Thousands of farmers in central Iran joined a protest on Friday demanding authorities open a dam to relieve drought-stricken areas, state TV reported.

Several prominent actors and athletes have taken part in the peaceful demonstrations in the city of Isfahan, urging the government to intervene to aid famers increasingly suffering from droughts that have worsened over the years. The demonstrations began earlier this month.

Authorities have been investigating the death of a pilot who crashed while fighting a wildfire near Rocky Mountain National Park at night, the second person to die amid wind-driven, late season wildfires in the Rockies this week.

The pilot of the single-engine air tanker was found dead Tuesday night south of Estes Park about three hours after authorities received reports of a crash, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office said. The pilot was the only person on board, it said.

The Canadian Pacific coast province of British Columbia has declared a state of emergency following floods and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall, and officials said they expected to find more dead.

Every major route between the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where Canada's third largest city of Vancouver is, and the interior of the province has been cut by washouts, flooding or landslides following record-breaking rain across southern British Columbia between Saturday and Monday. The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides late Monday.

Loss of habitat and poaching have made African forest elephants a critically endangered species. Yet the dense forests of sparsely populated Gabon in the Congo River Basin remain a "last stronghold" of the magnificent creatures, according to new research that concluded the population is much higher than previous estimates.

Counting forest elephants is a far bigger challenge than surveying plains-dwelling savanna elephants from the air. It takes difficult and dirty scientific work that doesn't involve laying eyes on the elusive animals that flee at the slightest whiff of human scent.

Air pollution remained extremely high in the Indian capital on Thursday, a day after authorities closed schools indefinitely and shut some power stations to reduce smog that has blanketed the city for much of the month.

New Delhi's air quality remained "very poor," according to SAFAR, India's main environmental monitoring agency. The concentration of tiny airborne particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter — known as PM 2.5 — neared 300 micrograms per cubic meter in some parts of the city, it said.

The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday will auction vast oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico estimated to hold up to 1.1 billion barrels of crude, the first such sale under President Joe Biden and a harbinger of the challenges he faces to reach climate goals that depend on deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions.

The livestreamed sale invited energy companies to bid on drilling leases across some 136,000 square miles (352,000 square kilometers) — about twice the area of Florida.

There is a ray of hope for the vanishing orange-and-black Western monarch butterflies.

The number wintering along California's central coast is bouncing back after the population, whose presence is often a good indicator of ecosystem health, reached an all-time low last year. Experts pin their decline on climate change, habitat destruction and lack of food due to drought.

As many parts of western Washington began drying out after a storm that dumped rain for days, waters in some areas continued rising, more people were urged to evacuate and crews worked to restore power and reopen roads.

Officials in the small city of Sumas, Washington, near the Canada border called the flood damage there devastating. Officials said on Facebook Tuesday that hundreds of people had been evacuated and estimated that 75% of homes had water damage.

Relentless rain battered Canada's Pacific coast on Monday, forcing a town's evacuation and trapping motorists as mudslides, rocks and debris were washed across major highways.

The nomad was thirsty, and the journey into the Somali desert would be long and taxing.