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New satellite-based research shows there is at least as much value in knowing how much water is left for plants to use as there is in knowing how much rain may be on the way. Siyuan Tian, Postdoctoral fellow, Australian National University Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Councils say lack of funding and rock-bottom recycling prices is hampering efforts to build better infrastructure and reinvigorate dying market

Recycling is being stockpiled and council authorities fear it will soon head to landfill, as Australia’s recycling crisis continues to take its toll on the industry.

More than a year after China refused to accept 99% of the world’s recycling, halting the export of more than one million tonnes of Australian waste each year, the heads of local government warn the recycling market is still in trouble.

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The Rainbow Warrior III has spent the past two months sailing Australia’s southern waters, bolstering the fight to protect the bight

The ship sets sail and we brace our legs against the swell, sweeping and mopping around the cabins. Countering the tilt we work quickly and silently, trying not to wake any crew who had been on watch the previous night. Not even celebrities and photographers are spared the daily 8am chores, the ship’s third mate, Amrit Bakshi, tells us later, laughing.

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Thousands of lakes are set to lose their ice cover within a generation due to rising temperatures.

EUAs tumbled by more than a euro to below €23 on Monday amid speculation that Germany’s coal phaseout deal would prompt big-emitting utilities to unwind generation hedges.

Mallard who lived in a roadside puddle is found dead after being attacked by dogs

Trevor the duck, whose tale of loneliness on the tiny Pacific island nation of Niue made him a local celebrity and captured headlines last year, has died.

He was found dead in the bush after being attacked by dogs, according to a social media page dedicated to the drake.

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The UK's Ministry of Defence approaches an Oxford start-up to help design a sovereign satellite radar system.

Desert lion population learning to hunt marine life to survive harsh conditions on Skeleton Coast

Lions in Namibia have turned to hunting seabirds and seals in the face of scarce food resources in the arid desert landscape, new research has found.

The desert lions, which are found exclusively within the Skeleton Coast region of Namibia, are the only lions known to target marine life. Among the creatures they have been recorded eating are fur seals, flamingos and cormorants.

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NSW Department of Primary Industries confirms another spate of fish deaths in the Darling River near Menindee.

For years, Liberia fought a losing battle against the foreign vessels plundering its coastline. Then a bold new approach sent fines – and arrests – soaring

Petty officer George Kromah, of the Liberian coastguard, slings his AK47 across his back before disappearing over the side of the Sam Simon, joining his colleagues in the rib below. The boat roars off, quickly followed by a second, speeding through the choppy Atlantic swell in pursuit of a suspected illegal fishing vessel that has crossed into Liberia’s territorial waters from Sierra Leone.

Kromah and his fellow officers are on the frontline of the little nation’s ill-matched crackdown on fisheries crime – which Interpol has linked with the trafficking of drugs and people, as well as fraud and tax evasion.

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Researchers have genetically modified chickens to lay eggs which contain drugs that fight cancer.

Footage submitted by Menindee tourism operator Rob Gregory shows thousands of dead fish floating on the surface of the Darling River after the third major fish kill in a matter of weeks. Gregory identifies 'masses and masses' of carp, 'all struggling next to dead bony bream' 

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Analysis by Guardian and Friends of the Earth raises questions about impartiality in post-Brexit reform

Dozens of MPs and peers, including some with vast inherited wealth, own or manage farms that collectively have received millions of pounds in European Union subsidies.

An analysis by the Guardian and the environmental group Friends of the Earth identified 48 parliamentarians who claimed £5.7m in farming subsidies under the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) in 2017, the latest year for which figures are available.

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In tightly controlled Queensland laboratories, scientists are testing foreign bugs as a way to manage invasive species

Wading through Paraguayan wetlands last year, the CSIRO scientist Raghu Sathyamurthy was on the lookout for an aquatic plant called cabomba. Or more specifically, for the eggs of a tiny weevil known to feast on this underwater legume.

Cabomba isn’t particularly conspicuous in the wetlands around Asunción, but back in Australia, it’s choking waterways along the east coast and is one of 32 weeds classed as nationally significant.

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Undercover film raises fears of serious health risks from major EU exporting country

Undercover footage that appears to show extremely sick cows being smuggled into a Polish slaughterhouse and sold on with little or no veterinary inspection has raised alarm about standards in one of the EU’s largest meat exporters.

Covert footage in a slaughterhouse in the central Polish region of Mazovia appears to show cows so sick that they are unable to stand up being dragged out of trucks and into the slaughterhouse using a winch, with ropes tied around their horns or legs.

The slaughter of sick cows appears to take place at night with no veterinary officials on site, another contravention of basic standards. Workers at the slaughterhouse appear to remove evidence from the carcasses such as pressure sores and tumours that indicate that the cows have been sick and lying on their side for days on end.

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What we consume has implications for pollution and deforestation – so we asked four leading experts how to transform our diets to be better to ourselves and the planet

If you live on planet Earth, you have probably taken a moment to evaluate your diet in the new year. And, if you’re like most of us, you’ve probably broken whatever overly ambitious promises you made to yourself by this time. But what you eat has effects beyond the desired improvement to your waistline.

The World Resources Institute, a not-for-profit environmental research group, said Monday that humanity is not on track to meet Mission 2020, the parameters laid out to prevent catastrophic global warming and irreversible environmental damage.

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A search for a beguiling beauty. And a saga about people power.

Plant to operate for first time in seven years, but the finished product will not be flowing out of city’s taps until at least April

Sydney’s desalination plant has officially been switched on, returning it to operation for the first time in seven years.

But the plant’s finished product will not be flowing out of the city’s taps until at least April.

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Pollution from farmers' fields that endangers fish is cut by a university-backed project.

It’s a golden time for Antarctic research, with more and more countries taking a direct interest in the great southern continent. But suspicions abound as to the real motivations of key Antarctic players.