer 10 miles away – the first sighting in Scotland since 1884.

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Officials say Kavous Seyed Emami used endangered Asiatic cheetah surveys as pretext for spying, but no evidence has been cited

UN officials have urged the Iranian government to respect the work of environmental activists following the death in custody last week of wildlife campaigner, Kavous Seyed Emami.

Emami was buried on Monday, but several members of the organisation he founded, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, remain in jail and the deputy head of the Environmental Protection Organisation, Kaveh Madani, was detained for 72 hours over the weekend.

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Crook, County Durham: A steady rain of shredded petals settles daily on the flagstone path

A family of bullfinches, Pyrrhula pyrrhula, started to visit our winter-flowering cherry in early December, soon after it began to bloom, and they have returned almost every day. I planted the tree about two decades ago and now its crown is level with the bedroom windows, offering opportunities to watch these shy birds at close quarters. They come to feed on its seemingly inexhaustible supply of flower buds that will last until spring.

Bullfinches’ passion for fruit tree flower buds led to their persecution by orchard owners, though they are equally fond of hawthorn for most of the year. The 19th-century parson-naturalist Francis Orpen Morris even had a theory that their name was a corruption of budfinch, “the word bud being pronounced in the vulgate of the north of England, as if spelled ‘bood’.”

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Status of northern hairy-nosed wombat, central rock-rat, numbat and Christmas Island shrew upgraded in latest threatened species list

Four mammals – including the northern hairy-nosed wombat and the numbat – have been upgraded to endangered or critically endangered on the updated Australian threatened species list published on Thursday.

The northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) has been steadily contracting its range to a single area within Queensland’s Epping Forest national park, 855km north-west of Brisbane.

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Coalition gives no indication of changing emissions targets, but wants five years' notice, and may use offsets. ESB flags potential use of auctions for reliability mechanism and greater use of demand response. It might not even be needed.

Origin results tell similar tale to AGL - a big utility making money out of rising prices, and battling a backlash from consumers.

New Climate Council report highlights growing number of large scale energy storage projects being rolled out across the east and west coast grids.

Demand tariffs are controversial, but if properly done they could work for everyone. We just need the network owners to do the right thing.

IEA warns Australia not to miss the importance of solar, although it does suggest that Australia waste more money on CCS.

Solar windows would need to trap enough light to generate power, while letting through enough to keep buildings light. Thankfully, newly developed semitransparent cells offer to do just that. Matthew Wright, Postdoctoral Researcher in Photovoltaic Engineering, UNSW Mushfika Baishakhi Upama, PhD student [Photovoltaics & Renewable Energy Engineering], UNSW Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Origin is earning itself the right to grow by performing better, but the trick will be to sell the interest in APLNG in the next few years, and to replace Eraring with competitive dispatchable renewable generation.

The project will generate revenue to UGL of approximately $170 million and is due to commence in early 2018, with power generation to the grid expected in 2019.