A juvenile blackcap is recorded in the soft light of morning at Minorca, UK, a former open-cast mine near Moira in the National Forest on June 18, 2025. Dr Heather Gilbert, research and evidence manager, checks mist nets among wildflowers and young trees as part of long-term monitoring that shows bird numbers have increased by 48 per cent over 30 years. (Photo by Rod Kirkpatrick/RKP Photography)

Boys pan for gold on a riverside at Iga Barriere, 25 km (15 miles) from Bunia, in the resource-rich Ituri region of eastern Congo February 16, 2009. Ituri is one of many areas of the country to have experienced bitter ethnic conflict between rival tribes in recent years. Massacres have left tens of thousands dead. It is this fighting that led U.S. authorities to take the unprecedented step of naming Congo in section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act, which says U.S.-listed companies that source gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin from Congo or its neighbours must assure the U.S. stock exchange regulator that their business is not helping fund conflict. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Unforgiving temperatures of up to 60℃ (140℉) beat down on these saltminers on a daily basis. The mines, situated in the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, stretch across 38,000 sq miles and at their lowest point are more than 300ft below sea level. Joel Santos travelled to capture the area’s dry, brutal beauty. Here: Dromedaries and donkeys are used to transport the salt. (Photo by Joel Santos/Barcroft Images)

A rainbow forms on water from a spray machine used to suppress coal dust at the Krasnogorsky open pit coal mine, operated by Mechel PJSC, in Mezhdurechensk, Russia, on Monday, July 19, 2021. Russia’s government is betting that coal consumption will continue to rise in big Asian markets like China even as it dries up elsewhere. (Photo by Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

Workers transport a model of a dinosaur at the exhibition “World of Dinosaurs” at a former lignite surface mining area in Grosspoesna near Leipzig, central Germany, Wednesday, October 29, 2014. A 100-foot long statue of a dinosaur had to be moved Wednesday because German authorities had deemed it a safety risk. Officials feared the sculpture could cause traffic accidents by distracting drivers on a nearby highway. The reptile, one of 50 species on show in the World of Dinosaurs exhibit near Leipzig, was moved to a less conspicuous position further from the road. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

“They’ve been obsessing me for years. I searched and found them in Benares, on the banks of the river Gange (India). They arrive here to get rid of everything and to wait for death. This existence can last for years, sometimes decades, almost a life. Opposite to mine, well organised and filled as a human life can be, to try in vain to push the limits of its end”. – Denis Rouvre. (Photo by Denis Rouvre)

In this August 1, 2014 photo provided by the National Park Service are male caribou antlers in the Oolah Valley, likely the result of a grizzly kill as he migrated south for the winter at the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The nation's northernmost national park says its new management plan will have to consider the effects of a new industrial road to the mining district of Ambler, the first road that would be constructed within its Maryland-sized boundaries. (Photo by Cadence Cook/AP Photo/National Park Service)

Russia-backed separatists stand at the site of the crashed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 plane, near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 16, 2015. The fighters said they have arrived to protect the media and make sure the MH17 crash site is clear of ammunition and mines. A year since a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was blown out of the sky over war-ravaged eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people, there has been little official word of progress in determining what brought down Flight MH17. (Photo by Antoine E. R. Delaunay/AP Photo)