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Consumers in England will get money back for returning plastic and glass containers in a bid to cut waste.

This week, site access construction works have started on site for the Cattle Hill Wind Farm, located in the Central Highlands of Tasmania.

Upstart electricity retailers Powershop and Diamond Energy again win 5-star rankings in independent Green Energy Guide. AGL, meanwhile, earned itself an elephant stamp.

• Father Amaro Lopes is follower of Dorothy Stang, killed in 2005
• Extortion, land invasion and sexual harassment charges considered

Brazilian police have arrested a priest in the Amazon who championed the rights of smallholders against powerful agricultural interests.

Father Amaro Lopes is the best-known follower of the American-born nun, Dorothy Stang, who was murdered in 2005 in a killing orchestrated by landowners during a dispute that continues today.

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Consumers to receive small cash sum for returning plastic, glass and metal drinks containers

All drinks containers in England, whether plastic, glass or metal, will be covered by a deposit return scheme, the government has announced.

The forthcoming scheme is intended to cut the litter polluting the land and sea by returning a small cash sum to consumers who return their bottles and cans.

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Many common frogs were trapped under ice in early March and some inevitably died

The common frog Rana temporaria is having a difficult spring. The extreme cold at the beginning of March trapped many under ice. A lot continued to breathe through their skin, but after several days some died from lack of oxygen. The survivors then got breeding under way in many ponds, only for another three-day cold snap to halt proceedings. Some ponds still have no spawn, while in others the adults have already left piles of jelly to take their chance.

Related: How to make your garden frog-friendly

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Africa's famous animal migrations are increasingly blocked by fences, erected by farmers to keep their livestock safe from disease. But a new approach aims to deliver healthy beef and healthy wildlife. Penny van Oosterzee, Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Wildlife film-maker, author and conservationist best known for Tarka the Otter, which was voted one of the greatest family films of all time

David Cobham is best remembered for his classic films on British wildlife, including the 1979 cinema feature Tarka the Otter and his 1972 TV programme The Vanishing Hedgerows, the first explicitly environmental film broadcast by the BBC.

Cobham, who has died aged 87, made The Vanishing Hedgerows for the corporation’s prestigious strand The World About Us. Presented by the author Henry Williamson, it was a powerful elegy to Britain’s disappearing farmland wildlife, with shocking scenes showing the fatal effects of pesticides on birds.

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The James Webb Space Telescope will not now be launched until May 2020 at the earliest.

Greenpeace wants health shops like Boots to follow the lead of Holland & Barrett and ditch products that threaten the pristine waters home to penguins, seal and whales

Campaigners are calling on high street retailers to stop stocking health products containing krill that have been caught in the pristine waters of the Antarctic.

The Guardian reported earlier this month on the threat industrial krill fishing poses to animals like penguins, whales and seals.

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Hunting pressures mean brown bear cubs now spend an extra year with their mothers, say scientists.

Footage of an elephant blowing ash has baffled wildlife experts, who say they've never seen behaviour like it before. The video released by the Wildlife Conservation Society may be an example of zoopharmacognosy, animal self-medication

• Elephant 'smoking' footage baffles experts

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Parties have the option of redrafting the disallowance and resubmitting it as soon as Wednesday

A first attempt by Labor and the Greens to disallow controversial new marine park management plans proposed by the Turnbull government last week has failed in the Senate after the government flipped the order of business and brought on the chamber debate.

The Turnbull government on Tuesday night pulled its proposal to lower the tax rate for big business to 25% and abruptly changed the order of business in the Senate to force consideration of Labor’s disallowance motion on the marine parks.

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Conservation charities estimate cost of dealing with predators at £2bn a year, and warns this may spiral without strong prevention measures

Invasive species such as Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and New Zealand flatworms must be subject to stronger safeguards after Brexit, a group of conservation charities has urged, or the cost of dealing with them may spiral.

They fear that future increased international trade outside EU rules could threaten further invasions, while the status of safeguards under potential trade deals could be put in doubt.

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With thousands of square miles of land already lost along the coast, Avery Island, home of the famed hot sauce, faces being marooned

Avery Island, a dome of salt fringed by marshes where Tabasco sauce has been made for the past 150 years, has been an outpost of stubborn consistency near the Louisiana coast. But the state is losing land to the seas at such a gallop that even its seemingly impregnable landmarks are now threatened.

The home of Tabasco, the now ubiquitous but uniquely branded condiment controlled by the same family since Edmund McIlhenny first stumbled across a pepper plant growing by a chicken coop on Avery Island, is under threat. An unimaginable plight just a few years ago, the advancing tides are menacing its perimeter.

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Barford Wood and Meadows, Northamptonshire: Yes, the trees have established beautifully, but a randomness to the planting pattern would be more aesthetically pleasing

Again the landscape is etched with snow. The footpath to Barford Wood and Meadows from Rushton village crosses first under the Midland mainline, emerging on to a wide and exposed field where the chilled wind bites, before passing over the Corby branch line and on to the nature reserve; a tapering wedge of land, bound on the west by the railway and by the thundering A43 on the east.

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Climate policy is a fiendish problem for governments, which is why we need a powerful independent body to call the shots.

Report from global renewables agency REN21 highlights just how dramatic the global energy transition will be, as the cost of wind and solar continue to fall, and storage continues its rapid adoption.

Renewables are making an important contribution to meeting peak demand and therefore addressing reliability, as this data from summer shows.

Renewables paired with storage could see gas peakers become a rarity, only selectively and sparingly used in systems with challenging limitations or localised constraints.