The fishing trip to Gaiakulpen in Vesterelva offered a real surprise to friends Njord Lindgård and Tobias Holm (13).

The heaviest puffling (baby puffin) ever recorded in Iceland was weighed by scientists in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago recently, and the director of the South Iceland Natural History Institute believes the puffin stock overall may never have been bigger than now. The news comes after many failed breeding seasons since 2000 and worries for the species’ future.

Despite extensive and expensive work last summer to prevent further oil leaks from the Second World War shipwreck El Grillo, in Seyðisfjörður, oil is still leaking into the sea. It is thought the wreck still contains some 10-15 tonnes of oil.

District of West Vancouver staff say they cleaned up 40 litres of fat from Ambleside Beach. Vancouver Coastal Health and the province are investigating.

Community Water System at Risk: Extreme precipitation throughout the summer and sustained high water has resulted in erosion of the location for the water transmission line and Noatak's two water wells.

Federal officials declared a water shortage for the Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the US. It will trigger mandatory water cuts to several western states starting next year.

Locals in Kotzebue showed a mix of excitement and concern over the weekend in response to reports that a rare polar bear was spotted in the area.

Rare footage shot by a researcher expedition in Norway shows a polar bear hunting and catching a swimming adult reindeer. The video, captured by Mateusz Gruszka, a cook for an expedition of Polish researchers in August 2021 on the Svalbard archipelago, shows the bear catching the reindeer and drowning it before dragging it ashore.

A state of emergency was declared in mid-August in Khatanga, a small town on the banks of the river of the same name in Russia’s far northern Taymyr Peninsula, after more than 1,200 dead reindeer were found scattered on the river’s banks.

On August 14, 2021, temperatures rose above freezing on the summit of Greenland, fueling a rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water—the heaviest since records began in 1950.

Entomologists confirm the report of the world's largest hornet — a worrisome invasive species that originates from East Asia and Japan — by a person in a rural area near the Canadian border.

These prolonged above-normal temperatures required the City of Cranbrook to increase water restrictions to levels not generally experienced by the community. Additionally, during this time (personal experience), the water was discoloured and had an odor, forcing bottled water to ensure safe drinking.

A handful of fires burning east of Humboldt continued to grow overnight with minimal containment, bringing air quality and travel impacts. Parts of State Route 36 have reopened to controlled traffic. Overall hot, dry conditions are expected to complicate fire suppression efforts.

A decades-long decline in salmon in the Yukon River has reached a crisis this year, forcing harvest closures and prompting emergency shipments of salmon from other regions of Alaska to river residents who are otherwise facing food shortages.

The wildfire has now grown to 565 square kilometres in size.

The village is losing ground three times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to studies of Napakiak’s erosion. During high tide, the river is only 64 feet from the high-schoolers’ original classroom and gets closer by the day. On windy days, waves crash against the shore where students used to play, battering it until the land relents and crumbles.

Extreme drought in the west means that households with private waterworks are out of water. Elvar's dried up. "The situation is very serious," he says.

At this time of year, the geese are moulting — and therefore unable to fly — so they congregate near ponds to avoid the Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), which is reluctant to jump into the water. But the bear was about to use a new hunting technique: he dove under the water, disappeared from the eyes of the geese who had stopped fleeing, and emerged from underneath one of them.

Starting last week, regional residents reported numerous dead seabirds washing up on regional beaches. Alaska Sea Grant Agent Gay Sheffield said there were carcasses of murres, puffins, shearwaters and a kittiwake starting on July 28; in Golovin, Solomon, Nome and a dead Little Diomede.

Poaching and climate change might be the reasons why more than 1,200 migrating animals did not make it across the wide Arctic waterway.