Environment

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November 3, 2026 at 5:30 PM

Drone flying over a chinstrap penguin colony at Vapour Col on Deception Island, where researchers measured methane from penguin droppings

Chinstrap penguin droppings across Antarctica release an estimated 540,000 tons of methane a year, and the bare ground between the guano patches gives off almost nothing

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November 3, 2026 at 3:10 PM

Map of Antarctic sea ice on September 14, 2026, the day of its annual maximum extent, with the 1981-2010 median edge outlined in yellow

Antarctic sea ice spread across 6.79 million square miles this winter, its third-lowest peak since satellites began watching, and less than three weeks later it was setting record lows for the date

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November 2, 2026 at 3:05 PM

Dozens of giant tortoises grazing on tortoise turf grassland on Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles

Seychelles now has more giant tortoises on a single remote atoll than people in the whole country, almost 183,000, and the new count finally accounts for the animals surveyors walk past without seeing

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November 2, 2026 at 8:45 AM

Satellite view of Hurricane Isaias in the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season reached November with 10 named storms and only one hurricane, and Isaias hit Destin, Florida, with 105 mph winds after peaking at 120 mph

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November 2, 2026 at 6:52 AM

Hugo, the tallest living horse, a black Shire, stands in a field with owner Brett Masters beside him

Long before tractors, a Shire horse named Sampson stood 7 feet 2.5 inches at the shoulder, and the tallest horse ever recorded still towers over today’s biggest living horse by a surprising margin

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November 1, 2026 at 7:30 PM

Aerial view of Aride Island in the Seychelles, where feral goats were shot out by 1920

Feral goats were shot out of a tiny Seychelles island over a century ago, and on Aldabra Atoll the hunt took 25 years and ended with a goat hunters had kept alive on purpose

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November 1, 2026 at 2:20 PM

Two of the relocated Atlantic wolffish lying close together in a tank during transport from Loppa to Melkøysundet

Scientists in Norway moved 20 Atlantic wolffish into coastal waters stripped bare by sea urchins, and what the fish did once winter was over is the part researchers find most interesting

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November 1, 2026 at 9:05 AM

Aerial view of the sheep's wool covers and a synthetic cover side by side on the ice at Glacier 3000

Four students in Switzerland tested sheep’s wool blankets on a glacier for a whole summer, and the first readings put the wool roughly level with the synthetic sheets ski areas use to slow melting

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October 31, 2026 at 5:20 PM

A five-gallon bucket in the grass filled with large goldfish, with a landing net behind it

Minnesota keeps finding released pet goldfish that can grow to 6 pounds, and one suburb now has a permit for the fish toxicant the state itself does not recommend

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October 31, 2026 at 3:30 PM

The Greenland Wildlife Overpass spanning Interstate 25 in Douglas County, Colorado, seen from across open grassland with a small pond in the foreground

Colorado’s 200-foot wildlife bridge over I-25 is being credited with a 91% drop in crashes with animals, but the state’s own study shows fences and underpasses reached that figure in 2024, before the bridge was finished

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October 31, 2026 at 2:01 PM

A freshwater jellyfish, Craspedacusta sowerbii, with its transparent bell and long tentacles against dark water

Italy has recorded a nearly invisible freshwater jellyfish from China at 61 sites, and the bells swimmers spot each summer are only the visible part of a life spent mostly out of sight

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October 31, 2026 at 12:45 PM

Wide, calm stretch of the White River in Indianapolis seen from the West 16th Street bridge, with green banks, a sandbar on the left and the downtown skyline on the horizon.

Indianapolis built the Emrichsville Dam on the White River in 1899 so Riverside Park could have a boating lake, and 127 years and several drownings later, crews are tearing it out so fish can move up and down the river again

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October 31, 2026 at 11:31 AM

A sky full of snow geese during bird migration

BirdCast tracked 1.25 billion birds over the US on the night of October 8, 2025, and most bird migration happens after dark, where city lights can pull flocks off course

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October 31, 2026 at 6:58 AM

Bare, rocky upper slopes on the south side of Mount Hood in late summer, with a small patch of the Palmer Snowfield and a few conifers under a clear blue sky

A meltwater pond at the foot of Mount Hood’s Coalman Glacier has grown larger than in previous years, and the USGS says a sudden release could send a debris flow down the White River toward the Highway 35 bridge

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October 30, 2026 at 7:31 AM

A camera set up to study forests in New Mexico’s Carson National Forest photographed a Canada lynx in June, the first confirmed in the state in about 25 years according to New Mexico State University, and it lives in the kind of forest crews thin to fight wildfires

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October 29, 2026 at 7:46 PM

A male and a female brown anole lizard perched on green leaves, one of the founder pairs released on small Bahamian islands in 2005

Scientists dropped just two brown anole lizards on each of several storm-swept Bahamian islands, and years later their descendants revealed something natural selection alone could not erase

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October 29, 2026 at 3:01 PM

Two Laysan albatrosses face each other on a grassy patch of Midway Atoll, with Wisdom on the right wearing a red leg band and fluffy brown chicks on the ground nearby.

Wisdom, the Laysan albatross banded on Midway Atoll in 1956, is about 75 and the oldest known wild bird, and as albatrosses return to the atoll this fall the question is whether she will nest again after a season with no egg

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October 29, 2026 at 1:46 PM

Aerial drone view of a single sperm whale swimming at the surface of deep blue water in the northern Gulf of America

A sperm whale about 59 feet long could swallow a person, experts say, and what would wait inside its stomach leaves no realistic room for escape

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October 29, 2026 at 10:16 AM

Women carrying firewood along a road below the eucalyptus forest on Entoto hill above Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ethiopia planted eucalyptus to get firewood and timber, and in one watershed it spread from about 590 acres to nearly 2,000 while streams lost the baseflow that keeps them running between rains