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The Oregon-born gray wolf gained a following this year when it became the first to travel to Southern California in a century. Wildlife officials say it appears to have been struck by a vehicle.

(Image credit: California Department of Fish and Wildlife via AP)

Sold at auction in western NSW, Marrakesh has orders from his new owners to ‘go forth and multiply’

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The owner of Australia’s most expensive goat has described his new acquisition as a “very stylish buck”.

Andrew Mosely knew he would have to break the $12,000 Australian record to buy Marrakesh, a goat that went on sale in the western New South Wales town of Cobar on Wednesday. But he did not expect he would have to pay almost double that, forking out $21,000 to see off another keen bidder at auction.

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Analysis: less than 5% of the green power the supplier provided to homes was sourced directly from renewable energy projects last year

The collapse of Bulb Energy this week follows a steady decline in its promises to customers.

Britain’s fastest-growing energy supplier set itself apart as a challenger to legacy energy giants by claiming to offer better service and energy that was cheaper and greener. But was Bulb as green as it claimed to be?

Bulb has become the biggest energy supplier to go under since August. Its collapse brings the crisis to a new climax

The crisis in the UK’s energy market has been growing in scale and seriousness for months. This week it claimed its latest corporate victim – and reached a tipping point. Bulb is the 23rd energy supplier to fail since August, but, unlike minnows such as Igloo and Neon Reef, it cannot easily be taken over by a rival. With turnover of £1.5bn, it is simply too big.

Bulb will instead enter “special administration” and be run on behalf of the government until it can be broken up or sold off. Meanwhile, its 1.7 million customers will remain with the company and get the same corporate branding on their bills, even while taxpayers stump up for any immediate costs. Any final losses will be passed on to households through their fuel bills.

Conservationists hail move as ‘critical breakthrough’ to protect endangered shortfin mako, prized for meat, fins and sportfishing

North Atlantic fishing nations have pledged to ban catches of the shortfin mako, the world’s fastest shark, in an attempt to save the endangered species.

Conservationists, who have for years sought to better protect the mako, said the ban was a “critical breakthrough”. The effort to ensure agreement between fishing nations was led by the UK, Canada and Senegal.

Hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges converge in search of metal as one activist describes it as a ‘free-for-all’

Environmentalists are demanding urgent action to halt an aquatic gold rush along one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries, where hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges have converged in search of the precious metal.

The vast flotilla – so large one local website compared it to a floating neighbourhood – reportedly began forming on the Madeira River earlier this month after rumours that a large gold deposit had been found in the vicinity.

Northumberland national park | Solar panels | Care costs | Influencers | Housework

It’s not just Wales that is depleted of curlews (New initiative aims to save curlew from extinction in Wales, 22 November). Forty years ago, I regularly walked stretches of Hadrian’s Wall in the Northumberland national park to the constant warbling of curlews, which was almost deafening. This year, I did some of the same walks in total silence. I was deeply saddened by the absence of the beautiful, haunting song of the curlew, which is, ironically, the symbol of the Northumberland national park.
John Rippon
Durham

• Alice Renton makes a good point about solar panels in new-build homes (Letters, 23 November). But I recently saw an electric van with solar panels taped and tied to the roof and bonnet – the driver claimed it extended his range by five or six miles, even though it was just a rough-and-ready job. When will electric vehicle manufacturers start building solar panels into the bodywork?
Stephen Ingamells
Ilford, London

Australian Energy Market Commission says Queensland and Victoria will enjoy biggest falls by 2024 as new large-scale solar plants join electricity grid

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The advance of renewable energy across Australia is driving down household electricity bills, and will result in average savings of about $77 a year by 2024, the Australian Energy Market Commission said in its annual survey.

Queensland is projected to lead the way among the states in the National Electricity Market, with a typical household’s bill to drop by 10%, or close to double the national average fall of 5.7%. That will cut the typical Queensland residential bill from $1,226 in 2020-21 to $1,100 by 2023-24.

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Australia's Great Barrier Reef is spawning in an explosion of color as the World Heritage-listed natural wonder recovers from life-threatening coral bleaching episodes in 2016, 2017 and last year.

(Image credit: Gabriel Guzman/AP)

Booming populations are a conservation success story, but not all terrorised residents are happy about it

There’s a violent gang stalking urban America.

