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The much-loved creature of the suburban garden is in rapid decline – with new builds, roads and badgers to blame. Can we prevent their extinction?

Hit by a car. Savaged by a dog. Slashed by a strimmer. Burnt in a bonfire. Tangled in garden netting. Poisoned by slug pellets. Caught in a postman’s discarded rubber bands. Head stuck in a tin can. Tricked out of hibernation by increasingly unpredictable winter weather. Modern life, governed by humans, designs a multitude of ingenious ways for a hedgehog to die. It is no wonder that this treasured animal, a suburban garden fixture, which consistently tops favourite-species polls and is the source of many people’s first close encounter with a wild creature, is vanishing from Britain.

This disappearance is rapid, and recent. A survey of more than 2,600 people by BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine in February found that 51% of gardeners didn’t see a hedgehog at all last year, up from 48% in 2015. Barely one in 10 saw a hedgehog regularly. Scientific studies are unequivocal. Britain’s hedgehog population was calculated to be 1.55 million in 1995. Since the turn of the century it has declined by a third in urban areas and up to 75% in the countryside. A survey based on roadkill calculates that hedgehogs are declining by 3% each year. This exceeds the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list criteria, which identifies species at greatest conservation risk. Why are we obliterating hedgehogs? Will they become extinct? Or can we save them?

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Campaign group Mighty Earth says aerial drones, satellite imaging and field research show farmers carried out forest-burning for fast food giant’s soy suppliers

The hamburger chain Burger King has been buying animal feed produced in soy plantations carved out by the burning of tropical forests in Brazil and Bolivia, according to a new report.

Jaguars, giant anteaters and sloths have all been affected by the disappearance of around 700,000 hectares (1,729,738 acres) of forest land between 2011 and 2015.

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Spring is sprung 26 days earlier than a decade ago, causing problems for the natural cycle of plants and wildlife, Climate News Network reports

Spring is arriving ever earlier in the northern hemisphere. One sedge species in Greenland is springing to growth 26 days earlier than it did a decade ago. And in the US, spring arrived 22 days early this year in Washington DC.

The evidence comes from those silent witnesses, the natural things that respond to climate signals. The relatively new science of phenology – the calendar record of first bud, first flower, first nesting behaviour and first migrant arrivals – has over the last three decades repeatedly confirmed meteorological fears of global warming as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels.

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Broad coalition writes to chancellor, urging him to tackle air pollution with compensation scheme for motorists

Taxi drivers and business leaders have added their voices to the growing campaign calling on ministers to introduce a diesel scrappage scheme to tackle dangerous levels of air pollution.

A broad alliance of business organisations and environmental charities has written to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, urging him to introduce a system in next week’s budget to compensate motorists switching from diesel to more environmentally friendly vehicles.

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Staying below dangerous climate thresholds requires a carbon pollution price much higher than the federal estimate

The ‘social cost of carbon’ is an estimate of how much carbon pollution costs society via climate damages, and can also be considered the optimal carbon tax price. The US federal estimate ($37 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution) underpins at least 150 regulations across various federal agencies, and has thus become a prime target in the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back Obama’s climate policies.

Yesterday, the House Subcommittees on Environment and Oversight held a hearing on the social cost of carbon. The Republican Congressmen and their witnesses argued the federal estimate is too high, but a majority of economists think it’s too low. Not surprisingly, the Republican witnesses have been heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry. They made two main arguments: 1) that the $37 estimate should be based on domestic, not global climate impacts, and 2) that the government should have used a higher discount rate, which would result in a lower estimate.

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Lasers reveal invisible details of the shape of a feathered dinosaur that lived 160 million years ago.

Every day, the sun kickstarts mini power plants in about 942,000 homes around America. We are of course talking about solar energy – and in 2017, it’s never been cheaper to invest in it for your home. The Guardian looks at key tips for installing solar panels and why now is the time to switch

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A new species of midge has been discovered but there is no need to reach for the insect repellent.

This year’s theme is Grow-Conserve and entries will be on show in Somerset House, London, from 9 to 28 March. Winners will be announced on 8 March

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SDCL claims government has not sought value for money for taxpayer in choice of Australian bank Macquarie

A last-ditch attempt has been made to derail the government’s controversial sale of the Green Investment Bank to the Australian investment bank Macquarie.

Sustainable Development Capital (SDCL), a rival bidder for the bank, said it was launching a legal challenge to the government’s decision to select Macquarie as its preferred bidder for the £2bn deal.

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Wenlock Edge Daisy – daes eage, day’s-eye – a wonderfully simple poetry that has become a complicated symbolic chain-link of love, innocence and death

Hazel catkins are limp, in a still brightness they hang fire, waiting. After the thrashing they got from Storm Doris it’s a wonder they survived, let alone have any pollen left, but from woods and hedges, unimpeded by leaves, the magic dust cloud drifts for wider fertilisation. The pollen record found in peat bogs shows an expansion of hazel during the Mesolithic, 11,000 – 6,000 years ago and the speculation is that travelling people transported hazel nuts, so that now, catkins dangle from here to the Caucasus and Algeria.

Related: Country diary: Wenlock Edge: The lesser celandine, the voice of spring

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Analysis shows steady warming in the Pacific Ocean and that Australia could be in for a warmer and drier year

Australia could be heading into another El Niño year according to new analysis by the Bureau of Meteorology, which found the chance Australia would be affected by the phenomenon in 2017 had increased to 50%.

Six of the eight models used by Australian climatologists to predict El Niño and La Niña events indicate the El Niño threshold could be reached by July, while seven indicate a steady warming in the Pacific Ocean over the next six months.

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Impact of decision of some liable parties to pay penalty rather than meet RET obligation felt in February – although the extent of this was lost in subsequent political volatility. Meanwhile, project commitments continue to flow.

Coal generator proposal asking CEFC for finance would provide power to Galilee Basin coal projects owned by Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart, and Adani, and bury Co2 in "un-mineable" part of same coal province. Meanwhile, emissions rise and Coalition links with fossil fuel lobby deepen.

Battery storage prices are trending downward as newcomers to the Australian market follow the Tesla Powerwall 2 to lower and lower price points.

Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Infrastructure Capital Group (ICG) and the Energy Infrastructure Trust (EIT) on the successful acquisition of the Bald Hills Wind Farm.

Kagoshima Prefecture-based project is scheduled for installation in Q3 2017 as part of Japan’s popular Excess Energy Purchasing Scheme and Feed-in Tariff

EV rental company launches sharing plan where owners of Tesla and other EVs can help pay off their investments or simply share the love of EV driving.

In an 11th-hour deal, Opal Solar has secured prime real-estate on the jerseys of NRL premiers the Cronulla Sharks as their 2017 Naming Rights Partner.

Spain reboots its renewable energy program, while India has said the country will double the installed capacity in solar parks to 40 gigawatts.