The Guardian

Wildlife experts have applied for licence to release 10 animals following successful reintroductions in Scotland and England

Beavers could return to Wales for the first time in hundreds of years, after being successfully reintroduced in other parts of the UK.

Wildlife experts are submitting a licence application to release 10 beavers in the south of the country and hope the reintroduction could begin this year.

2016 wasn’t all bad news for the climate, but it was ugly toward the end

This past year had so many stories involving human-caused climate change – it will be forever in our memories. Here is a summary of some of the high points, from my perspective. When I say “high points” I don’t necessarily mean good. Some of these high points are bad and some are downright ugly. Let’s do the good first.

Parkhead, Sheffield Shortly before the day died, luridly bright streaks of pink and purple began appearing like a bruise

The window of my room here looks south-west, over the rooftops of a Sheffield suburb draped over the foothills of the Pennines, and through it I watch the endless traffic of the sky all day; the fleets of clouds steaming past on their journey from coast to coast, the planes etching contrails that wobble tipsily in the winds.

Recently, the sky has seemed muted, in the way it often does when the light is at its leanest and the weather settles for grey neutrality. But a marvel of midwinter is how even the most austere, threadbare days can give rise to the most lavish of sunsets.

Karumba locals use improvised barricades to corral the 3.5m saltwater crocodile, which made an unwelcome appearance on New Year’s Eve

Locals in a small north Queensland fishing town improvised with rubbish bins and hay bales to corral a 3.5m crocodile who wandered into their midst on New Year’s Eve.

The crocodile kept police and residents in Karumba, on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, on high alert for most of Saturday until environment department officials arrived from Cairns, about 700km away, to capture and remove the reptile.

Some of Britain’s best-loved landscapes are being threatened by the government’s rush to declare the country “open for business”, warn rural campaigners.

Large developments and infrastructure projects are planned in some of the UK’s most treasured tourist destinations, including the Lake District, the Cotswolds, and Sussex’s High Weald as well as on large swaths of green belt land.

• NYPD posts photo of whale swimming near mayor’s mansion
• Another humpback took up residence in Hudson river last month

A large whale, believed to be a humpback, was spotted in the East river in New York City on Saturday.

Related: New York's whales to be studied for the first time

Greek graphic designer Meni Chatzipanagiotou, who has been immersed in nature since she was a child, crafts her scenic illustrations of starry mountainscapes on wood rather than on paper. “The natural colour and smell of the wood brings me closer to nature,” she says. “I enjoy thinking about the wood’s structure, how it can be transformed into something else and hold additional purpose and meaning.” At the intersection of science, fantasy and fiction, and made with thin pens to achieve an intricate attention to detail, these woodcut illustrations represent an ode to our earthly origins. “Botanical nature holds harmony and purity. For those who want to listen, I believe that nature has many things to teach us.”

A longtime advocate for public lands, Terry Tempest Williams has been at the forefront of fighting for conservation. This year, she stepped into the firing line

One cold day last February, Terry Tempest Williams, a prominent environmental author and advocate, stepped into Utah’s Salt Palace to begin her unlikely career in the energy industry.

Salt Palace, Salt Lake City’s largest convention center, was hosting a federal oil and gas lease sale, at which the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would auction off 45,000 acres of public land for oil and gas extraction.

Cricieth, North Wales There was no horizon, no distinction in the grey tonality, no dividing line between sea and sky

A drab December greyness. I scrunched eastwards along the shingle, heading towards Black Rock. Foamy salients threatened to swamp my boots. My little terrier Phoebe darted in and out of the wavelets to retrieve sticks.

Here and there I paused to watch a raft of scoter (Melanitta nigra) offshore. Their dark shapes pulsed up and down on a smooth swell.

Each summer for 40 years Nev and Bev McLachlan have camped on a remote Queensland beach to monitor and tag nesting sea turtles. Melissa Davey joins them on their mission

It’s about 7pm at the remote Wreck Rock beach within Deepwater national park in Queensland and Nev and Bev McLachlan are starting the night watch.

For the past 40 years the husband and wife have been travelling from their home on the Sunshine Coast to a tiny campsite about 140km north of Bundaberg, their enormous caravan full of camp supplies as well as turtle tagging and monitoring gear.

