A tiny new species of scops-owl, with yellow eyes and a distinctive screech, is identified on Príncipe island off the west coast of Africa.

Bar-tailed godwit B6 sets a new world migration record by flying 8,425 miles nonstop from Alaska to Tasmania.

Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva wins the presidential election in Brazil and vows to stop deforestation in the Amazon.

Milder winters on Norway’s high Arctic island of Svalbard cause reindeer to change their diets from moss to grass.

According to UNESCO, the glaciers in one-third of all World Heritage sites—including Yosemite National Park and Mount Kilimanjaro—will be gone by 2050.

Eighty-one percent of the garbage at US national parks is plastic.

The six biggest US banks fall far short of their climate pledges.

Oil companies rake in record profits in the third quarter of 2022. ExxonMobil posts a record $19.7 billion profit for the third quarter, Chevron $11.6 billion, and Shell $11.5.

President Biden threatens oil companies with a windfall profits tax.

Oil and gas companies contribute record amounts to Republican political action committees seeking to gain control of Congress.

A federal court blocks voter intimidation efforts at ballot dropboxes in Arizona.

Overdrawing of groundwater by nearby potash mines has reduced Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats by half and thinned its salt crust by a third. 

Nearly all of the lead water pipes that were poisoning majority-Black Benton Harbor, Michigan, have been replaced, five months ahead of the year-and-a-half schedule set by Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Global use of pesticides has increased by 80 percent since 1990.

The electrical charge from swarming insects can produce changes in atmospheric electricity comparable to weather events.

Elon Musk’s prototype “hyperloop” tunnel in California has been removed and replaced with parking for employees of his SpaceX company.

Belgian climate protesters who glued themselves to Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring receive sentences of two months in prison. German climate protesters glue themselves to other stuff.

Great Basin bristlecone pines, among the oldest trees on Earth, are dying from drought and pine-bark beetles.

Threatened with legal action, Zoo Atlanta relents on its gun ban and will now allow armed visitors.

A lioness at the Topeka Zoo in Kansas grows a mane.

Dida the elephant, possibly Africa’s largest female tusker, dies of natural causes at age 60+ in Tsavo East National Park in Kenya.