Wildlife

"A court has vacated federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a Great Plains bird that was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act last year."

"Florida would allow hunters to kill up to a total of 320 bears in October during the state’s first bear hunt season in 20 years, according to a recommendation from the state's wildlife agency presented at a public hearing on Wednesday."

"Against the backdrop of rocky bluffs, a pod of orcas repeatedly jumped out of the emerald waters of the Puget Sound one recent sunny afternoon before splashing their massive black-and-white bodies back into the water."

"The Lacey Act, a 115-year-old law that seeks to protect threatened species, is still going strong."

"MASAI MARA NATIONAL RESERVE, Kenya — Death feeds life on the Mara. Each summer, 500,000 wildebeests die along the treacherous migration from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. And with death come the scavengers, none more important than the vulture."

Illegal logging on a key sanctuary in Mexico threatens monarch butterflies already decimated by herbicides sprayed on milkweed in the U.S.

"Widely-used pesticides made by Bayer CropScience and Syngenta pose a risk to bees, the European Union's food safety watchdog said on Wednesday, reinforcing previous research that led to EU restrictions."

"California legislators aiming to pass more stringent regulations on the sale and dissemination of ivory and rhinoceros horns received a boost last Friday when a San Francisco man pleaded guilty to selling an undercover federal agent two black rhinoceros horns for $55,000. The art dealer Lumsden Quan and Mill Valley man Edward Levine will face sentencing in December."

"Here’s a sobering update on efforts in Mexico, Hong Kong and mainland China to stave off the extinction of the vaquita, a critically endangered porpoise inhabiting Mexican waters at the north end of the Gulf of California that is the world’s smallest, and rarest, cetacean."

"Humans are throwing ecosystems out of whack by not only killing a large number of animals, but by killing adults and top carnivores in particular, a study suggests. One answer is to act more like animal predators."

"If humans hope to fish the oceans more sustainably, they are going to have to start fishing like fish, a new study suggests.

That means harvesting younger, smaller fish to leave more of their elders to continue maturing and reproducing. And it means fishing quotas that are more in line with what nonhuman predators consume.