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The Australian Academy of Science and its New Zealand counterpart, the Royal Society Te Apārangi, are launching a 10-year plan to study and name unknown species, warning that a sound understanding of biodiversity is critical in the face of a global extinction crisis. Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has gotten behind the study, saying, 'We cannot understand the natural world without the taxonomic system.'  He adds, 'I depend on the work of these scientists'

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Annual BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine study reports six in 10 people have not seen a hedgehog in their garden this year

Sightings of hedgehogs in gardens have fallen again, with almost six in 10 people saying they have not seen one at all this year, a survey has found.

Related: Apocalypse hedgehog: the fight to save Britain's favourite mammal

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Female trapdoor spider known as Number 16 was sedentary and stayed close to her burrow

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The world’s oldest known spider has died at the ripe old age of 43 after being monitored for years during a long-term population study in Australia, researchers say.

The trapdoor matriarch comfortably outlived the previous record holder, a 28-year-old tarantula found in Mexico, according to a study published on Monday in the Pacific Conservation Biology Journal.

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Endangered bandicoots have been found in the outskirts of Melbourne. Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Sarah Maclagan, PhD candidate, Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Stanley residents fail to stop farmer mining groundwater that is sold on as bottled springwater

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Residents from a tiny Victorian town have been ordered to pay $90,000 in legal costs after they launched a failed bid to prevent a farmer from extracting and selling groundwater as bottled springwater to a subsidiary of the Japanese beverage giant Asahi.

The supreme court of Victoria made the costs ruling last week, four months after a residents association in the town of Stanley, which has a population of 400, was denied leave to appeal previous decisions allowing the water extraction.

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Armathwaite, Eden Valley: Their fingertips white with climbing chalk, they are surmounting overhangs and traversing blank-looking walls

John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay crosses my mind as I reach an impasse while walking along the banks of the Eden to Armathwaite crags. A flight of steps descends into Sandy Bay, created from fine-grained sand churned up from the riverbed each flood. Only, while Buchan’s 39 steps descend to sands between white chalk cliffs in Kent, Armathwaite’s stairs are sandwiched between red sandstone precipices. Also, Hannay’s adversaries were international spies; mine are old age and a dodgy hip.

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Modelling for Reliability Panel says risk of supply shortfalls in NSW after Liddell closure is one millionth of one per cent - "so small, they are generally not visible on the chart". So much for the government scare campaign about blackouts.

Two new solar farms begin full production in NSW, and with nearly 2GW of new large scale solar to be added across the country before summer, and the boom in rooftop continuing, the lowest prices may now occur at midday rather than midnight.

The 11MW Dunblane solar farm in Queensland is far from the biggest solar farm in the country, but is setting some important new benchmarks on construction and financing.

It's budget week in Victoria, and there’s a simple question to be asked: if there’s so much renewable energy ready to go, then why not go bigger?

US technology that can harvest drinking water from the air using solar power to be trialled around Australia, with backing from ARENA.

CEFC makes $5m equity investment in Zen Ecosystems, to go towards the further development and deployment of its smart thermostat products.

Saving a vulnerable species that's not cute and cuddly; go bush with landcare volunteers; meet the 'apple island wife' blogger; and join Roly Lennox on his last delivery run.

AGL's big gas play in NSW only makes sense if you assume a lot more renewables. Meanwhile, all eyes on the RECs, and the states.

With the NEG kicked down the road, it is a good time to step back and consider the implications for Australia’s climate policies.

Amid Australia's waste and recycling crisis, RN Breakfast gets expert advice from a polymer (plastics) scientist about what are the good and bad types of plastics and why.

Exclusive: Plan to stop leaves and branches falling on lines has already led to thousands of trees being chopped down

Millions of trees are at risk in a secretive nationwide felling operation launched by Network Rail to end the nuisance of leaves and branches falling on the line.

Thousands of poplars, sycamores, limes, ash trees and horse chestnuts have already been chopped down across the country from Yorkshire to Dorset, and the scale of the potential destruction outlined in a Network Rail blueprint involves 10m trees growing within 60 metres of track.

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$500 million boost for Reef protection

$500 million boost for Reef protection