Rainforest trees at Nightcap national park have not evolved to deal with bushfires, leaving the landscape vulnerable for years after major burnsCounting the cost of Australia’s summer of dreadGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThousands of years of accumulated leaf fall makes the ground bounce like a mattress underfoot and, high...

The US scientist on being the first Black woman to descend to Earth’s deepest point, ignoring career advice – and what really happened to the Titan submersibleThe American oceanographer Dawn Wright is the first Black person and only the 27th human to have been to the deepest spot on the planet. Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench...

Party donor Dale Vince warns that urging homeowners to switch to clean-power technology risks political storm bigger than UlezThe government risks a huge political backlash if it keeps pushing the public to install heat pumps to replace their boilers, one of Britain’s leading green entrepreneurs has warned.Dale Vince, a major Labour donor and renewable...

The wildlife presenter, 34, talks about his happy childhood in Sudan, home on the west coast of Scotland, superpower of dyslexia and friendly neighbourhood ottersAt school I was called a “weird nerd”. When I grew up those words changed to: “You are an expert.” I don’t mind being called a geek. Own your own originality, whatever it may be – then no one...

Bethesda, Gwynedd: They make short work of the sardines from my sandwiches. But I don’t begrudge them, for they have a long flight aheadIt’s a bright autumn day as I make my way up by steep paths lined with drystone slate walls through the outskirts of this old quarrying town, making for the high tops of Y Carneddau, the largest land mass over the 3,000ft...

While some embrace technological innovations, others are forced to close as global heating causes lack of snowfallSitting at his window in Västerås, central Sweden, Thomas Ohlander is wondering when the winter season might start for his outdoor adventure business, Do The North. “To schedule a trip we have to be sure of snow,” he says, “And that start...