Scientists sailed today to inspect an undersea volcano that has been erupting for days near Tonga — shooting smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the sky above the South Pacific ocean.

Scientists in New Zealand have rescued the world’s largest parrot from the brink of extinction. The population of the flightless kakapo has surpassed 100 birds for the first time in decades.

Following our Environment Editor Mike McCarthy's splash on Monday about the future of the polar bear, Der Spiegel has published a comprehensive backgrounder on the beast's slide towards extinction

Genetically modified crops, that is, not the troublesome bit of the American car industry.

A limit on the hunting of polar bears by sportsmen and native Arctic people will top the agenda at an international summit in Norway tomorrow, seen as vital to the survival of the predator. Although few people outside the Arctic realise it, there is still a major legal hunt for the animals in four out of the five states that host the bears: Canada, Greenland, Alaska in the US, and Russia. In Norway, stalking is banned.

Inuit hunters call it thenanniaq, the quest to track, chase and kill the animal they consider to be king of the beasts that stalk the ice floes and plains of the Arctic.

Bee hygiene may not be right at the top of most people's worry lists in these troubled times. But maybe it should be. For, if researchers are to be believed, the future of the world's food supplies may depend on it.

Dozens of beaches in southern Queensland, popular with tourists, were declared a disaster zone yesterday, with 40 miles of once-pristine sands fouled by an oil slick and local wildlife under threat.

Authorities declared a disaster zone today along a stretch of some of Australia's most pristine and popular beaches after tons of fuel oil that leaked from a stricken cargo ship rolled ashore as black sludge.