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The Australian Petroleum Statistics provide statistics on petroleum production, refinery inputs and outputs, sales and stocks of petroleum products, and prices.

A critically endangered Regent Honeyeater has given researchers hope that the species can be saved.

A rare sighting of a red-backed shrike, notorious for its habit of impaling its victims in a grisly larder

The first sign of autumn appeared the moment we arrived. A spotted redshank, resplendent in its dusky breeding plumage, stopping off on my Somerset coastal patch as it headed south from its Arctic nesting grounds.

But the start of July is far too early for any songbird migrants. So along with my companion Daniel, whom I met on our very first day at grammar school, almost half a century ago, I simply enjoyed the fine weather, and its associated marbled white and meadow brown butterflies.

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A Victorian garden sensation has become a sensational invasive nuisance. Contact with its toxic sap causes burns and blisters that can take months to heal

It’s a monster towering up to 20ft tall, leaves spreading out like giant hands and flowers arranged in clusters the size of dinner plates. This is the giant hogweed, and the tabloids have been running alarming headlines recently, claiming an explosion in numbers of “Britain’s most dangerous plant” is creating havoc as it spreads in the hot weather this summer.

In reality, the plant only spreads by seed, each plant producing up to 50,000 seeds released from late August onwards and cast into the wind or water. But the giant hogweed is undoubtedly a dangerous plant, armed with highly toxic sap and just brushing past it with bare skin is enough to cause painful skin burns, which blister when exposed to ultraviolet rays in daylight, and can take months to heal. Even years afterwards the skin remains sensitive to sunlight.

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Mosquitoes are the main vectors for dengue and zika. Insecticides are our best weapon against them. Anja Jonsson/Flickr

Chemical pesticides have been used for many years to control insect populations and remain the most important method of managing diseases carried by pests, including mosquitoes. However, insects have fought back by evolving resistance to many pesticides. There are now thousands of instances of evolved resistance, which make some chemical classes completely ineffective.

The Aedes mosquito, largely responsible for the spread of viruses like dengue and zika, has globally developed resistance to commonly used chemicals, including pyrethroids. Pyrethroids are the most used insecticides in the world, which includes the control of dengue outbreaks and quarantine breaches at air and sea ports.

In Asia and the Americas, pyrethroid resistance in Aedes mosquitoes is now widespread. In Australia, our mosquitoes have not developed these defences and pyrethroids are still very effective.

The difference lies in our stringent and careful protocols for chemical use. As the global community fights zika and other mosquito-borne diseases, there are lessons to be learned from Australia’s success.

Developing resistance

Mosquitoes usually become resistant to pyrethroids through the mutation of a sodium channel gene that controls the movement of ions across cell membranes. Mutations in a single gene are enough to make mosquitoes almost completely resistant to the level of pyrethroids used in insecticides.

The mutations first arises in a population by chance, and are rare. However, they rapidly spread as resistant females breed. The more times a mosquito population is exposed to the same chemical, the more the natural selection process favours their impervious offspring.

Eventually, when many individuals in a population carry the resistance mutation, the chemical becomes ineffective. This can happen where insecticide “fogging” is common practice. Overseas, fogging is sometimes undertaken across entire neighbourhoods, several times a month, despite concerns about its effectiveness as well as its environmental and health impacts.

A pest exterminator carries out insecticide fogging in an apartment block in Singapore. EPA, Wallace Woon/AAP

Once resistance develops, it can spread to non-resistant mosquito populations in other areas. Pest species, including mosquitoes, are often highly mobile because they fly or are carried passively (in vehicles, ships and planes) at any stage of their life cycle. Their mobility means mutations spread quickly, crossing borders and possibly seas.

We can still control Australian mosquitoes

Despite this, Australian populations of Aedes mosquitoes remain susceptible to pyrethroids. Aedes aegypti (the yellow fever mosquito) is the main disease-carrying mosquito in Australia. Its population is restricted to urban areas of northern Queensland, where dengue can occur.

Recent research found that all Australian populations of this species are still vulnerable to pyrethroids. None of the hundreds of mosquitoes tested had any mutations in the sodium channel gene, despite the high incidence of such mutations in mosquito populations of South-East Asia.

A female Aedes aegypti mosquito during a feed. James Gathany, CDC Prof Frank Hadley Collins/Wikimedia

We believe these mosquitoes remain vulnerable to pyrethroids because in Australia pressure to select for resistance has been low.

Australia does not carry out routine fogging. If dengue is detected in an area, pyrethoids are used in highly regimented and limited fashion. Spraying is restricted to the insides of premises within selected house blocks, and then only for a short period.

Importantly, water-filled artificial containers, which can serve as a habitat for larvae, are treated with insect growth regulators, which do not select for the pyrethroid resistance mutations.

Exporting resistance

With chemical resistance growing around the world, it is more urgent than ever that we co-ordinate action to control and reduce risk of resistance. Unfortunately, no global guidelines exist to minimise the evolution of resistance in mosquitoes.

Adopting pesticide resistance management strategies has proven to be effective against other pests – for example, the corn earworm (Helicoverpa armigera). Guidelines include rotating different class of pesticides to deny pests the chance to develop resistance, and investing in non-chemical options such as natural predators of target pests.

Resistance management strategies are particularly critical for new pesticides that have different modes of attack, such as preventing juvenile insects from moulting, or attacking various chemical receptors.

To prolong the effectiveness of pesticides, we must develop these strategies before resistance begins to develop. North Queensland may be an example to the rest of the world on the best path forward.

