The Guardian

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.

Winning images from national and international wildlife photography competitions of the year

Sandy, Bedfordshire The tiny bird comes on strong at the end of the year, an emblem of the season

The singers began rehearsing for the main event as long ago as September. At first light, the murmur of traffic would be punctuated with tentative trills or cadences that expired almost as they began. The gaps between plaintive coos of the wood pigeon were filled with sotto voce snatches of song, making up for a lack of volume with notes of high piercing intensity. There is nothing that sings quite like a robin.

Robin song comes on strong at the end of the year, as if the bird were living up to its status as an emblem of the season. The simple scientific explanation is that male and female birds are re-establishing pair bonds and territorial rights.

Designation of Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada mark last moves to protect environmentally sensitive areas in administration’s final weeks

President Barack Obama designated two national monuments at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the west, marking the administration’s latest move to protect environmentally sensitive areas in its final weeks.

The Bears Ears national monument in Utah will cover 1.35m acres in the Four Corners region, the White House said. In a victory for Native American tribes and conservationists, the designation protects land that is considered sacred and is home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.

Cougar killed after husky and owner injured in central Alberta forest during unusual attack on pet dog

A Canadian man punched a cougar in the face to stop it attacking his dog, police have said.

The incident occurred in a wooded area near a fast food chain in Whitecourt, central Alberta, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said on Wednesday.

A University of Edinburgh study finds birds are arriving at breeding grounds too soon, causing some to miss out on food

Migrating birds are responding to the effects of climate change by arriving at their breeding grounds earlier as global temperatures rise, research has found.

The University of Edinburgh study, which looked at hundreds of species across five continents, found that birds are reaching their summer breeding grounds on average about one day earlier per degree of increasing global temperature.

Brambles and birds did well, but bees dipped and butterflies were hindered, according to a review of the year’s wildlife and weather by the National Trust

Farmers made hay but rampant grass growth in 2016 made life hard for butterflies and even puffin chicks, according to a review of the year’s wildlife and weather by the National Trust.

The nation’s ever more variable weather brought both booms and busts, with brambles and birds doing well, and slugs flourishing. But bumblebees dipped and owls found field voles hard to find.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire On a closer look, the trees are not still holding leaves at all but are full of bracts and seeds

From a distance, the common lime trees are a rich orangey colour. This looks wrong. The autumn leaves of these trees are buttery and the last of them blew down a month ago. The limes have a curious russet foliage, just like the coating of rust on the fallen leaves in a spring issuing from ironstone under the Short Woods a few miles north of here. The rusty limes look oddly out of time, as if frozen in an arrested autumn when all about them winter trees stand darkly naked.

On a closer look, the limes are not still holding leaves at all but are full of bracts and seeds. The bracts are small, oblong, modified leaves, pale and almost transparent when they open in spring, like solar panels on a satellite above the dangling cyme of two to seven flowers.

Cropland losses will have consequences especially for Asia and Africa, which will experience growing food insecurity as cities expand

Our future crops will face threats not only from climate change, but also from the massive expansion of cities, a new study warns. By 2030, it’s estimated that urban areas will triple in size, expanding into cropland and undermining the productivity of agricultural systems that are already stressed by rising populations and climate change.

Roughly 60% of the world’s cropland lies on the outskirts of cities—and that’s particularly worrying, the report authors say, because this peripheral habitat is, on average, also twice as productive as land elsewhere on the globe.

The President-elect’s nominees to key positions deny the existence, threats, and solutions to human-caused global warming

When speaking about climate change, President-elect Trump has flip-flopped between acceptance and denial, which suggests that he hasn’t put much thought into one of humanity’s greatest threats. However, what his administration does is far more important than what he thinks. Unfortunately, Trump has nominated individuals to several critical climate leadership positions who reject inconvenient scientific and economic evidence.

Urgent action is needed to stop the world’s fastest land animal becoming extinct, experts have warned

Urgent action is needed to stop the cheetah – the world’s fastest land animal – becoming extinct, experts have warned.

Scientists estimate that only 7,100 of the fleet-footed cats remain in the wild, occupying 9% of the territory they once lived in. Asiatic populations have been hit the hardest, with fewer than 50 surviving in Iran, according to an investigation led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

A selection of images captured by photographers over the past 12 months, including a Donald Trump lookalike pheasant, kissing parakeets, and a lost sloth