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Fabrics such as cotton come at a dear cost to the environment. Look for progressive alternatives made from pineapples, eucalyptus, even mushrooms

Future generations will shake their heads at our loyalty to a handful of fibres with terrible environmental profiles, such as cotton (thirsty for pesticides and water) and plastic (oil based). They’ll want to know why we didn’t display more imagination.

Many innovations in the fashion industry have a distinctly mushroomy flavour

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Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre says investment in keeping temperature rises below 2C would return less than $1 for every $1 spent

Experts have challenged a claim by Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre that holding global temperature rises to 2C is a poor investment.

In 2015 the education department abandoned plans for Lomborg to set up an Australian Consensus Centre, but gave the Copenhagen centre $640,000 to support its Smarter UN Post-2015 Development Goals project.

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The southern continents were once united as the supercontinent Gondwana, but does this explain the links between the plants of the southern hemisphere? Dr Barbara Briggs travelled to Madagascar to find out.

The southern continents were once united as the supercontinent Gondwana, but does this explain the links between the plants of the southern hemisphere? Dr Barbara Briggs travelled to Madagascar to find out.

A key component of the UK's first high-energy proton beam machine is delivered to its new home in Newport.

Measures are announced after water enters a frozen facility guarding the world's key crop seeds.

Rome has a problem with wild boar; wolves mingle with surburban Germans; mountain lions frequent LA. All around the world, city life seems increasingly conducive to wildlife

In Aesop’s fable, the town mouse turns his nose up at his country cousin’s simple fare, preferring the haute cuisine to be scavenged in the city. It appears that the wild boar of Italy have taken note, and are venturing ever more boldly into Rome.

But they are not alone: all around the world, city life seems to be increasingly conducive to wildlife. Urban nature is no longer unglamorous feral pigeons or urban foxes. Wolves have taken up residence in parts of suburban Germany as densely populated as Cambridge or Newcastle. The highest density of peregrine falcons anywhere in the world is New York; the second highest is London, and these spectacular birds of prey now breed in almost every major British city. And all kinds of wild deer are rampaging through London, while also taking up residence everywhere from Nara in Japan to the Twin Cities of the US.

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Mockbeggar, New Forest Tiny, parched, sorrels streak the ground with red but there is feverish activity in the ditch

From Moyles Court, a fine 17th-century house that is now a private school, we set off up the slope with paddocks on either side. Leaving the Avon Valley Path, we cut the corner of Newlands Plantation, and climb steadily uphill along the woodland edge. Rhododendron ponticum infests part of the margin, with the blooms of young plants announcing their colonisation of the adjacent open ground.

Related: For a beetle at risk, what better place to be?

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A Humboldt penguin chick has hatched at a sea life sanctuary for the first time in more than a decade.

Boomerang Bags is an Australian solution to plastic pollution that's gone global.

The Arnavon Islands are the largest rookery for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle in the South Pacific.

Natimuk pre-schoolers go bush for outdoor kinder; Miriwoong man David Newry goes searching for native bananas; an Irish lass swaps Belfast for an outback pub; and we go to an alpaca handling school.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.

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The conflict between humans and elephants for space and resources is driving the rapid decline of elephant populations. Join us on Wednesday 24 May from 1-2.30pm BST to discuss how elephants and humans can live together

This week an elderly man was killed by a wild elephant in central India as he picked tendu leaves in the Surajpur forest. A few days earlier, a father and his son were injured after two elephants wandered into their house in Tamil Nadu. As human populations grow and communities live in closer proximity to elephants, one of the world’s most unique and beautiful animals can become the most dangerous.

But human development is also contributing to the severe decline in elephant populations. Across Asia and Africa, elephants’ natural habitats are being destroyed by rapid urbanisation and industrial and agricultural expansion.

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Tasmanian devils, a Saimaa ringed seal and a white wolf are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Locals say sheep on Agios Efstratios are starving as so much plant life is being devoured by swarms.

Shutting down wind farms when birds pass over is one of the methods being tested to save migrating species.

People have to grasp how climate change impacts them, and we need to value environmentally sound behavior

We know humans are causing climate change. That is a fact that has been known for well over 100 years. We also know that there will be significant social and economic costs from the effects. In fact, the effects are already appearing in the form of more extreme weather, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and so on.

So why haven’t humans done much about the problem? Answering that question may be more challenging than the basic science of a changing climate. Fortunately, a new review just out in Science helps us with this question. Lead author, Dr. Elise Amel, a colleague of mine, completed the review with colleagues Drs. Christie Manning, Britain Scott, and Susan Koger. Rather than focusing solely on the problems with communicating the science of climate change, this work takes a wider view on the hurdles that get in the way of meaningful action.

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The vast reserves of methane hydrates under the bottom of the sea could be key to future energy needs.