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The failed attempt to reinstate land clearing regulations in Queensland has prompted 'panic clearing', pushing Australia into the global top-ten deforesters. Noel D Preece, Adjunct Principal Research Fellow at Charles Darwin and, James Cook University Penny van Oosterzee, Principal Research Adjunct James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The Trump administration’s lifting of restrictions on importing elephant body parts from Zimbabwe and Zambia is not the last gift to hunting interests

Hunting interests have scored a major victory with the Trump administration’s decision to allow Americans to bring home body parts of elephants shot for sport in Africa. Another totemic species now looks set to follow suit – lions.

As the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was announcing it was lifting a ban on the import of elephant “trophies” from Zimbabwe and Zambia, it also quietly published new guidelines that showed lions shot in the two African countries will also be eligible to adorn American homes.

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Calls grow for the federal government to step in as erosion from intensified land clearing in Queensland threatens coral

A deforestation surge in Queensland, which the latest government data suggests is about to accelerate dramatically, is heavily concentrated in catchments for the Great Barrier Reef, further undermining plans to improve reef water quality.

The finding has renewed calls for the federal government to use its powers to assess the impact of clearing there until the Queensland government is able to pass legislation to halt it itself.

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Report from the National Audit Office finds overall improvement in air quality but does not expect to meet EU targets until 2021

The government will be more than a decade late in meeting EU targets on air quality, a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) has revealed.

The cost of health impacts from air pollution, including fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, is estimated at £20bn. Nearly 30,000 deaths were thought to be caused in 2008 by fine particulate matter pollution, some of it caused by diesel cars, according to the report. About 13% of fine particulate matter pollution is thought to come from diesel engines. This is in spite of improving air quality overall.

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US sceptics are questioning the science behind air pollution and mortality, a trend that is starting to appear in countries where the air is much more toxic

Despite report after report linking air pollution to deterioration of the lungs, heart and brain, Prof Robert Phalen believes the air is “too clean” for children.

After all, everybody needs a bit of immune-system-boosting dirt in their lungs.

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A significant group of nations take a stand against using coal for electricity generation at UN climate talks.

The procedure took 30 people three hours to complete. Tantor had been rescued from a ranch in Colombia.

New alliance launched at Bonn climate talks hopes to signal the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that kills 800,000 people a year with air pollution

A new alliance of 19 nations committed to quickly phasing out coal has been launched at the UN climate summit in Bonn, Germany. It was greeted as a “political watershed”, signalling the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that currently provides 40% of global electricity.

New pledges were made on Thursday by Mexico, New Zealand, Denmark and Angola for the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which is led by the UK and Canada.

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Campaigners fear move by Trump administration will damage global efforts to end the ivory trade

Donald Trump’s administration plans to allow imports of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe into the US – a move campaigners fear could damage global momentum on ending the ivory trade.

In 2014, US big game hunters killing elephants in Zimbabwe were banned from bringing their trophies home, on the basis that the country had failed to show that it was taking elephant management seriously.

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Laser labs sense black holes merging at a distance of about a billion light-years from Earth.

In a rare instance, Indian villagers and forest officers worked together for hours to save the animal

Gene-editing has been attempted on cells inside a patient, in a world first by doctors in California.

Leading climate economist says world leaders must move forward without the US on crucial issues in the closing days of the UN summit

Ministers from governments around the world meeting in Bonn for the final days of the UN climate talks must prove they can pass “the Trump test” by moving on without the US on issues crucial to combating global warming, a leading climate economist has said.

“It’s about getting on with it,” Lord Nicholas Stern told the Guardian. “They have to get on with it. But there are good signs.”

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RN Drive sifts fact from fiction with analysis of the week's science news.

Hamsterley, Weardale, Durham As the centuries passed, the memorials in the village churchyard became more formal and decorative, less idiosyncratic

There has been a place of worship on this spot since 1180 but no one seems to know why St James’ church was founded on this hillside half a mile from the village. “Man fleeth as it were a passing shadow,” cautions the sundial above the porch. Perhaps the grandeur of the rising sun, as I watched it lifting deep shadows from the valley cut by the river Wear, moved its founders to build here.

I wandered around the churchyard, reading names on tombstones carved by stonemasons whose own identities have long since been forgotten.

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Australia's "unambitious, uninspired" climate policyagain puts it near bottom of global rankings. States get a mention for taking "independent action."

Victoria will likely go without its much-vaunted battery storage installations this summer, following months of delays likely to be centred around finance and contracting.

Pilbara Solar seeks federal government funding for plan to export WA generated solar power to Indonesia, via a sub-sea cable.

Big gas generators in South Australia have combined again to create "scarcity" and push prices into orbit, pocketing windfall profits at the expense of consumers.

Hydro Tasmania’s Hybrid Energy Solutions team has installed a 600 kilowatt solar array to complement the island’s existing 600kW wind turbine.