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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a crab spider, a glass frog and a curious snow leopard

Devon cattle stand in for extinct aurochs in project aimed at protecting precious species such as sand lizards

The mighty aurochs have gone, as have the tarpan horses and the wild boars, but modern-day substitutes have been drafted in to recreate a large open “savannah” on heathland in Dorset.

Instead of aurochs, considered the wild ancestor of domestic cattle, 200 red Devon cattle are to be found roaming the Purbeck Heaths, while Exmoor ponies are stand-ins for the tarpan horses and curly coated Mangalitsa pigs are doing the sort of rooting around that boars used to excel at here.

The solution is not more fields but better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories

No issue is more important, and none so shrouded in myth and wishful thinking. The way we feed ourselves is the key determinant of whether we survive this century, as no other sector is as damaging . Yet we can scarcely begin to discuss it objectively, thanks to the power of comforting illusions.

Food has the extraordinary property of turning even the most progressive people into reactionaries. People who might accept any number of social and political changes can respond with fury if you propose our diets should shift. Stranger still, there’s a gulf between ultraconservative beliefs about how we should eat and the behaviour of people who hold such beliefs. I have heard people cite a rule formulated by the food writer Michael Pollan – “Don’t eat anything your great-great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food” – while eating a diet (Thai one day, Mexican the next, Mediterranean the day after) whose range of ingredients no one’s great-great-great-grandmother would recognise, and living much the better for it.

A trove of biodiversity has been catalogued by scientists in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast area of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico, which has been targeted by deep-sea mining companies keen to exploit its mineral wealth

Ruling by conservative-dominated court shrinks scope of landmark law to protect America’s waterways

The scope of a landmark law to protect America’s waterways has been shrunk by the US supreme court, which has sided with an Idaho couple who have waged a long-running legal battle to build a house on wetlands near one of the state’s largest lakes.

In a ruling passed down on Thursday, the conservative-dominated court decided that the federal government was wrong to use the Clean Water Act, a key 50-year-old piece of legislation to prevent pollution seeping into rivers, streams and lakes, to prevent the couple building over the wetland beside Priest Lake in Idaho.

A wealth of biodiversity has been found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area earmarked for exploitation by mineral firms

Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 new species living on the seabed in an untouched area of the Pacific Ocean that has been identified as a future hotspot for deep-sea mining, according to a review of the environmental surveys done in the area.

It is the first time the previously unknown biodiversity of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a mineral-rich area of the ocean floor that spans 1.7m sq miles between Hawaii and Mexico in the Pacific, has been comprehensively documented. The research will be critical to assessing the risk of extinction of the species, given contracts for deep-sea mining in the near-pristine area appear imminent.

We need to know more about what goes into plastics in the first place and better regulation of how recycled products are used

• Dr Charlotte Lloyd is a researcher in environmental chemistry at the University of Bristol

Sometimes it feels like we are simply drowning in plastic. Over the past five decades plastic products have found their way into almost every aspect of our daily lives. Global plastic production has reached a total of 8bn tonne – that’s 1 tonne for every person currently on the planet – with plastic pollution expected to triple by 2060.

Current best estimates are that only about 10% of plastic ever produced has been recycled. Despite this, the idea of circular economy in the plastics industry is often cited as the magic bullet: we will simply reuse the plastic we have already made and reduce the impact of plastic pollution. But new evidence points to the flaws in this plan. A report by Greenpeace has found that recycled plastic can be even more toxic, and is no fix for pollution.

Dr Charlotte Lloyd is a researcher and lecturer in environmental chemistry at the University of Bristol

One explanation is that their behaviour is a reaction to past trauma inflicted on one member of the pod by humans

Recent accounts of “attacks” on vessels by orcas off the Iberian peninsula are challenging the way we expect the natural world to behave. Increasing in number since 2020, from northern Portugal to the strait of Gibraltar, these incidents suggest the need for a cetacean scene investigation team. On 4 May, in one of the most extreme events, orcas sank a yacht.

“There were two smaller orcas and one larger,” the skipper Werner Schaufelberger told German magazine Yacht. “The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the boat with full force from the side.”

Fears biodiversity proposals could be abandoned amid opposition from lobby groups and some countries

MEPs have been accused of whipping up “a culture war against nature” after the fisheries and agriculture committees voted against the EU’s biodiversity restoration law.

