Environment

Four infected animals were found alongside 900 dead crested terns at a Kangaroo Island breeding colony, prompting the state government to lobby for a national wildlife vaccine trial.

Below the glaciers of the Hindu Kush Himalaya sit thousands of lakes held back by walls of ice and rock debris. When those walls give way, entire valleys can flood in minutes.

Read the stranding records for the Gulf of Carpentaria and one thing stands out: pygmy blue whales do not belong there. The Gulf is shallow, warm and enclosed, sitting well inside waters the subspecies is almost never documented to enter.

Lake Mead's surface sat at 1,040.96 feet above sea level on 2 August 2026, its lowest elevation since the reservoir began filling in the 1930s. The white bathtub ring etched into the canyon walls above the waterline tells the rest of the story: decades of drawdown made visible in bleached rock.

Testing at CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness confirmed H5 bird flu in a silver gull found at Robe in South Australia on 1 August 2026, the first detection in that species in Australia. The result pushed the national tally of confirmed or presumed positive detections to 53.

Wildfires burning across southwestern France and Spain have displaced more than 300,000 people, triggering one of Europe's largest ever evacuation operations.

The line of defence has just moved. Authorities have confirmed H5 bird flu is passing from bird to bird inside Australia for the first time, which turns the job from keeping the virus out of the country to keeping it away from poultry sheds and egg farms.

Illinois EPA and National Weather Service Chicago issued a Red Forecast Air Pollution Action Day for Chicago and Cook County effective 16 July 2026, citing hazardous smoke levels driven south by Canadian wildfires.