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An industry expert says petrol and diesel cars should be banned by 2030 or 2035, not 2040.

The about face has angered conservationists who say it will trash the delicate Alpine environment.

Conservationists say NSW decision will damage native flora and fauna, and result in horses starving

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The New South Wales government is to introduce laws to protect the Snowy Mountains brumby from culling, angering conservationists.

On Sunday the NSW deputy premier and Nationals leader, John Barilaro, announced he would introduce legislation to parliament this week recognising the brumbies’ “heritage value”.

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Economist says Australian MPs ‘abusing the term’ in applying it to any decision to pull approval for Carmichael mine

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A decision by a future Australian government to stop Adani from developing its Carmichael coalmine would not increase Australia’s sovereign risk, a new report argues.

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Conservationists hope remediating landowners’ sunken gullies could lead to a significant improvement in reef water quality

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Strathalbyn station is cattle country, about 34,000 hectares of north Queensland grazing land, and the site of a pilot program that has demonstrated the potential to drastically improve water quality flowing towards the Great Barrier Reef.

At Strathalbyn, which is more than 200km from the coast, bulldozers and graders work to remediate sunken gullies where sediment flows into the Burdekin river catchment. It looks more like a construction site than an environmental program.

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Insects are the backbone of a healthy global ecosystem – but their numbers are facing catastrophic decline due to climate change. So, what can you do to help?

Already beset by degraded landscapes and a toxic environment, insects are going to suffer a catastrophic decline in numbers unless climate change is controlled, according to new research from the University of East Anglia. This is on top of the alarming collapse reported in Germany, where 75% of the flying insect biomass has vanished from protected areas in less than 30 years.

Insects are the backbone of a healthy ecosystem and the consequences of their absence will be global. Is there anything we can do other than despair? Insects will need stepping stones to move around the country as the climate changes. Here are some ways you can help.

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Most of us feel the itch of the primitive from time to time—to run without shoes, try a paleo diet, or just ditch the smartphone. The primitivist ideal exerts a seductive pull in tech-obsessed contemporary western society, but is the ideal based on a highly questionable set of philosophical assumptions?

Insect Armageddon. Is it happening...or not?

UK’s ‘reputation could suffer if environmental protections are weakened after leaving EU’

The United Nations has warned the government that Britain’s reputation is at risk over plans that would significantly weaken protections for the environment after Brexit.

In a stern intervention, Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN’s environment programme, called on the environment secretary Michael Gove to honour his promise to deliver a “green Brexit”, ensuring the environment would not suffer from Britain’s EU departure.

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What is it about AI that unnerves us? Alan Finkel suspects it’s a combination of things.

How a remote Australian town found itself at the vanguard of a global revolution.

Report finds Narrabri has “enormous potential” for renewables, with scope for between 1GW and 4.5GW of large-scale solar and wind, that would create 500-2,600 permanent local jobs.

Automaker behind world's best selling EV unveils Nissan Energy Solar – a home solar, storage, smart control package – including 2nd-hand EV batteries.

Easton Hornstocks, Northamptonshire: A thousand years ago, mastiffs were allowed here if their front claws had been removed. Now it’s a national nature reserve, all dogs are banned

The dawn light astonishes but mostly it’s the smell: sharp, delicate, wild garlic, the last of the bluebells, dewy grass. Dappled light is spilled up the trees and on the ground, and swirls, as the leaves casting it sway, like reflections off water. Silver birch limbs, knotted with birch polypore fungus, lie pale on beds of fat-bladed grass. I find an ornate snail on one. Falling leaf litter. Birdsong. This place quietly seethes with life.

I’ve never needed a permit to go for a walk in England before. Easton Hornstocks is an old wood of lime and ash trees close to my home. It’s a national nature reserve, and I had to ask for access. It was easy. Free. I had to carry the permit. No bikes; fine, I don’t own one. No dogs; ditto. But I didn’t know how I felt about the idea. Rankled by the restriction? Or thankful for its sense of privilege?

Easton is a village, but Hornstocks is an unfamiliar word, certainly for a wood. There are other odd suffixes to woodland reserves in these parts: Everden Stubbs, Castor Hanglands, Bedford Purlieus. Archaic generics that had fallen obscure in the way that chase or heath hadn’t, maybe. One, purlieu, is a relic of the Forest Law, meaning an agricultural area on the edge of the trees.

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Scientists strap tiny bum-bags onto geckos in the middle of the night on an outback cattle station. They are tracking how cattle grazing impacts tiny lizards. PLUS BONUS #FieldWorkFail

Vanessa Pirotta will represent Australia at the Famelab final in Cheltenham.

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

The Netherlands said it will shut two of its coal power plants in 2024 and the other three before 2030 unless they switch fuels, adding further pressure to big-emitting generators ahead of the implementation of a planned domestic carbon floor price for power from 2020.

Several Californian agencies are discussing raising the carbon reduction target for natural and working lands (NWLs) in the state in order to meet the state’s 2030 GHG targets, which the departments laid out at a workshop on Friday.

Family sells off a vintage machinery collection; go fly fishing in Tasmania; indigenous language comes alive at Taree High; and a local shearing clothing brand turns 30.