Five thousand invasive Burmese pythons have been removed from the Everglades.

July 2020 establishes a new record low extent of Arctic sea ice. 

The amount of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean has increased by 10 percent.  

Glacial runoff melted by record heat on Svalbard floods the Norwegian Arctic island’s coal mine. 

A quarter of Bangladesh is flooded. 

The global death toll from COVID-19 passes 700,000. The US toll is 158,445. Ten times as many people died of COVID-19 in the US on August 5 than are known to have died in the enormous explosion in Beirut. 

Administrator Andrew Wheeler moves to reopen EPA offices in Boston and Washington, DC, despite climbing coronavirus cases in those areas. 

House Natural Resources Committee chair Raúl Grijalva, 73, tests positive for the coronavirus after attending a hearing during which he sat next to Representative Louie Gohmert, who refused to wear a mask and tested positive the next day.  

Norway resumes ocean cruises, and one of the first ships to sail immediately experiences an outbreak of COVID-19.  

Eight previously unknown colonies of emperor penguins in Antarctica are discovered after high-resolution satellite images reveal traces of their poop.

A Louisiana man is fined $85,000 for his role in killing two whooping cranes, among the most endangered birds in the world.  

The Trump administration wants to weaken the Endangered Species Act by narrowing the definition of “habitat.”

Oil giant BP, for the second time, vows to cut oil production and invest heavily in renewables.  

President Trump signs the Great American Outdoors Act, which funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund with royalties from oil and gas drilling on public lands and addresses the National Park Service’s large maintenance backlog. In his signing statement, Trump pronounces the famous national park as “Yo-semite.”   

Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter and fisher, urges his father to block the giant Pebble copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay in Alaska, which the Army Corps of Engineers recently greenlighted. 

A letter from 301 organizations, including the NAACP and the Sierra Club, urges the Senate to reject Trump’s nomination of William Perry Pendley to be director of the Bureau of Land Management, calling him a “bigoted and divisive extremist.” 

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allows President Trump to continue the construction of his border wall while it resolves the question of whether he can divert $2.5 billion in military pay and pensions to do so.  

A huge armada of 260 Chinese vessels is fishing just outside the territorial waters of the Galápagos Islands, prompting fears of overfishing in Ecuador. 

Nearly 60 kinds of fish now swim in Chicago’s rivers, compared with fewer than 10 in the 1980s.  

For $180 million, you could buy 36,000 acres of intact forest and lakes in the Adirondacks. 

Blame Jupiter for our solar system not having more habitable planets.