Biodiversity

"Exploding Asian demand for shark fin soup has slashed worldwide shark populations, and global regulation is the best way to save eight species now under pressure, ocean conservationists reported on Monday."

Three years after "colony collapse disorder," a still-mysterious syndrome that kills whole beehives, commercial beekeepers are struggling to provide pollination for the nation's crops.

"Federal prosecutors Wednesday filed criminal charges against a Santa Monica sushi restaurant and one of its chefs, alleging they had sold meat from an endangered whale."

"The federal government on Wednesday recommended an endangered-species listing for the loggerhead turtles in U.S. waters, a decision that could lead to tighter restrictions on fishing and other maritime trades."

"Proposals to block Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes have largely focused on the costs and inconvenience of closing off Chicago-area waterways into Lake Michigan. But now business and environmental groups are exploring a possible upside: a broadly based infrastructure investment that would benefit much of northern Illinois."

"The Interior Department said Friday that the greater sage grouse, a dweller of the high plains of the American West, was facing extinction but would not be designated an endangered species for now."

"Environmentalists filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on Monday accusing the service of illegally allowing farmers to grow genetically modified crops in a national wildlife refuge."

"The mysterious pelican malady that left hundreds of the birds sick and stranded along the Oregon and California coasts this winter was probably caused by a combination of bad weather and fish shortages related to El Nino, state Fish and Game officials said Monday."

"During his first year in office, President Barack Obama won praise from environmental groups for a wide range of decisions, ... But now there's grumbling on his green flank. A growing number of environmentalists are clashing with the administration over its management of America's struggling wildlife populations and what they call its reluctance to use the nation's most powerful environmental law, the Endangered Species Act, to stand up to industry."