Last June, the European Commission revealed proposals for legally binding targets to restore wildlife on land, rivers and the sea for member states. The nature restoration law was announced alongside separate legislation proposing a crackdown on chemical pesticides with the aim of reversing the catastrophic loss of wildlife on the continent.

They can hardly believe their eyes

International Energy Agency says investment will hit $1.7tn this year, well ahead of fossil fuels

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped ignite a boom in clean energy investment which will significantly outpace spending on fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency.

A report from the IEA has found that clean energy investment is on track to reach $1.7tn (£1.4tn) this year as investors turn to renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage and other low-carbon technologies.

Carbon neutrality of low-cost telco Belong relies almost solely on buying overseas offsets, and how an Institute of Public Affairs fellow misread the Great Barrier Reef

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Telstra’s low-cost mobile and internet company Belong is in the middle of a nationwide advertising campaign that’s memorable for its imagery of a sliced-off bloodless thumb crawling up a snow-driven mountain.

“The average Australian is estimated to scroll the height of Everest on their phone every month. That’s why we proudly offset our network emissions,” the advert declares.

The clean-up begins after catastrophic flooding that has left tens of thousands of people homeless in north-east Italy. Rising waters swallowed houses and landslides isolated hamlets

• ‘Roads have disappeared’: Italy begins cleanup after catastrophic floods

Exclusive: ‘Ready-to-be-activated’ roadmap adds pressure to Minns government to follow lead of other states in ending controversial practice

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The Perrottet government found native logging could be ended in New South Wales without costing the budget but opposition from the Nationals blocked the proposal.

A plan to end the controversial and loss-making practice of timber extraction from native forests was prepared by the environment department by October 2022.

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More than 200 million face more intense and frequent floods due to plastic pollution blocking drainage systems, report finds

A devastating 2005 flood that killed 1,000 people in the Indian city of Mumbai was blamed on a tragically simple problem: plastic bags had blocked storm drains, stopping monsoon flood water from draining out of the city.

Now a new report, attempting to quantify this problem, estimates that 218 million of the world’s poorest people are at risk from more severe and frequent flooding caused by plastic waste.

Exclusive: investigation finds energy giant’s efforts to offset its huge emissions rely on schemes with little impact

A new investigation into Chevron’s climate pledge has found the fossil-fuel company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies, which do little to offset its vast greenhouse gas emissions and in some cases may actually be causing communities harm.

Chevron, which reported $35.5bn in profits last year, is the US’s second-largest fossil fuel company with operations stretching from Canada and Brazil to the UK, Nigeria and Australia.

Decline worse in Britain than other countries, as conservationists blame agriculture and global heating

Butterfly populations that live on grasslands across Europe have declined by more than a third in the past decade, according to a study.

Seventeen species that were once commonly found in pastures and meadows across 22 countries, including the small copper, common blue and meadow brown, declined by 36% on average between 2011 and 2020.

Science-Based Targets Network says new schema will ‘get nature into the boardroom’ in the same way as climate footprints

Businesses can now assess their impacts on nature loss using science-based targets as part of a move to “get nature into the boardroom”.

Research shows that the biodiversity crisis is as serious as the climate crisis, yet there is less information about how companies drive nature loss, because this data is not being disclosed. The Science-Based Targets Network (SBTN) is providing the first framework for companies to report their impacts on nature as part a new frontier of corporate environmental reporting.

Campaigners call for rigorous testing of waterways to protect species after analysis reveals scale of problem

Chemical cocktails that are harmful to wildlife have been found in 81% of river and lake sites tested in England, a study has found.

Wildlife organisations are calling on the government for more rigorous testing of waterways for chemical cocktails, and new legal protections against dangerous mixtures, including requiring assessments of potential hazardous chemical mixture impacts before any new chemical is allowed on the market.

Campaign group says plastics are incompatible with circular economy as countries prepare for treaty talks

Recycling plastic can make it more toxic and should not be considered a solution to the pollution crisis, Greenpeace has warned before the latest round of negotiations for an international plastics treaty.

“Plastics are inherently incompatible with a circular economy,” the global environmental network said in a report that brings together research showing recycled plastics are more toxic than their virgin constituents.