Biodiversity

"As scientists rush to save ailing corals elsewhere, in Venezuela locals are trying to kill off this stinky variety."

"Gardeners are inadvertently killing scores of earthworms with soil conditioners marketed as “organic”, experts fear, as they call for tighter regulation on products that poison the invertebrates."

"The bird flu virus sweeping across dairy farms in multiple states has acquired dozens of new mutations, including some that may make it more adept at spreading between species and less susceptible to antiviral drugs, according to a new study."

"More than 1,000 sea lions have gathered at San Francisco’s Pier 39 this spring, the largest herd in at least 15 years. Mounds of floppy, delightfully ungraceful marine mammals have plopped themselves on to rafts along the city’s pier, displaying themselves to the thousands of tourists who pass by the area each day."

"Environmentalists warn that a California Democrat’s bill “drives a bulldozer” through the state’s new law that protects imperiled Joshua trees from commercial development. But the lawmaker says his impoverished desert region desperately needs the economic boost."

"An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, scientists reported Thursday."

"There was something wrong with the chimpanzees. For weeks, a community of 205 animals in Uganda’s Kibale national park had been coughing, sneezing and looking generally miserable. But no one could say for sure what ailed them, even as the animals began to die."

"Over the past several years, the temperature of the Earth’s oceans have been spiking high enough to trigger numerous die-offs of marine species, killing millions of corals, fish, mammals, birds and plants. Those mass die-offs also have sent a wave of emotional trauma washing over some researchers watching their life’s work vanish before their eyes."

"The U.S. House voted Tuesday to end federal protection for gray wolves, approving a bill that would remove them from the endangered species list across the lower 48 states."