Biodiversity

"Despite a backlog of endangered species issues and a host of current lawsuits, the Fish and Wildlife Service plans to focus firmly on the future."

The bright-golden spray toads, small as a dime, once lived in the spray of a waterfall on the Kihansi River in Tanzania. A dam funded by the World Bank destroyed the species habitat, and they are now extinct in the wild. They now live only in captivity.

"Federal land managers said Monday they'll delay a roundup of most of the nearly 600 wild horses in a range in eastern Nevada, at least until after the herd's spring foaling season."

"Anti-whaling protest group Sea Shepherd said a Japanese whaling vessel 'intentionally rammed' one of its protest boats on Saturday during a standoff in Antarctic waters."

"Blue whales are updating their playlist, according to new research on the huge mammals."

Researchers are hoping to find new medicines underwater in corals and sponges.

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday evening that it would not grant the American pika -- a tiny mammal whose mountainside habitat is being threatened by climate change -- protection under the Endangered Species Act."

"All along the Oregon coast over the last month, hundreds of brown pelicans have turned up dead, starving or begging for food. ...Researchers, at a loss to explain the casualties, are looking at unusual ocean currents and the depletion of fish stocks -- as well as warmer temperatures, toxic runoff and algae blooms -- as possible causes."

"Capping a decade-long battle, private companies in Mexico have begun the first legal plantings of genetically modified corn, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday."