Environment

Wildlife, oceans, forests, climate and conservation

In Environment, ECOnews covers wildlife and biodiversity, oceans, forests, climate change, pollution, recycling and conservation. Surprising stories from around the planet that explain how nature works and how people are changing it.

UK robins: an adult European robin with an orange-red breast perched on a leafy branch

Britain’s Christmas robin could be a rarer sight in gardens this winter, and the reason goes back to a record-breaking summer that made the worms they feed on much harder to find

By ECONEWS

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October 27, 2026 at 6:31 PM

Close-up of one of the oriental hornets, Vespa orientalis, with reddish-brown body and yellow face, from the Morón de la Frontera town hall notice

Goodbye to the idea that hornets only nest in trees: oriental hornets in Spain are turning up in shutter boxes and false ceilings, and most records sit within about 0.6 mile of towns

By ECONEWS

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October 27, 2026 at 3:32 PM

African wild dog standing in Zambia, photographed by the Zambian Carnivore Programme

Three African wild dog brothers walked 2,564 miles across Zambia in search of mates, and no African mammal has ever been recorded on a longer journey

By Adrian Villellas

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October 27, 2026 at 2:01 PM

Close-up of a northern gannet, one of the plunge-diving seabirds, showing its long pointed beak and pale yellow head

A northern gannet can hit the ocean at roughly 54 mph and keep hunting underwater, and CT scans now show the sturdy neck bones that help diving seabirds survive the impact

By ECONEWS

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October 27, 2026 at 12:31 PM

Fishermen unload a painted pirogue carrying sardines on Nouakchott beach, Mauritania, where round sardinella is a key catch

Two decades of research cruises off West Africa show round sardinella pushing its northern edge about 112 miles per decade, and its share north of Mauritania’s Cape Blanc rose from 38 to 65 percent

By Adrian Villellas

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October 26, 2026 at 6:29 PM

Aerial view of the Dakhla plant site that will produce desalinated Atlantic seawater, with lined basins, buildings and the ocean shore

A 60-megawatt wind farm is already running near Dakhla, and Morocco has offered 35 more farm projects that will depend on desalinated Atlantic seawater from a plant still under construction

By ECONEWS

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October 26, 2026 at 11:31 AM

Aerial view of the Giens peninsula with its two sand tombolos and the Hyères salt pans behind

A CNRS team found France’s Giens peninsula was once an island before two sand strips joined it to the mainland, and a geographer warns the western strip could vanish within 80 years

By Adrian Villellas

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October 26, 2026 at 10:14 AM

Botanist Nisa Karimi hangs from a climbing rope in the branches of a baobab in Madagascar during research on a resurrected baobab species

In northwestern Madagascar’s Sambirano River region, a DNA study of 70 samples found a baobab species demoted to a variety in 1952 is distinct after all, and its authors say it would qualify as endangered

By Adrian Villellas

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October 25, 2026 at 3:02 PM

NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe, AWC Board Chair Nick Butcher and ecologist Dr. Rachel Ladd release a bettong at Mallee Cliffs, one of the reserves where locally extinct mammals have returned

Ten years after New South Wales teamed up with conservationists, 13 locally extinct mammals are back in three fenced reserves, and some gone over a century now breed safe from feral cats and foxes

By ECONEWS

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October 25, 2026 at 10:13 AM

Crane on a Murtech barge dropping stone to build a Chesapeake Bay oyster reef at Hooper Strait Oyster Sanctuary, Maryland

A $10 million NOAA project is laying stone for more than 70 acres of Chesapeake Bay oyster reef habitat in Maryland’s Hooper Strait, and partners aim to restore or conserve 2,000 more acres by 2040

By ECONEWS

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October 25, 2026 at 6:41 AM

Aerial view of exposed sandstone shoreline and low water at Lake Powell near Bullfrog, Utah, in the Upper Colorado River Basin during the 2022 drought

