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A week in the social media feed of ecologist Euan Ritchie.

"Extremely rare" fossils from a swordfish-like predator which lived 100 million years ago have been discovered on Australia's "Dinosaur Trail".

Footage uploaded to YouTube shows the moment a great white shark breaches the side of a cage during a diving trip to Guadalupe Island, off the west coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. According to YouTuber Gabe and Garrett, ‘this shark lunged at the bait, accidentally hit the side of the cage, was most likely confused and not able to swim backwards’.

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Maintaining a thriving business today means consistently providing top quality customer service, even if you are a small business growing at a rapid rate. And with new digital technology, small companies now have the tools to compete

When Facebook bought Instagram for $US1 billion in 2012, it had just 13 employees. But it also had global recognition and more than 30 million customers.

And in the years since, the power of small companies to compete with the titans of commerce has only grown, as digital technology continues to empower minnows to make whale-sized splashes.

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West Dean, West Sussex I munched on wedges of spicy Sussex Mother, fragrant Tinsley Quince and nutty russets

“Welcome to paradise,” exclaimed our guide as he led us through the gate. Derived from the ancient Persian pardes, meaning “orchard” or “enclosure”, “paradise” is an apt description for this beautifully restored Victorian walled garden nestled at the foot of the South Downs, which boasts more than 100 varieties of apple, many of Sussex origin. Commercial growers nowadays concentrate on a handful of cultivars selected for heavy cropping, bruise resistance, keeping quality and uniform shape; this garden, in contrast, celebrates our wealth of heirloom apples, whatever their peculiar traits.

Related: Country diary: Henstridge, Somerset: Apples of concord

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It was disappointing some politicians used a natural disaster to play cheap political games and blame renewable energy for a blackout caused by freak weather.

South Australia's energy minister has slammed Coalition's proposed reboot of Northern coal-power plant as “uninformed and baffling.”

The Paris climate deal should be a signal to cut fossil fuel use, rather than an excuse to mine more coal

The Queensland government is now slamming its foot down on the accelerator to help a private company build the biggest coalmine Australia has ever seen.

“We can see the end of the tunnel and now we are accelerating towards it,” the state’s mining minister, Anthony Lynham, said.

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Households are moving away from gas for use for heating and other purposes. Maybe industry should too.

Amid the toxic politics about climate and clean energy in Canberra, Simon Corbell has engineered a plan to take the ACT to 100% renewable energy within four years, laying down a blueprint and a vision that will be followed by other states, if not the federal government.

Electric vehicles might remain a fraction of the global car stock, but the industry is growing about 10 times faster than the traditional ICE market.

Melbourne University and Powershop to host "energy hack" to unlock ideas about EVs, virtual power plants, community energy, and the role of data.

On any given night, many farmers go to sleep worrying about what they might wake up to in the morning. Few things are more stressful than seeing your livestock, such as sheep, lying dead or seriously injured in the paddock. Sometimes dingoes, free roaming and unowned (“feral”) dogs, and domestic dogs, or their hybrids, are responsible for such a scene. But what’s the best way to deal with this situation?

The Victorian government is set to reinstate a dingo and wild dog bounty scheme as a way to reduce livestock, especially sheep, being attacked and killed, in response to calls from farming and shooting groups.

Just what is a dingo?

One of the problems with managing dingoes is that the boundary between them and “wild dogs” is contentious. Some have even claimed that there are no pure dingoes in Victoria.

Defining what dingoes are is harder than you might think. There is considerable variation in how dingoes look, for example, in terms of their overall size and colour, as is common with many other members of the dog family (canids).

And if a dingo isn’t considered 100% “pure”, containing genes from domestic dogs, should hybrids be managed differently to dingoes?

Dingo colour is highly variable

Research suggests “pure” dingoes do exist in Victoria, albeit in smaller numbers than other regions.

Notably though, genetic samples in Victoria have been collected largely from areas close to towns, where there are likely more hybrid dogs, and less so from deep within Victoria’s more remote natural regions (the mallee, alpine, and Gippsland forests), where dingoes are often sighted.

Two other recent studies are important in the Victorian context. One suggests dingo characteristics prevail even within hybrids and another has found there are two distinct dingo populations. Importantly, the south east dingo population is at increased risk of extinction.

Many ecologists would argue that splitting hairs about dingo genetic “purity” is a moot point, because what really matters is what dingoes and dingo-dog hybrids are doing in the environment. This is because dingoes are known to have important ecological roles, including the suppression of feral species (such as cats, pigs, and goats), red foxes, and kangaroos.

How are wild dogs and dingoes managed in Victoria?

