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The 2016 Bragg Prize for science writing was won by Ashley Hay for her superb essay on Australian trees.

A new campaign led by medical professionals is calling for all diesel cars to be banned from London.

Every year more than 100 wildlife rangers are murdered in the line of duty. Why do they get so little support? And where is the outrage?

Cameroonian ranger killed by wildlife poachers

As we sat by the campfire, Gervais, a ranger from the forests of Malawi, slowly pulled back his hair to expose a 20cm scar left by a machete attack that nearly killed him. Poachers, he told me.

I was at an international rangers’ conference, held 13 years ago in a national park on the southern tip of mainland Australia. Another ranger, Jobogo Mirindi from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), showed me a photo taken five years before. Arranged football team-style were 30 or so of his smiling colleagues. Six rangers’ heads were circled in red; those were the only ones still alive.

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Two to three rangers are being shot a week as poachers step up their predations on the world’s wildlife

Another day, another dead wildlife ranger. We must do more to help them

A Cameroonian ranger was ambushed and killed by ivory poachers on Wednesday while patrolling to protect elephants and gorillas. During the last morning of a 10-day patrol in Lobéké National Park, Bruce Danny Ngongo was shot three times, once in the thigh and twice in the hip.

“[Ngongo fell after] an ambush by a gang of poachers heavily armed with Kalachnikov [sic] who immediately opened fire on the surveillance staff,” said Lobéké National Park director Achille Mengamenya Goue, in a letter sent on the evening of the incident to Cameroon’s forestry and wildlife minister, Philip Ngole Ngwese.

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Bosherston, Pembrokeshire To stand on the cliff as green combers thud into the walls beneath, roar into the cave and recoil in white chaos is to become aware of even rock’s fragility

The bird ledges on Mowing Word, a cock’s spur of a limestone point on the south Pembrokeshire coast, are empty now. The guillemots and razorbills that jostle, cackle and croon here through the spring months, their single eggs perilously free from nests’ constraints, are far out to sea, searching for food.

The cliff on wild days is storm-watchers’ domain. To stand on top as green combers thud into the walls beneath, roar into the cave and recoil in white chaos is to become aware of even rock’s fragility. Sometimes the whole narrow headland shakes beneath your feet, and white spume that looks so light lashes the skin.

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Laysan albatross known as Wisdom is also the world’s oldest known breeding bird in the wild and has had a few dozen chicks

The world’s oldest known seabird is expecting – again.

Biologists spotted the Laysan albatross called Wisdom at Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge earlier this month after she returned to the island to nest.

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During the prolonged dry period between 1997 and 2010 37 species of birds declined significantly. Three years later, even with abundant water only 5 species showed signs of recovery.

The world's largest cold energy storage plant, which can act like a giant battery for renewable energy, is being commissioned at a site near Manchester.

Living out almost their entire life within cow pats, dung beetles are the unlikely heroes of both biological control AND Australian barbecues. This is a repeat episode from the Off Track archives.

Japan launches a cargo ship equipped with a half-mile long magnetic tether to clear space junk.

A former shearer turns his hand to growing native flowers in the Wimmera; scientists conduct a bio-blitz on Fraser Island; we spice up the day with a visit to a pepper farm; and meet a world champion tractor collector.

Tina Louise Rothery – part of a protest group known as the Nanas – staged a three-week occupation of a field near Blackpool

An anti-fracking campaigner has been spared jail after she refused to pay more than £55,000 of legal fees to the oil and gas firm Cuadrilla.

Tina Louise Rothery, 54, had been ordered to pay £55,342 of fees to the British company and a group of landowners, or face a 14-day prison sentence, after she sought to stop an injunction that would prevent protesters gathering on a stretch of land being considered for shale gas exploration.

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The annual National Geographic nature photographer of the year attracts thousands of entries from across the globe. Here’s a selection of the winning images

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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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Japan launches a cargo ship carrying a space junk collector designed to gather debris in space.

Without their traditional land managers, conservation reserves in Central America are left vulnerable to corporate interests, report finds. Climate Home reports

Conservation reserves in Central America have shut indigenous peoples off from their traditional lands and driven deforestation, community leaders have told Climate Home.

Since revolution in the region started to wind down in the 1980s, there has been an internationally celebrated trend to create large conservation areas. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of forest have been placed within borders designed to protect them.

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Cast: AdelaideSBN

Planet Earth filmmakers talk dancing flamingos and bears

A grey crane, bright red autumnal leaves and Tibetan gazelles are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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EU emissions pledge could be undermined by bank’s investments in oil, gas and auto industries, new analysis shows

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) quantitative easing programme is systematically investing billions of euros in the oil, gas and auto industries, according to a new analysis

The ECB has already purchased €46bn (£39bn) of corporate bonds since last June in a bid to boost flagging eurozone growth rates, a figure that some analysts expect to rise to €125bn by next September. On Thursday the bank said it would extend the scheme until 2018.

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