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A Mexican fish species has been "brought back from extinction" after a decades-long rescue mission.

The beaches of the Indian Ocean island seem bereft of the beautiful shells popular with tourists.

Is the progress made in Glasgow in jeopardy from a rising tide of challenges in the year ahead?

Continents colliding, mountains rising and falling, and remarkable strength. The story of Australia’s most iconic mountain is truly magical. Melanie Finch, Lecturer in Structural Geology and Metamorphism, Monash University Andrew Giles, Assistant lecturer, Monash University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Despite the ‘minuscule’ chance of leopards roaming the wilderness, diehard enthusiasts insist ‘you’ve got to see it to believe it’

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Scott Lansbury had his first encounter 25 years ago. It was in the Victorian town of Upper Beaconsfield, close to midnight, where he and his brother saw the animal walking up the footpath across the road from where they lived.

“It was bigger than any dog I’ve ever seen,” he recalls. “Bigger than a labrador, bigger than a [German] shepherd.”

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The climate emergency has clear themes with heroes and villains. Describing it this way is how to build a movement

The biggest success of the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to push doubt about climate science is that it forced the conversation about the climate crisis to centre on science.

It’s not that we didn’t need scientific research into climate change, or that we don’t need plenty more of it. Or even that we don’t need to do a better job of explaining basic science to people, across the board (hello, Covid). But at this moment, “believe science” is too high a bar for something that demands urgent action. Believing science requires understanding it in the first place. In the US, the world’s second biggest carbon polluter, fewer than 40% of the population are college educated and in many states, schools in the public system don’t have climate science on the curriculum. So where should this belief – strong enough to push for large-scale social and behavioural change – be rooted exactly?

Amy Westervelt is a climate journalist and the founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency podcast network

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Namibia wants to use its abundance of sunshine and wind power to make and export hydrogen.

Dogs can only sweat on their paw pads, which is not a lot of use when it comes to shedding body heat. Melissa Starling, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Sydney Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The award-winning naturalist and conservationist earned the Darwin nickname for his life's work.

Floods and storms connected to rising temperatures have had a huge impact on people worldwide.

Wildlife across the UK is increasingly suffering the impacts of extreme weather events and natural disasters, says the National Trust.

Maggots are misunderstood, and we should see past the “yuck” factor and appreciate what these unique organisms can do for us. Michelle Harvey, Associate Professor, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

It wasn’t a financially astute move but it led to my TV series and helped me discover the truly important things in life

• Guardian writers and readers describe their favourite place in New Zealand’s wilderness and why it’s special to them

My entire experience of Auckland changed when I got a boat. It was the perfect antidote to a professional DJ lifestyle, where getting up at 5am to be on the water become immeasurably preferable to coming home at 5am from work. On trips out I began sticking my head underwater with such vigour that I somehow turned it into a whole new profession.

It didn’t happen straight away, of course. My 40-year-old, 14-foot beige fibreglass boat with a semi-reliable two-stroke engine, named Brown Thunder, only had so much range, and my real goal lay much farther offshore, tantalisingly out of reach. A place where tales of clear blue tropical water and huge fish swirled around a group of uninhabited islands, teasing me from the pages of marine magazines or the crusty lips of old salty sea-mates.

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The climate crisis resembles a huge planetary lockdown, trapping humanity within an ever-deteriorating environment

There is a moment when a never-ending crisis turns into a way of life. This seems to be the case with the pandemic. If so, it’s wise to explore the permanent condition in which it has left us. One obvious lesson is that societies have to learn once again to live with pathogens, just as they learned to when microbes were first made visible by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.

These discoveries were concerned with only one aspect of microbial life. When you also consider the various sciences of the earth system, another aspect of viruses and bacteria comes to the fore. During the long geochemical history of the earth, microbes, together with fungi and plants, have been essential, and are still essential, to the very composition of the environment in which we humans live. The pandemic has shown us that we will never escape the invasive presence of these living beings, entangled as we are with them. They react to our actions; if they mutate, we have to mutate as well.

Bruno Latour is a philosopher and anthropologist, the author of After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis and the winner of the 2013 Holberg prize

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Our photographers brought the natural world to the fore, with pictures of wildlife and the efforts to conserve them across the globe

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The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including galloping horses, a honey-bee hive and a lonely red-crowned crane

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

A British businessman nicknamed Batman has been jailed by German authorities for more than three years after confessing to his part in using the EU carbon market to commit tax fraud valued at €125 million.

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