The decision to reinstate a dingo and wild dog bounty in Victoria is vexed. In 2007 the Victorian government established protection of dingoes, due to conservation concerns about the species, with hybridisation between dingoes and domestic dogs identified as a threatening process.

As a result, dingoes in Victoria are listed as a threatened species under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 and protected under the Wildlife Act 1975.

In Victoria wild dogs are classed as pest animals and can be legally controlled. However, the Victorian Department of Environment states that “dingoes are visually indistinguishable from wild dogs, making it impossible to ensure they are not inadvertently destroyed in wild dog control programs in any given area where both exist” and “dingoes are protected wildlife and it is an offence under the Wildlife Act 1975 to take or kill protected wildlife without an authorisation to do so”.

Management misfire

Legal and species identification issues aside, do bounties and lethal control of predators actually work?

In short, scientific evidence suggests the answer is largely no (see for instance here, here, here, here, and here).

Data showing bounties don’t work

There are a range of reasons cited for why bounties fail. These include:

• an inability to sufficiently reduce numbers of the the target species and hence their impact, due to rapid breeding and/or immigration from other areas

• corruption by those claiming bounties, whereby animals claimed for bounty payments have not actually been killed in the area where the bounty is intended to benefit

• an inability to access some animals over large and/or remote areas

• a disincentive to completely eradicate animals as this removes the source of income

• disruption of predator social structures causing higher livestock predation.

Investing in predator-friendly farming

So what solutions do we have that might allow productive farms without the need to kill predators? A range of nonlethal solutions exist for protecting livestock, including improved husbandry techniques (such as corralling and herding), and in particular, a growing body of research suggests guardian animals provide a great step forward.

Nonlethal methods to protect livestock are also consistent with a growing social demand that both domestic and wild animals are treated humanely and ethically on farms.

Top left: G. Schuirmann. Bottom left: E. Swegen. Top right: Ian Whalan. Bottom right: L. van Bommel.

Predator-friendly farming is growing across Australia, as you can see in the image above. Large livestock on large landholdings, such as beef cattle on thousands of square kilometre stations, are reducing conflict by enabling dingo packs to stabilize and by supporting healthier cows that are better able to defend their calves (top left).

Smaller farms are also employing protective strategies, including guardian dogs, even if the livestock species is large, such as dairy cows and buffalo, because lethal control on neighboring farms continues to disrupt the dingo’s social structure (bottom left).

Technological innovations in nonlethal methods for protecting livestock from predators have been developed in Australia and used worldwide, such as “Foxlights” (top right). And vulnerable stock, such as chickens, are being successfully protected with guardian dogs and enclosures (bottom right).

There are substantial gains to be made for agriculture, people, wild animals and the environment if decision-makers use scientific evidence and ethical analysis, rather than responding to lobby groups, as the basis for taxpayer-sponsored actions.

Education is also a key aspect of any change, and scientists are being proactive here too, providing guidance on new approaches to rangeland livestock management that are supported by research.

The fact is, bounty schemes don’t work. If instead the substantial funds currently being invested in bounties were invested in supporting farmers to move to more long-term, cost-effective, and more environmentally-friendly solutions, we may all be able to sleep better at night.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Euan Ritchie is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society.

Arian Wallach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

A comet impact 55 million years ago may have helped mammals dominate the Earth.

Batteries will supercharge the energy revolution, smoothing renewables and offering prosumers autonomy. Right now, though, the regulatory space is a bit of a Wild West.

Tom Feilden explains why maths and computing may now hold the key to a career in medicine and biology

The suggestion that nets prevent bites is an oversimplification of a complex story, a misrepresentation of technology and data

Mike Baird has this week announced a plan for a six-month trial of shark nets off the beaches of northern New South Wales. This would extend the state’s shark net program from the 51 beaches now netted between Wollongong and Newcastle.

The premier’s announcement was triggered by a surfer receiving minor injuries on Wednesday after he was bitten by a shark at Sharpes beach near Ballina.

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ARENA provides $18 million to solar, wind and battery storage project in north Queensland which could provide much of north Queensland's electricity needs.

According to folklore there could be several distinct spells of good weather in autumn, each named after a saint’s day

Spells of fine autumn weather used to be known as gossamer, a contraction of “goose summer”. The name was applied because this was when geese were eaten, having been fattened up in the previous months.

These spells were notable for gossamer threads, the mass of fine spider webs which catch the sun in stubble fields on a bright autumn morning. Now gossamer is used only to describe fine threads rather than weather.

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A group of Vienna-based scientists is working on plans to create a pacifist nation state, called Asgardia, in space.