Dr Martin Warren has saved at least three species from extinction, laying the ground for landscape-scale conservation

Every June on Exmoor and in woods near Canterbury, a fragile-looking golden butterfly called the heath fritillary flutters in the sunshine.

It would probably not grace summer woodlands and moors were it not for the efforts of Dr Martin Warren, a scientist and conservationist who has been awarded an OBE in the New Year honours list.

Dozens of trade venues to be closed in the next three months, in a move activists are calling ‘a gamechanger’

China will ban all domestic ivory trade and processing by the end of 2017, state media reported on Friday, in a move hailed by activists as a gamechanger for Africa’s elephants.

African ivory is highly sought after in China where it is seen as a status symbol and prices for a kilo (2.2 pounds) can reach as much as $1,100 (£890).

Activists camping out near Kirby Misperton where shale exploration by Third Energy has been approved by council

Protesters have called themselves the “frontline in the fight against fracking” as they prepare to camp out on New Year’s Eve by one of the two UK sites where the practice is has been given the go-ahead.

Activists moved on to private farmland near Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire, just before Christmas, after the high court rejected a legal move to stop plans for fracking at a well south-west of the village.

While we love the beach and the backyard pool, a dip in the Yarra or Swan has become anathema to us – but it wasn’t always so

Australia is world-famous as a swimming nation. We have a celebrated beach culture, not to mention more privately owned pools per capita than any other country. Yet few urban Australians would consider swimming in their city’s river.

Almost every major Australian city sits on the banks of a large river. But judging by online reactions to the suggestion of a dip in the Brisbane river, most people are worried about everything from ear infections to a painful death from brain-eating amoebae.

Ladle Hill, Hampshire This neat circle of blue is the only unfrozen water for a kilometre in each direction

Refreshed by the labour of the climb, my legs nonetheless argue for respite on the crest of the hill. And, just as it does on the map, the dewpond appears a little way below me as a neat circle of blue reflecting a flawless sky on a day of hard frost.

The pond is at the very top of the downs. On one side is flint-spewing earth, which in summer is covered in a yellow cowl of rapeseed. And on the other is grazing pasture capping the concentric earthen rings of the iron age fort that stands sentinel on the hill’s northern ridge. The lightest of winds twitches the smears of wool caught on wire barbs. Up here ‘There is no life higher than the grasstops / Or the hearts of sheep…’, as Sylvia Plath wrote of the West Yorkshire moors in Wuthering Heights, her poem of exquisite introspection.

The artist says her undeniably sad portraits of bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef are about resilience: ‘It’s not a fragile delicate flower … it’s so important to be optimistic and do what we can to protect it’

Laura Jones is pained by the delicate balance she wants to strike. Her paintings of coral bleaching are going to be engulfing, immersive and undeniably sad. But she wants them to express hope and resilience, too.

It’s something she keeps coming back to before, during and after I visit her studio, where she is preparing a major exhibition.

Oceanographers are busy mapping the powerful underwater eddies that have proved a major hazard to submariners

Rows of tall buildings channel the breeze, turning streets into wind tunnels and creating whirlwinds. A similar effect underwater may be deadly.

Tidal currents can produce giant whirlpools. Some, like the famous Maelstrom off the Norwegian coast, have been known as shipping hazards for centuries. Their destructive power feeds mythology; Maelstrom is the home of the mythical Kraken, which drags ships down, while regular whirlpools in the straits of Messina are blamed on the fearsome Charybdis.

Green energy such as wind power made up 40% of electricity generated in Britain, compared with 25% on 25 December 2015

Christmas Day was the greenest on record for energy generation, according to the power group Drax.

The company said more than 40% of the electricity generated on the day came from renewable sources, the highest ever. It compared with 25% on Christmas Day in 2015, and 12% in 2012.

Throughout 2016, astronauts aboard the International Space Station recorded the ever-changing face of the Earth and its environment. Here are a selection of their best photographs

We’ve asked readers to share their photos of wildlife they have discovered every month this year. Here is a selection of the best of them

Readers have been sharing a wonderful array of wildlife photographs every month throughout the year. And with 2016 drawing to a close, we thought it would be nice to document the very best of them from all four seasons. Here’s to more fantastic, up close and personal wildlife photography next year.