Satellites tracked a loss of about 4.6 trillion gallons of groundwater in the snow-fed Upper Colorado River Basin during the 2020-2022 drought, and that is nearly double what the drier Lower Basin lost

By ECONEWS

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October 23, 2026 at 8:01 PM

Mariana Di Pascuale in front of the earthen house she built in Los Hornillos, Traslasierra, with salvaged car windshields set as windows

A 38-year-old artist built an earthen house in Argentina’s Traslasierra Valley with about 12 car windshields given away in the town where she grew up, and from above its two hexagons form a heart

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 23, 2026 at 6:31 PM

Colorful beehives inside a wooden shelter enclosed by a metal mesh cage in the snow, one alternative to beehives behind electric fences in Slovakia

In Slovakia’s Liptov and Lower Orava regions, brown bears damaged 130 hives in 37 raids between 2020 and 2024, and more than two-thirds of those raids hit beehives behind electric fences

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 23, 2026 at 3:01 PM

More than 750 nesting boxes for native birds have come from a Coppell, Texas, teenager who lost his pet cockatiel, he says, and his Backyard Bird Project has grown to chapters in 24 states and three countries

By ECONEWS

—

October 23, 2026 at 11:31 AM

Cygnet Earthship in Tasmania with rammed earth walls, a long north-facing glass sunroom and a rock gabion wall below

Two owner-builders priced out of Melbourne built a 2,286-square-foot Earthship in Cygnet, Tasmania, with rammed earth walls, bottle bricks and no fireplace, and they say their heating bills are $0

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 23, 2026 at 10:16 AM

Cellar spider on a glass shower wall in a bathroom, a common sight that does not mean your house is dirty

In 50 homes around Raleigh, North Carolina, researchers found spiders in every single house, and tidiness made no significant difference to the variety of bugs, so a spider does not mean your house is dirty

By ECONEWS

—

October 23, 2026 at 8:45 AM

Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica seen by Copernicus Sentinel-2 in February 2026, one of the fast-flowing glaciers behind polar ice loss

42 satellite surveys show 11.3 trillion metric tons of polar ice loss across Greenland and Antarctica since 1979, and 84 percent of it came from glaciers flowing faster into the ocean rather than surface melt

By ECONEWS

—

October 23, 2026 at 6:31 AM

Brown bears and electric fences: a brown bear stands in a meadow in front of an electric fence

In Romania’s Brașov County, brown bears number about 1,329 by a national genetic estimate, the highest density of any county, and one bear relocated from Poiana Brașov was back within 3 days

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 22, 2026 at 8:01 PM

Magellanic penguins from Mar del Plata standing together in their new enclosure at Bubalcó, Río Negro

More than 40 Magellanic penguins born in captivity arrived by court order from Mar del Plata at a river island in Argentina’s Río Negro province, and at first they had not explored even a third of their new home

By ECONEWS

—

October 22, 2026 at 6:31 PM

Lake Constance water level so low that a broad gravel bank lies exposed in front of the Liebesinsel in Radolfzell

At 8.2 feet on Oct. 13, the Lake Constance water level in Konstanz, Germany, fell below a 1947 record for the date, and it now sits 10 inches under last winter’s low

By ECONEWS

—

October 22, 2026 at 3:01 PM

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Environment

Britain’s Christmas robin could be a rarer sight in gardens this winter, and the reason goes back to a record-breaking summer that made the worms they feed on much harder to find

Goodbye to the idea that hornets only nest in trees: oriental hornets in Spain are turning up in shutter boxes and false ceilings, and most records sit within about 0.6 mile of towns

Three African wild dog brothers walked 2,564 miles across Zambia in search of mates, and no African mammal has ever been recorded on a longer journey

A northern gannet can hit the ocean at roughly 54 mph and keep hunting underwater, and CT scans now show the sturdy neck bones that help diving seabirds survive the impact

