"Louisiana will receive $340 million from BP in early Natural Resource Damage Assessment money for four projects to restore barrier islands and to finance two coastal science centers, Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Tuesday in a news conference in Jean Lafitte. The money comes from $1 billion that BP set aside in 2011 to build early projects to compensate for damages to natural resources resulting from the three-month flow of oil resulting from the blowout of BP's Macondo well in April 2010."

"After six years of searching, an entomologist has concluded that three varieties of butterflies native to south Florida have become extinct, nearly doubling the number of North American butterflies known to be gone."

""These are unique butterflies to Florida. This is our biological treasure. Each unique species that we lose, we won't ever get that back again," Marc Minno, who conducted the survey for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, told Reuters on Monday.

"MOBILE, Alabama -- Three people were hurt in a fuel barge explosion on the east side of Mobile River on Wednesday night, Mobile Fire-Rescue reported.

"CLEARWATER -- Despite warnings from scientists, rising sea levels still seem little more than a distant, imperceptible threat, a phenomenon whose change is measured in centimeters over decades."

"Underfunded agency faces the challenge of finding answers to key questions: When did Exxon's pipeline rupture and when did the company learn of the spill?"

"Before Disney World, Silver Springs in Central Florida was for decades one of the state's most popular tourist destinations."

"Giant snail invasion puts more than 500 plant species and even stucco and plaster at risk. More than 1,000 giant African land snails caught each week in Miami and invasion expected to spread in upcoming rainy season."

"They’re back. Seventeen years after a major swarm of bug-eyed cicadas staged one of nature’s weirdest — and loudest — mating rituals, their offspring are preparing to rise in Washington’s suburbs and the Mid-Atlantic."

"Two Arkansas women sue ExxonMobil after its Pegasus pipeline ruptured, spewing oil onto lawns and roads. The $5 million class-action suit charges the pipeline spill has permanently diminished their property value."

"Coal production in Kentucky last year reached its lowest level since 1965, while shedding more than 4,000 jobs, nearly all of them in Appalachian counties, according to a new state report."

"A 'rank' odor that has spread across parts of greater New Orleans may be linked to a leak from the 192,500-barrel-per-day Chalmette refinery, the U.S. Coast Guard investigating the smell said on Thursday."

"Even as a Red Tide algae bloom is wiping out a record number of manatees in southwest Florida, a mysterious ailment is killing dozens more manatees on the state's east coast. So far, state biologists have been unable to pinpoint the cause."

"COLUMBIA, SC -- As SCE&G and other utilities work to complete atomic power plants, the law that made construction possible gives power companies less incentive to use solar, wind and other forms of alternative energy."

Rescuers are struggling to save manatees in Florida, there a Red Tide algal bloom has killed 181 of the mammals so far this year.

After CDC researchers confirmed that dengue fever had returned to the U.S., a Key West health officer said no new cases had been reported since October 2010.