"Fewer than 100 Rice’s whales remain on Earth. Here’s what they sound like when they communicate. They live only in the Gulf of Mexico, where air guns firing sonic blasts are used to survey the ocean floor for oil and gas. The low frequency of the blasts overlaps with the frequency of the calls of the whales."

"The Defense Department has designated its press office a classified space and banned journalists from accessing it to meet with the public affairs officers who have traditionally answered their questions." "The change creates a new barrier compared with previous administrations, under which the office was an open room where reporters could stop by the desks of military public affairs officials without escorts."

"Critics are outraged that the Trump administration is moving to roll back chemical safety rules even as the U.S. faces deadly industrial chemical incidents."

"With a puny snowpack in the Western mountains and a widespread drought, the nation is a tinderbox. A reorganization of federal firefighting efforts and the departure of many staff qualified to join the fight are heightening concern."

"The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate."

"Lax regulations and mismanaged applications in the US are to blame for the tons of nitrogen fertilizer that runs off into waterways each year and contributes to water and air pollution, cancer and environmental damage, according to a report released Monday."

"Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new mission: bringing more transparency to data center construction and the impact those data centers have on nearby communities. Brockovich — who was famously played by Julia Roberts in a film dramatizing her legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric — recently launched a website with a map of data centers across the United States."

"National Park Service officials repeatedly raised legal and environmental concerns over the Trump administration’s plan to lease public parkland, including the site of a professional tennis tournament, to a private operator widely expected to be the tournament’s operator, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post."

"A pair of House Democrats is asking a congressional watchdog to probe the Trump administration’s disaster declarations after high-profile denials of disaster aid requests."

"A judge has temporarily stopped the National Science Foundation from removing the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder from its leadership of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne."