The U.S. government has taken another definitive step toward launching a deep-sea mining industry, starting in the waters of American Samoa, despite public opposition.

On July 17, the Marine Minerals Administration (MMA), a new U.S. agency formed by merging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, announced intentions to hold a lease sale for seabed mining on Nov. 19 in Camarillo, California.

The MMA also stated that the proposed lease “does not guarantee that a lease sale will be held” or that “exploration or collection activities will occur should MMA move forward with a sale.” Still, opponents see the proposal as a major step toward commercial deep-sea mining — an industry that has drawn widespread criticism over its potential impacts on marine ecosystems.

If the lease sale moves forward, the proposal indicates that companies will be able to secure 20-year leases across nearly 127,500 square kilometers (approximately 49,000 square miles) of seabed in the ocean surrounding American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the Pacific. The minimum bid for each of the two lease areas will be $3 million, and royalties in year 11 of the lease will be $1.25 per acre and increase over time.

The lease sale itself won’t be open to the public, but will be live streamed, according to the announcement.

The MMA indicated that the governor of American Samoa will have 60 days to comment on the proposed lease sale.

“Advancing this notice is an important step toward building a secure domestic critical minerals supply chain, strengthening U.S. economic and national security, and ensuring America can compete and win in the 21st century,” Matt Giacona, the acting director of MMA, said in a statement.

The proposed mining area is adjacent to the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, a marine protected area that serves as a nesting ground and refuge for many threatened and endangered species.

Critics accuse the U.S. government of disregarding the concerns of many American Samoans, as well as members of the broader public, who have voiced opposition to the proposal.

“Pacific people have made our position clear: we do not want deep sea mining in our waters,” Sabrina Suluai-Mahuka, founder of Finafinau Foundation, an environmental organization in American Samoa that opposes deep-sea mining, said in a statement. “Yet the Trump administration is forcing this industry on our communities — imposing decisions that could affect us permanently without consulting us. Our ocean is our home, our food, our culture, and our future, and we are calling on the Administration to stop this reckless lease sale before irreversible harm is done.”

The U.S. government led by President Donald Trump has also indicated that it intends to auction off blocks of the seabed for deep-sea mining in the waters of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Alaska and Virginia.

Banner image: A deep-sea frogfish in the deep waters of National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa. Image by NOAA Okeanos.

Beavers are well-known residents of rivers, lakes and streams across North America.  New research finds they are also far more common in estuaries and tidal wetlands than was previously understood. The study suggests the rodents are critical ecosystem engineers in a habitat where twice-daily tides raise and lower water levels, bringing saltwater inland from the sea.

Estuarine ecologist and self-described “accidental beaver biologist” Greg Hood surveyed estuaries and tidal wetlands across coastal British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. He found beavers (Castor canadensis) in those ecosystems by surveying places other scientists tend to overlook.

“Estuarine scientists and beaver biologists are generally working in other areas — the beaver biologist in normal streams and lakes where they expect to find beavers; the estuarine ecologists typically in herbaceous tidal marshes or even in eelgrass,” Hood told Mongabay in an email. Adding that scientists rarely work in “tidal shrub and forest habitats (tidal swamps) where beaver are most likely, because tidal swamps are very hard to move around in.”

Hood found that beavers are widespread in tidal habitats across the Pacific Northwest. In some tidal channels of the Snohomish and Skagit rivers, he found beaver dams at twice the density of such dams on non-tidal rivers.

Beaver dams in tidal habitats are shorter than those on non-tidal rivers, according to Hood’s research. He hypothesizes that since these dams are flooded at high tide, that their main function is to trap water at low tides, which allows beavers to continue moving freely through the river system even when the tide is out.

Hood found that tidal beaver dams likely provide important low tide refuges for many fish species, possibly including endangered salmon species like Puget Sound Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and Oregon Coast coho salmon (O. kisutch).

To continue the research, Hood and beaver biologists from the Tulalip Tribes put a GPS tag on one tidal beaver to follow it in otherwise impenetrable habitat; they hope to tag 20 more.

“Tagging data will tell us what kind of habitat they use in tidal wetlands; how much habitat they need (territory size); how their movements relate to tides; perhaps what kinds of tidal channels they most often frequent; perhaps how they partition time between multiple lodges; and perhaps things that we haven’t even thought about (surprises!),” Hood said.

Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb has written extensively about beavers and their role as a freshwater keystone species. “Hood’s research suggests beavers are equally indispensable along the coast, engineering deep pools for fish, including juvenile salmon, in estuaries plagued by habitat loss,” Goldfarb wrote in 2019 of Hood’s previous work on tidal river beavers.  “Acknowledging the importance — indeed the existence — of coastal beavers might just be vital to re-creating a lost intertidal world: an ecosystem sculpted by rodent teeth, undone by human hands.”

Banner image: North American beaver. Image by Chuck Szmurlo via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

NEW DELHI (AP) — India rolled out its first domestically built, hydrogen-powered train on Friday, a move aimed at expanding the use of clean energy in its vast rail network.

The train made up of two hydrogen-powered driving cars and eight passenger coaches will operate in the northern state of Haryana. It can run at speeds of up to 75 kph (47 mph) and carry a maximum of about 2,600 passengers, railway officials said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the “NaMo Green Rail” at Haryana’s Jind railway station on Friday. “NaMo” is a common abbreviation of Modi’s first and last names.

“This is a very significant day in the direction of self-reliant India and sustainable development,” Modi said in a post on X.

The pilot project includes hydrogen storage and refueling infrastructure to test the use of the technology in India’s rail network, according to officials.

Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, producing water vapor as the only direct emission. Several other countries have introduced hydrogen-powered trains as an alternative to diesel on routes that are not fully electrified.

The launch is part of India’s broader efforts to develop green hydrogen and reduce carbon emissions. India has set a target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2070, with Indian Railways exploring hydrogen as an alternative to diesel on some routes.

By Associated Press

Banner image: India Prime Minister Narendra Modi flags off India’s first indigenously built hydrogen-powered train named the “NaMo Green Rail,” at Jind, in the Indian state of Haryana, Friday, July 17, 2026. Image courtesy of Indian Prime Minister’s Office via Associated Press. 

Nepal’s expanding birdwatching community offers a vital lifeline for both biodiversity monitoring and ecotourism, reports contributor Bibek Bhandari for Mongabay.

According to a recent study, a growing interest in birdwatching, particularly among younger generations, is helping bridge gaps in ecological data while promoting Nepal as a birdwatching destination.

Nepal is home to more than 900 bird species, including the endemic spiny babbler (Turdoides nipalensis). Of these, 172 species are nationally threatened owing to urbanization, infrastructure development and climate change.

The study surveyed 135 birdwatchers and found that only 37% shared their observations on citizen science platforms, such as eBird, or with bird conservation organizations, while 46% kept their records private. This lack of participation limits the overall impact of citizen science on regional conservation efforts, the study said.

Hem Bahadur Katuwal, study co-author and an assistant professor at China’s Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, said  birdwatchers should record their observations of the species they spot, the number of individuals seen and where they saw the birds. These data are helpful in conservation, he said.

“This helps in fulfilling the data gaps related to bird population and habitat,” Katuwal said. He added that the records also help researchers like him in assessing species’ risk levels for Nepal’s national Red Data List.

Beyond science, birdwatching presents an untapped economic opportunity for the country. While some birdwatchers spend up to 40,000 rupees ($260) per trip, according to the study, the travel sector remains dominated by trekking and religious tourism, said Ishana Thapa, CEO of Bird Conservation Nepal.

Thapa argued that proactive government promotion of Nepal as a birdwatching destination is essential. “This is a low investment that can bring great benefits to our tourism sector,” Thapa said.

A former hunter turned birdwatching guide and tourism leader, Shankar Tiwari now holds a top ranking for unique bird sightings in Nepal on eBird. Tiwari, who said he recently documented three species for the first time in Nepal, said he views his work for bird conservation as a form of restitution for his past.

“It also feels like I am paying my debt in some ways,” he said. “As kids, we didn’t know, so we killed birds. I’m very remorseful. So now I’m involved in bird conservation, raising awareness and getting more people to see and know about birds.”

Read the full story by Bibek Bhandari here.

Banner image: Bird enthusiasts look for birds in Suryabinayak, Kathmandu. Image courtesy of Prasan Shrestha.

Gray whales are experiencing a potentially catastrophic population decline, a sharp reversal from what had been considered a conservation success.

As of July 6, 2026, there were 145 gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) stranding deaths in the Pacific, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data.

The environmental non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) estimates that for every one stranded gray whale observed, another nine or more may have died at sea, meaning another 1,305 gray whales may have died this year without anyone knowing. Scientists consider such a rate of gray whale deaths a “catastrophic mortality event.”

In 2019, there were roughly 20,500 gray whales; by 2023, the population had declined to 14,526 individuals, nearly 30% of the entire population gone in four years.

The whale’s population was already greatly reduced by a century of whaling, but protection under the Endangered Species Act had helped the species recover.

Gray whales live in the eastern North Pacific and migrate between 16,000 and 22,500 kilometers (10,000 and 14,000 miles) from their winter calving lagoons off Baja California, Mexico, to their Arctic feeding grounds. But climate change is disrupting the Arctic food web on which the gray whales depend.

The whales are coastal bottom feeders and use baleen plates inside their mouths to filter tiny invertebrates from the seafloor or benthic layer. Warming temperatures and earlier-than-usual ice melt mean that phytoplankton bloom earlier and are eaten before they can fall to the seafloor to feed benthic invertebrates and, ultimately, gray whales. The collapse of benthic invertebrate populations is leading to starving whales.

Gray whales are also vulnerable to ship strikes since their migration route crosses busy shipping lanes. PEER is petitioning NOAA to make whale safety zones a federal rule in U.S. waters. Such zones require ships to slow down in important whale habitats that overlap with major shipping routes. Rick Steiner, a marine ecologist from Alaska and PEER board chair, told Mongabay in an email that these zones could reduce the risk of ship strikes on whales by half or more.

Steiner said the long-term solution to gray whale population recovery is to dramatically reduce global CO2 emissions, “which in turn will begin bringing down the temperature of air and sea, and reforming sea ice cover. That is a multi-decadal challenge,” he added.

Gray whales were removed from the Endangered Species Act list in 1994. PEER is petitioning NOAA to relist the whales in U.S. waters which would afford them additional protections.

NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein told Alaska Public Media KTOO that the agency would only consider it an unusual mortality event if the reason for the whales’ deaths is new. “At this point, elevated strandings have continued, but all indications are that the causes remain the same,” Milstein said.

Banner image: Gray whale in Alaska. Image courtesy of NOAA [public domain]

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level in the past 10 years, according to satellite data published by Brazil’s National Space Agency (INPE).

Between January and June 2025, a total of 2,090 square kilometers (807 square miles) of deforestation was recorded in the Brazilian Amazon. In the same months of 2026, the total deforested area was 1,295 sq km (500 sq mi), marking a 38% decrease.

“This shows that the political will to fight deforestation has prevailed,” Ane Alencar, science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, said in a statement. “From a scientific standpoint, this is evidence that deforestation is not an inevitable process and its reduction is responsive to decisions made by society and the government.”

Alencar said that a drop in deforestation does not mean that the Amazon is protected. Threats, including illegal gold mining and forest fires, are still concerns.

In 2024, fire accounted for an estimated 60% of primary forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon. Still more forest was cleared in the first half of 2025, according to INPE, with an increase in forest loss of 27% compared with the same period in 2024.

In the first half of 2026, however, the area of the Amazon that burned was nearly 40% smaller than the 2013-25 historic average, João Paulo Sotero, director of deforestation and fire policy with Brazil’s Environment Ministry, told Mongabay in a video interview.

Forecasts of a “super” El Niño through the second half of 2026 have put Brazil’s government and conservationists on high alert, as the climate phenomenon, intensified by climate change, is expected to cause drought in parts of the Amazon rainforest.

The combination of more heat, less rainfall and criminal fires in the rainforest is a recipe for environmental disaster, as a dry understory, the layer of plants growing between the forest canopy and floor, can cause small fires to spread more quickly and aggressively.

In response to this threat, Brazil’s government has increased equipment and on-the-ground personnel available to fight fires in the region, and added 20% to this year’s national firefighting budget. The effects of the El Niño are expected to last until the start of 2027.

Banner image: Amazon rainforest burned in Acre, Brazil, to make way for cattle pastures. Image courtesy of Victor Moriyama/Climate Visuals.