A violent storm in the Mediterranean generates a five-foot storm surge, flooding more than three-quarters of Venice and stranding tourists. 

China reverses its previous ban on the use of tiger and rhino parts in traditional medicine. Fewer than 30,000 rhinos and 3,900 tigers remain in the wild. 

From 1970 to 2014, the average population sizes of vertebrate wildlife declined by 60 percent.

Sea otters are free to repopulate the Southern California coast, per the U.S. Supreme Court.

The deep-sea research vessel EVNautilus films an aggregation of more than a thousand brooding octopuses at the bottom of California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Twenty-eight offshore wind projects throughout the U.S are in the works, with a cumulative capacity of more than 25 gigawatts.

The Interior Department informs employees that dressing up as Donald Trump on Halloween violates the Hatch Act. 

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is referred to the Justice Department by the inspector general of his own agency  for further investigation of one of three cases of apparent self-dealing.  

Two “ag-gag” laws in Wyoming, which made it illegal to photograph and collect other data about harmful practices on public and private land, are struck down as unconstitutional limits on free speech.

Oil and gas lease sales on a million acres of sage-grouse habitat are put on hold after a court finds that the BLM intentionally limited public-comment opportunities on the sales.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new far-right president, vows to industrialize the Amazon and “end all activism in Brazil.” 

More than 99 percent of Haiti has been deforested. 

A couple taking a selfie fall to their deaths from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. A couple visiting the Grand Canyon die after falling from the Trailview Overlook on the South Rim. 

Chris Lehnertz is removed as superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park after becoming the object of a federal investigation of an undisclosed nature. Lehnertz, the park’s first female superintendent, has been a leader in the fight against sexual harassment in the Park Service. 

Hawaii’s supreme court allows construction of the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope on top of Mauna Kea.

After discovering 2,662 planets circling distant stars, NASA’s space telescope Kepler runs out of fuel and sends its last photo. 

An unusual, extraordinarily thin interstellar object called the ‘Oumuamua passed through our solar system in 2017. It may be of artificial origin.