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More than 200 whales stranded on a remote beach in New Zealand on Saturday have refloated themselves and returned to sea.

Researchers develop mathematical equation to determine impact of people’s intense activity on earth

For the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces.

The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, and was published in the journal, The Anthropocene Review.

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Natural lighting or at least LEDs will improve your mood, and there are other positive steps to take to make the office a more world-friendly environment

If you’re dreading the start of the working week tomorrow can I just check it’s not the lighting? A 1990s study showed plentiful natural light to be a top determinant of job satisfaction.

If you can’t get near a window at least press for LEDs (they have a life of up to 60,000 hours in comparison to 6,000 hours for a fluorescent tube). They also improve your mood, productivity and energy efficiency.

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Chemical spraying began in Santa Cruz department, the eastern grain region of the country.

We tend to assume that some of the serious problems facing the world can be solved by technical wizardry. According to Ted Trainer, our assumptions are wrong.

The mass stranding of whales on a remote beach in New Zealand has taken a turn for the worse as 240 more arrived.

A frustrating development for rescuers only hours after 100 were successfully refloated.

Unwittingly shipped almost 3000km across the continent in a hand of bananas, this small frog has no way to return home. Luckily, Arthur White is here to help.

There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, but Turnbull’s party takes the cake

Watching politics builds a high tolerance for hypocrisy and humbug, but even I am aghast at the Coalition’s antics this week – fondling a lump of coal in parliament while accusing the opposition of an “ideological approach to energy” and negligence in policy planning.

Seriously. There’s a long list of blame and shame for Australia’s threadbare climate and energy policy, and the failure to plan for an energy market crisis that experts have warned about for years. But Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition takes out first place.

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Food security is an issue for all of us.

Analysis shows spike in fossil fuel-dominated state’s wholesale spot price this year far eclipses that in SA in July 2016 which sparked calls for a national inquiry into renewable energy

Extreme price spikes in Queensland’s fossil fuel-dominated electricity market this year have far eclipsed those seen in South Australia last July, which sparked calls of a national inquiry into renewable energy and led the federal Coalition to call for a halt to state-based renewable energy targets.

Since the start of 2017, Queensland’s wholesale spot price for electricity has spiked above $13,000 per megawatt hour a total of 71 times, according to analysis by Dylan McConnell from the Climate & Energy College at the University of Melbourne.

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A conservation project that supports people and conservation.

How an adaptive management approach can produce better outcomes.

Order for 60-day pause on regulations not yet implemented includes protection for endangered rusty patched bumblebee, which experts say is near extinction

Donald Trump has been accused of targeting Muslims, media outlets and even department stores in his first month in the White House. Now, the US president may have doomed a threatened bumblebee.

An executive order freezing new regulations could push the rusty patched bumblebee towards extinction, environmental groups claim. The 60-day pause on all federal regulations that have yet to be implemented – which includes the bumblebee protection – will review “questions of fact, law, and policy they raise”, according to the White House memo.

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The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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A tiger family drinking at the watering hole, a nightingale and a snake that plays dead are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Do you like pangolins or silky sharks? How about the black-legged kittiwake? Vote for your favourite in the Wildscreen Arkive’s Valentine’s Day campaign to help protect under-appreciated species from poaching and climate change

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As temperatures in New South Wales, South Australia, the ACT, Queensland and Victoria soar, there are predictions of rolling blackouts in some parts of the national electricity grid. However, experts agree there is more than enough generation capacity in the energy market to meet demand, so why are we having power outages? Is it market failure? Are renewables to blame? Or are power companies gaming the system?

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Warblington, Hampshire By associating with large ungulates, these birds can obtain up to 50% more food using two-thirds of the energy required for lone foraging

A loose flock of egrets has gathered by the cattle in the corner of the pasture to the west of the cemetery. Three of the white herons are immediately identifiable as little egrets, their yellow feet beacons in the mizzle. The fourth bird looks dumpy, hunchbacked and stubby-billed next to its elegant, slim-necked, rapier-billed cousins. It is a cattle egret, a species that has had one of the most rapid and wide-ranging natural expansions of any bird, but is still relatively rare in Britain. Two of them were spotted here in mid-December. A few days later, they were joined by a third and, by the new year, five birds were regularly being sighted in the fields surrounding the church.

Related: A solitary little egret is an elegant sentinel on the muddy creek

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Dozens of volunteers form a barrier in Golden Bay in an effort to prevent more whales from stranding themselves after hundreds died on Thursday night. The Department of Conservation (DOC) discovered 416 pilot whales had beached themselves at Farewell Spit at the top of the south island, the largest stranding in decades. Volunteer Peter Wiles said: ‘It is one of the saddest things I have seen.’

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