A California sea lion ends up in the mouth of a humpback whale.

Tiger sharks regularly consume backyard birds like sparrows, doves, and woodpeckers.

An orphan whale is adopted by a bottlenose dolphin. 

Melting ice makes many climbing routes in the Alps too dangerous to attempt.  

The “heat dome” that brought record temperatures to Europe last week moves on to Greenland, which loses 11 billion tons of ice on July 31 alone. August 1 is forecast to be Greenland’s biggest single-day melting event ever. 

Alaska experiences 95+ days of above-normal temperatures.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, will travel to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City by sailboat.

Instead of exporting its grain via railroad as it has done in the past, the Russian region of Omsk can now ship it north on the Irtysh River to the Gulf of Ob, where it can be shipped through increasingly ice-free Arctic waters to Japan. 

Vladimir Putin orders the Russian army to Siberia to help combat the massive wildfires raging there. In a phone call with Putin first revealed by Moscow, President Trump offers US assistance. 

During the 2016 presidential campaign, a close Trump aide allowed the United Arab Emirates to edit the candidate’s “America First” energy speech.

The Supreme Court rules against the ACLU and Sierra Club, allowing President Trump to spend money not authorized by Congress on his border wall. 

Siding with environmentalists and local tribes, a federal judge blocks the proposed Rosemont copper mine in the Coronado National Forest near Tucson, Arizona.

Gold miners invade a remote Indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon and kill the community’s leader, Emyra Waiãpi. In July, the Amazon suffers record deforestation. 

Ethiopians plant a record 350 million trees in a day, toward an eventual goal of 4 billion.

Yellowstone’s grizzly bears regain protection under the Endangered Species Act. 

An escaped herd of 75 bison roam free in Upstate New York.  

A camper at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky investigating “strange sounds” in the middle of the night says he saw Bigfoot emerge from the woods and shot at it. 

Kentucky coal miners in Harlan County block a coal train, demanding that they be paid following the bankruptcy of the Blackjewel mining company. 

A coal mine in Elkhorn, West Virginia, experiences a “coalnado.”

The Trump administration wants to end limits on the use of toxic coal ash from coal-fired power plants.

Ohio cuts energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs to create new subsidies for coal and nuclear power plants. 

Intercontinental Hotels, owner of 5,600 hotels including the Holiday Inn, Regent, and Crowne Plaza chains, will phase out tiny plastic bottles of toiletries by 2021. 

A US Navy fighter jet crashes in Death Valley National Park, injuring seven visitors on a scenic outlook and killing the pilot. 

An explosion sparks a large fire at ExxonMobil’s Olefins refinery near Houston, Texas, injuring 37 and leading to a shelter-in-place order for nearby residents. 

A large gas explosion kills one person in Moreland, Kentucky. Five to seven more people are missing.

In Australia, a white male cat destroys a sanctuary for the fairy tern, a “cartoonishly adorable native seabird.”  

A 24-year-old woman drowns trying to reach the abandoned bus where Christopher McCandless (of Into the Wild fame) died.

A Spanish biologist is trying to create human-monkey chimeras in China.  

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite locates a potentially habitable planet only 31 light-years away.