In New Hampshire a motorcyclist crashed after being assaulted. In New Jersey, a terrified postman rang 911 after a dozen members attacked at once. And in Michigan, one town armed public workers with pepper spray.

Researchers say warmer waters mean birds are travelling further for food and becoming more stressed, triggering relationship breakdowns

Albatrosses, some of the world’s most loyally monogamous creatures, are “divorcing” more often – and researchers say global heating may be to blame.

In a new Royal Society study, researchers say climate change and warming waters are pushing black-browed albatross break-up rates higher. Typically after choosing a partner, only 1-3% would separate in search of greener romantic pastures.

Greens thankful ‘worst elements’ stripped from the bill, which will ensure the protection of the Gardens of Stone

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The NSW parliament has passed a bill on laws governing national parks after the Perrottet government agreed to remove some of the most controversial elements.

The bill, introduced last week, included a proposal to allow management work in the state’s national parks to generate biodiversity credits that could be sold under the state’s offsets scheme, to compensate for habitat destruction caused by development elsewhere.

Two giant chimney stacks and a boiler have been demolished at the defunct Wallerawang power station, near Lithgow on the western edge of the Blue Mountains in NSW. The controlled explosions of the 175-metre chimneys at the former coal-fired power station come with plans to repurpose the site into a mixed industrial, residential and tourism development with plans for a giant battery almost complete 

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• ‘End of an era’: explosives topple giant chimneys at defunct NSW coal-fired power plant

The 175-metre chimneys at Wallerawang on the edge of the Blue Mountains collapsed in seconds

Explosive engineers have demolished two giant chimney stacks and a boiler at a defunct coal-fired power station west of Sydney as part of efforts to transform the site.

The 175-metre chimneys at Wallerawang have loomed large for residents of Lithgow, a town on the western edge of the Blue Mountains that is home to two coal-fired plants and coalmines.

Activists say ad could encourage driving in ecologically sensitive areas and accuse ASA of bias

Environmental campaigners have accused the UK advertising watchdog of bias for overturning a draft ruling that banned adverts for a mud-splattered Land Rover Defender off-roader after previously saying it encouraged “socially irresponsible” driving that could “cause damage to vulnerable habitats”.

The national newspaper ad featured a Defender in a forest with the headline “Life is so much better without restrictions”. Text accompanying the ad said the 4x4 had the “capacity to go almost anywhere and do anything. If you take one for an extended test drive … a whole new world of freedom awaits”.

Nathaniel Rich responds to claims about Losing Earth, his 2018 article for the New York Times, later published as a book

In his article (Neoliberalism wrecked our chance to fix the climate crisis – and leftwing statements of faith have changed nothing, 17 November), Jeff Sparrow repeats Naomi Klein’s simplistic claim that, in Losing Earth, I “attribute” the missed opportunity on climate change during the critical decade between 1979 and 1989 to “human nature”. Anyone who reads Losing Earth will see that I do no such thing.

The failure can be attributed to various causes. Among them are: the fecklessness of bureaucrats tasked with developing legislative solutions to a global problem; a generation of influential US scientists’ blind faith in American exceptionalism; the anti-environmental blitzkrieg launched by the Reagan administration on taking office; the failure of journalists, scientists and policymakers to explain the severity of the threat to a disinterested public; the refusal by the major environmental organisations to embrace climate change as a cause worthy of their attention; the machinations of George HW Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu; and ultimately the mobilisation of the oil and gas industry around a massive disinformation campaign, the origin story of which I reported for the first time.

The cost of petrol is re-emerging as a political touchstone thanks to a recovery in demand and some Covid-linked supply snafus

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Service stations are a new source of public angst, with their red neon signs searing the psyches of drivers worried about how much their next filling will set them back.

Petrol prices are emerging as a political touchstone again too, with $2 a litre in major cities in prospect for some grades.

Campaigners say if copper mine gets go-ahead in cloud forest, the longnose harlequin, once thought to be extinct, will be threatened again

Reports of the longnose harlequin frog’s death appear to have been greatly exaggerated – or, at least, premature. The Mark Twain of the frog world is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as extinct, which may come as a surprise to those alive and well in the cloud forests of Ecuador’s tropical Andes.

Known for its pointed snout, the longnose harlequin frog (Atelopus longirostris) is about to play a central role in a legal battle to stop a mining project in the Intag valley in Imbabura province, which campaigners say would be a disaster for the highly biodiverse cloud forests.