Dan Zukowski

From the peak of Mt. Rausu, a clear view of the Shiretoko Peninsula opens from the Okhotsk Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east. Below, a dense green boreal forest of conifers, maples, and birch hides hundreds of brown bears and 590,000 sika deer. Japanese wolves once roamed this wilderness but their primeval howls fell silent here, and throughout Japan, more than a hundred years ago.

It was called epic, historic, and terrifying. A wall of sand a mile high swept across Arizona on July 9, 2018, knocking out power to 100,000 customers. The dust storm kept going for 200 miles, finally petering out in Baja, California. Sandstorms like these carry heavy metals, toxic chemicals, and microparticles from 350,000 acres of open-mine tailings, which get into the lungs, water, and soil of Arizona residents.

Since July 1, more than 460 dead seals have washed up on beaches and islands in Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts. Another 137 coughing, sneezing, and sick seals have stranded themselves, overwhelming marine animal rescuers. In an announcement last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared the mass die-off an unusual mortality event (UME)—adding to the three other UMEs currently affecting right, humpback, and minke whales in the same waters.

More than 100 years ago, hunters nearly wiped out the Gulf of Maine’s Atlantic puffins. Climate change may finish the job.

It’s a chilly, damp spring morning in Sewall Woods. The red oaks have begun to leaf out among the white pines, and a soundscape of songbirds plays in the tall trees. This 91-acre former dairy farm along the Whiskeag River in Maine has been designated as a demonstration forest by the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, where landowners, foresters, and loggers can see that cutting a few trees actually helps bird conservation.

Bad things are happening to whales along the Atlantic coast of North America. Last year, 17 North Atlantic right whales died, as did 33 humpback whales and 28 minke whales. NOAA Fisheries declared each of these an “unusual mortality event,” the first time they’ve ever had three such declarations simultaneously in the same region.

Melting permafrost carries unknown dangers for Arctic marine life. On a small island in the Beaufort Sea, brown muck slides down tall cliffs, oozes into mud pools, and slithers into the ocean. It’s summer, and the permafrost is thawing. As the sediment enters the sea, it clouds the coastal waters, releasing organic carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. But that’s not all.

Broken, brown tree stumps and roots lie askew along an ancient peat bog on Block Island, churned up by Hurricane Sandy. Such bogs are not unusual in New England, but this one is different: it’s 6,000 years old and under 12 feet of water—a relic of a time when the ocean floor was filling in as mile-high glaciers melted and seas rose. [Archeologists and Native American tribes work together to identify culturally important sites underwater.]