Ary Hoffmann receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

Nancy Margaret Endersby-Harshman receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Scott Ritchie receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, US Dept. of Defence, and USAid.

Inside the Lancashire protest camp aiming to disrupt new Cuadrilla wells with direct action tactics

It is a battle that has gone on for years, pitting tireless local residents and environmentalists against a major gas exploration company hoping to get rich – and solve a future energy crisis – by fracking under the Fylde coast.

Last October the government overruled Lancashire county council and gave Cuadrilla the green light to begin drilling, but anti-fracking activists have refused to give up their fight.

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The UK’s first geothermal plant could come online as soon as 2020 – research suggests the technology could one day generate a fifth of the nation’s power

A pioneering project to produce power from hot rocks several kilometres under the ground in Cornwall will begin drilling early next year, if a multimillion-pound fundraising drive succeeds.

Abundance, a crowdfunding platform overseen by the main City regulator, will this week launch a bond to raise £5m for the UK’s first commercial geothermal power station, located near Redruth.

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A mariner says there is a "raft" of plastic debris spanning 965,000 square miles in part of the South Pacific.

Around Yellowstone national park, mining companies anticipate the end of the Obama-era moratorium, but local businesses are fighting back

• Help support the Guardian’s coverage of the government’s public land sell-off

Bruce Gordon’s Cessna Centurion floats off the runway south of Livingston, Montana, quickly escaping the confines of Paradise Valley, walled on both sides by the Absaroka and Gallatin mountain ranges. Snaking through the alfalfa fields, cottonwood thickets and ranches below, the Yellowstone river is still surging with late spring snowmelt.

As soon as we crest the ridges, the whole of Yellowstone national park is visible to the south, with Grand Teton towering on the far horizon. Places that would take hours to drive between – because of impassable mountains and roadless wilderness – are revealed to be only a handful of miles apart. The nearly 1 million acres of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness is spread out to the east, teeming with unseen elk herds, mountain lions, and grizzly bears. Gordon, who runs the nonprofit EcoFlight, based in Aspen, Colorado, pilots flights like this one to help people understand conservation issues with a view from above. “We’re coming up on Emigrant Gulch now,” Joe Josephson, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, says over the intercom as we fly over the green-roofed buildings of Chico Hot Springs resort, skirting the conical 10,915ft Emigrant Peak. Josephson, an avid mountaineer who recently summited Emigrant Peak to celebrate his 50th birthday, is the Montana Conservation Associate for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a nonprofit devoted to defending the 20 million-acre Yellowstone ecosystem from degradation.

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The Founder and chair of the Virgin Group speaks during a panel discussion in New York on Friday and says the threat of climate change actually offers ‘one of the great opportunities for this world’. Branson urges the business sector to step forward and ‘fill certain gaps that some governments are leaving behind’ in tackling the problem

• Trump regrets ‘bizarre mistake’ of Paris climate pullout, Branson claims

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Britain is an international leader in animal welfare and now, fortunately, the message is beginning to spread – importantly to China

Animal welfare is one of the UK’s most successful exports. When the late Peter Roberts, a Hampshire dairy farmer, founded the charity Compassion in World Farming (ciwf.org.uk) 50 years ago, he rightly feared that industrialised farming would wreak havoc on animals and the planet. Even he couldn’t have envisaged today’s numbers: 70 billion animals are reared globally for meat, milk and eggs each year and two thirds of farm animals are reared intensively. We call it factory farming. The mission of CIWF is to bring it to a halt.

The concept of animal welfare didn’t have an equivalent in Mandarin or Cantonese.

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Scientists have dated the trees to a previous ice age 60,000 years ago, when sea levels were far lower.

A "raft" of plastic debris spanning more than 965,000 square miles is floating in the South Pacific.

Simultaneous harvest failures in key regions would bring global famine, says the Met Office

Governments may be seriously underestimating the risks of crop disasters occurring in major farming regions around the world, a study by British researchers has found.

The newly published research, by Met Office scientists, used advanced climate modelling to show that extreme weather events could devastate food production if they occurred in several key areas at the same time. Such an outcome could trigger widespread famine.

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• Virgin chief tells audience in Brooklyn Trump’s decision is ‘very, very strange’
• ‘I get the feeling the president is regretting what he did’

Donald Trump regrets the “bizarre mistake” of withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, Sir Richard Branson has said. The British billionaire also urged the president to help phase out the ailing US coal industry.

Related: Donald Trump offers hand of friendship to Emmanuel Macron on Paris visit

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Acclaimed Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani dies of breast cancer aged 40.

Readers document the rising environmental crisis of plastic waste, as the planet struggles to cope with a million plastic bottles being sold every minute

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Bratley View, New Forest The distinct click had been a seed pod twisting and firing its tiny black seeds into the distance

Click. The sound is distinct. A black speck flashes across my vision. I straighten up and think about the two. There can be no doubt what they were, but I am sensorially confused. Which had I actually experienced first? The click, or the speck?

At that moment, I had been adjusting the settings on my camera to try to catch the pink of the clump of common centaury that was looking radiant at the edge of an parched path. I give up on that for the time being, and linger by the gorse bushes in the hope that there will be a repeat performance, and I will solve the puzzle. Though I wait, and later walk some distance through an extensive gorse brake following a route marked out by the ponies, the plants refuse an encore.

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Six of the world's large carnivores have lost more than 90% of their historic range, new analysis says.

They hunt for prey, look like modernist sculptures and have their very own kingdom on the tree of life: slime moulds are bizarre and beautiful. This episode is selected from the Off Track archive.