Two decades of research cruises off West Africa show round sardinella pushing its northern edge about 112 miles per decade, and its share north of Mauritania’s Cape Blanc rose from 38 to 65 percent

A 60-megawatt wind farm is already running near Dakhla, and Morocco has offered 35 more farm projects that will depend on desalinated Atlantic seawater from a plant still under construction

A CNRS team found France’s Giens peninsula was once an island before two sand strips joined it to the mainland, and a geographer warns the western strip could vanish within 80 years

In northwestern Madagascar’s Sambirano River region, a DNA study of 70 samples found a baobab species demoted to a variety in 1952 is distinct after all, and its authors say it would qualify as endangered

Ten years after New South Wales teamed up with conservationists, 13 locally extinct mammals are back in three fenced reserves, and some gone over a century now breed safe from feral cats and foxes

A $10 million NOAA project is laying stone for more than 70 acres of Chesapeake Bay oyster reef habitat in Maryland’s Hooper Strait, and partners aim to restore or conserve 2,000 more acres by 2040

Satellites tracked a loss of about 4.6 trillion gallons of groundwater in the snow-fed Upper Colorado River Basin during the 2020-2022 drought, and that is nearly double what the drier Lower Basin lost

A 38-year-old artist built an earthen house in Argentina’s Traslasierra Valley with about 12 car windshields given away in the town where she grew up, and from above its two hexagons form a heart

In Slovakia’s Liptov and Lower Orava regions, brown bears damaged 130 hives in 37 raids between 2020 and 2024, and more than two-thirds of those raids hit beehives behind electric fences

More than 750 nesting boxes for native birds have come from a Coppell, Texas, teenager who lost his pet cockatiel, he says, and his Backyard Bird Project has grown to chapters in 24 states and three countries

Two owner-builders priced out of Melbourne built a 2,286-square-foot Earthship in Cygnet, Tasmania, with rammed earth walls, bottle bricks and no fireplace, and they say their heating bills are $0

In 50 homes around Raleigh, North Carolina, researchers found spiders in every single house, and tidiness made no significant difference to the variety of bugs, so a spider does not mean your house is dirty

42 satellite surveys show 11.3 trillion metric tons of polar ice loss across Greenland and Antarctica since 1979, and 84 percent of it came from glaciers flowing faster into the ocean rather than surface melt

In Romania’s Brașov County, brown bears number about 1,329 by a national genetic estimate, the highest density of any county, and one bear relocated from Poiana Brașov was back within 3 days

More than 40 Magellanic penguins born in captivity arrived by court order from Mar del Plata at a river island in Argentina’s Río Negro province, and at first they had not explored even a third of their new home

At 8.2 feet on Oct. 13, the Lake Constance water level in Konstanz, Germany, fell below a 1947 record for the date, and it now sits 10 inches under last winter’s low

Czech cave explorers and a robot have measured the Hranice Abyss to 1,476 feet underwater, and a decade after it became the world’s deepest flooded cave, nobody knows where the bottom is

A Hawaiian tree snail vanished from the wild after Hawaii brought in a predator to fight a garden pest, and 33 years later it is back behind walls that keep its hunters out

A Swiss glacier has pulled back far enough to reveal a larch that stopped growing about 10,300 years ago, and its still-attached roots show the tree grew on ground the ice later buried

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

Twenty family dogs listened to nonstop invented words while wearing electrodes, and scientists found that dog brains lock onto the same hidden detail of speech that human brains rely on from infancy

Norway’s largest Viking coin hoard has grown to 5,550 coins since two metal detectorists found it in a field, and an archaeologist cataloging them spotted one struck for a king who became a saint

Turkey has unearthed a clay fragment of the oldest known peace treaty, sealed about 3,300 years ago, and its broken lines show what two kings promised people who fled their lands

A 194-year-old giant tortoise named Jonathan has some gene switches as orderly as those of tortoises a fraction of his age, and scientists think part of his secret lies in how his cells make energy

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