Biodiversity

"Eradicating rats, goats and other invasive animals from islands is one of the most effective tools for protecting wildlife, resulting in dramatic transformations to degraded archipelagos and atolls, according to a new study."

"Virus, which causes symptoms including fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite and muscle aches, is believed to have spread from animals to humans".

"Some of the country’s most powerful scientific advisers want regulators to take a closer look at the risks sunscreen products pose for aquatic environments."

"What is it that’s so compelling about the wild horses of Sable Island? Maybe it’s that they turn up where horses have no right to be—grazing on a sand dune, or standing on a broad beach beside the speckled form of a gray seal...."

"Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would funnel millions of dollars into saving overlooked species."

"The amount of coral in some areas of the Great Barrier Reef is at its highest in 36 years, according to a new report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science."

"On a recent, scorching afternoon in Albuquerque, off-road vehicles cruised up and down a stretch of dry riverbed where normally the Rio Grande flows. The drivers weren’t thrill-seekers, but biologists hoping to save as many endangered fish as they could before the sun turned shrinking pools of water into dust."

"Hunted for centuries for their pelts, sea otters had dwindled to near-extinction by the 1910s, leaving a population of about 1,000 worldwide and only about 50 in California, in small pockets on the Central Coast and Southern California’s Channel Islands."

"A spate of recent criminal indictments highlights how U.S. companies, taking advantage of a patchwork of federal and state laws, are supplying a market for fins that activists say is as reprehensible as the now-illegal trade in elephant ivory once was."

"Scientists are hoping to reduce negative and nationalistic associations with the bee-slaying insect that is turning up in the Pacific Northwest."