"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 187,000 square miles of on-shore barrier islands, denning areas and offshore sea-ice as critical habitat for the threatened polar bear under the Endangered Species Act."

"The United Nations' cultural arm UNESCO has appealed to Congolese President Joseph Kabila to guarantee there will be no oil exploration in the forest home of rare gorillas where two UK-listed firms hold drilling rights."

"With the tiger on the verge of extinction, officials from 13 nations agreed Tuesday on a program to double the population of the big cat by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger under the Chinese zodiac."

"A campaign to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022 was on the agenda today at the highest level political meeting to ever discuss a single species."

Roundup: What's up with whale poop? Humpback sets migration record. Whale jam off Norther California. Deaths blamed on krill, ship traffic.

"A roundup of wild horses began Monday in northwestern Colorado over the objections of animal advocacy groups."

"Across the northern Rocky Mountains, bighorn sheep are dying by the hundreds from pneumonia and alarmed wildlife officials are hunting and killing the majestic animals to halt the spread of the disease."

"Japanese police have launched a probe after nets on holding pens for dolphins in the coastal town of Taiji were cut during an annual hunt, possibly by foreign activists, a press report said Wednesday."

"New efforts to measure what warming temperatures are doing to forests, streams and animals at a regional level are at the core of a strategic plan by the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to the effects of climate change."

"Across the Far North, populations of caribou — an indispensable source of food and clothing for indigenous people — are in steep decline. Scientists point to rising temperatures and a resource-development boom as the prime culprits."

"A number of the playful marine mammals are being poisoned by an ancient microbe that appears to be on an upsurge in warmer, polluted waters around the world."

"COROLLA, N.C. -- On a stretch of barrier island without paved roads, some of the last wild horses in the eastern United States are seeing their world get smaller each year."

"Asia's tiger population could be close to extinction with fewer than 3,500 tigers remaining in the wild and most clustered in fragmented areas making up less than 7 percent of their former range in Asia, a study says. The study in the latest issue of the online journal PLoS Biology says saving tigers living in 42 sites across Asia from poachers, illegal loggers and the wildlife trade is crucial to prevent the species becoming extinct in the wild."

"Concern for the survival of albatrosses, penguins, and other marine birds has drawn scientists from 40 countries to first World Seabird Conference in Victoria. The five-day event opened Tuesday, sponsored by 26 professional seabird groups and societies from around the world."

After wolves killed dogs in Wisconsin, the state DNR is calling for transfer of jurisdiction over the federally protected endangered species to the state.