Wildlife

"CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — Bounding out of a silver Ford pickup into the single-digit wind-flogged flatness that is Iowa in December, Laura Jackson strode to a thicket of desiccated sticks and plucked a paisley-shaped prize."

"It was a pod that, after a gentle squeeze, burst with chocolate brown buttons: seeds of milkweed, the favored — indeed, the only — food of the monarch butterfly caterpillar.

Once wild and common, milkweed has diminished as cropland expansion has drastically cut grasslands and conservation lands. Diminished too is the iconic monarch."

"SENECA, S.D. — Birds boiled out of the slough 30 yards ahead, brown streaks against a bright blue sky."

"Hash marks went down next to each species on [Mike] Newhouse’s clipboard. With a gloved hand, he brushed flakes off the paper. Forget about a white Christmas, this was a white Christmas Bird Count, part of Audubon’s 114th annual census of our feathered neighbors."

"The history of the Chesapeake Bay oyster hasn't always been a pure one. So you could forgive a chef for being skeptical about the big bivalve comeback being staged in D.C. and the surrounding area this winter as oyster season gets underway."

"New Mexico's attorney general sued on Thursday to block a horse slaughter plant scheduled to open next month from becoming the first facility of its kind to operate in the United States in more than five years."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- The public comment period closed today on a proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove federal protections for all gray wolves across the country. Close to one million Americans stated their opposition to the plan – the largest number of comments ever submitted on a federal decision involving endangered species."

"A number of unexplained bald eagle deaths in Utah when hundreds of the government-protected birds have migrated to wintering grounds in the central Rocky Mountains has wildlife officials worried."

"The heat is on for the world’s caribou with a new study warning the creatures could lose as much as 60 per cent of their range within 60 years."

"In recent years, California’s Agassiz’s desert tortoise population has been decimated by shootings, residential and commercial development, vehicle traffic, respiratory disease and predation by ravens, dogs and coyotes. Now, dwindling populations of the reptiles with scruffy carapaces and skin as tough as rhino hide are facing an even greater threat: longer droughts spurred by climate change in their Sonoran Desert kingdom of arroyos and burrows, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study."

The discovery of chronic wasting disease in captive deer in Missouri has put the keeping of deer under fire.