Environment

The Trump administration says easing these standards will make cars more affordable. Critics say it's not so simple and could be costly for the environment.

(Image credit: Apu Gomes)

A new field of study called "smoke ecology" strives to understand the smoke blowing off wildfires, and whether anything can be done to protect the environment's inhabitants from it.

Hurricane Nolo edged further away from the Hawaiian Islands on Sunday as major Hurricane Polo bore down on Mexico's Baja California peninsula with a threat of storm surge, high winds and heavy rains.

(Image credit: Gregory Bull)

Two troops of chacma baboons are breaking into homes and shops but animal rights activists insist coexistence is the answer

Cape Town’s city council has said it will “imminently” round up two baboon troops coming into repeated conflict with residents. The animals will be sterilised and permanently moved to a newly constructed sanctuary. The plan has been fiercely criticised by animal rights activists, who say the monkeys should remain roaming freely, and that less destructive options have not been properly considered.

Cape Town’s baboon problem has been brewing since the 2000s, after the city stopped culling troops in the late 1990s after pressure from the public. But in the past two years it has reached boiling point. A 2025 census found that the population had grown by a third since 2000, from 360 baboons to 493, (including a peak of 519 in 2023), now living in 12 managed troops.

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Across the country, lost-and-found networks seek to reunite objects with disaster survivors. The work can take years. In some cases, it's impossible to pick up all the pieces.

(Image credit: Juan Diego Reyes for NPR)

Known as the ‘energy bars of the sea’ the fish are a key food source for many species, but closing fisheries to allow numbers to recover would cost millions

It began on 28 July, when fishers near Saldanha Bay on the west coast of South Africa reported seeing dead sardines (also known as pilchards) floating at sea. Then, in early August, more dead sardines began washing up on beaches near Cape Town.

In the weeks that followed, similar reports came in from places across a vast area spanning 2,600km (1,600 miles) of coastline, such as Henties Bay in Namibia and Mbotyi in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

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Southwestern Mexico braced for heavy rain and mudslides after Polo became a major hurricane. Forecasters warned another system headed for Hawaii could cause catastrophic flooding later in the week.

(Image credit: NOAA via AP)

Biggest study of its kind provides insights into bats’ evolution – a potential gamechanger for research into treating viruses and cancer in humans

In the northern forests of the Congo-Brazzaville, as the sun slips away, a distinctive honking fills the dusky sky. Every evening, thousands of hammer-headed fruit bats depart their daytime roosts in search of mates, calling out through large, box-shaped snouts that give the flying mammals the appearance of a winged moose. Here, along the Congo River, scientists have been collecting DNA swabs and tissue samples from the bats for years, working deep into the night in spacesuit-like protective gear.

Those hard-won samples are now among the thousands of specimens gathered from bats across the world that have helped to reshape what we know about the bat family tree.

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Coral reefs are under threat right now, due to abnormally warm ocean temperatures. Scientists are studying some of the most pristine reefs in the world, in search of ways to help all reefs recover.

Hurricane Polo has grown into one of the most powerful Pacific cyclones in decades, and it was expected to skirt Mexico's southwestern coast as a Category 5 storm.

(Image credit: NOAA via AP)

Incendiamoeba cascadensis, which translates to "fire amoeba of the Cascade mountain range." This single-celled organism can replicate at temperatures up to 145°F, a new record for a complex organism.'/>

Scientists have found a species they've named the fire amoeba, which is capable of reproducing at 145°F and continuing to move up to temperatures of 147°F — a record for complex eukaryotic life.

(Image credit: Felix Mikus  )

A magical new film captures the secret life of the deep sea in a stretch of the ocean at risk from industrial mining

A magical film that explores the wonders of the deep sea through the eyes of a team of scientists and an underwater robot called Isis will be shown in selected cinemas across the UK next month.

The documentary, How Deep Is Your Love, offers a playful, irreverent and bittersweet look at our anthropocentric view of Earth, as it switches perspective from humans to deep sea animals and back again. It follows a research team from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, who sail for 12 days to reach a remote region called the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a biodiversity-rich area of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico. It takes Isis five hours to make the 3-mile (5km) descent to the bottom of this harsh world, where sunlight cannot penetrate, and where nodules rich in minerals mark it out as a hotspot for industrial mining.

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The U.S. gets nearly a third of its pork from Iowa. One family is making the switch from pigs to more sustainable specialty mushrooms and trying to show other pig farmers how they did it.

(Image credit: Madeleine Charis King)

A fisherman has the ultimate fishing tale: He spotted an adult humpback whale has in California's largest river. That's a rare sighting in those parts.

State officials say the new SpaceX site will be a $100 billion investment and launch thousands of rockets. Lawmakers helped ease regulations and negotiations were covered under nondisclosure agreements.

(Image credit: Kathleen Flynn)

Last year, remnants of a typhoon damaged homes, infrastructure and an archaeological dig site. Now, archaeologists are trying to get as many objects out as possible before the next storm.

(Image credit: MaryCait Dolan)

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This year's single-elimination tournament will see 16 competitors face off, compared to 12 in past years. Officials report more cubs in Katmai National Park than they've seen in recent memory.

(Image credit: C. Loberg)

A bacterial infection is wiping out Florida's citrus trees. Growers hope a rootstock developed with gene-editing technology could keep the disease at bay.

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

No one across the U.S. is consistently tracking climate-fueled deaths. One medical examiner has a new protocol on heat-deaths.

(Image credit: Cassidy Araiza for NPR)

Gene technology is giving hope to citrus farmers in Florida who are fighting greening disease, which has been killing their trees for two decades.