"Fungi create soil, sequester vast amounts of carbon, and contribute $55 trillion to the global economy, but knowledge about them is scarce. Now, mycologists are pushing to get the international scientific community to recognize fungi on the same level as plants and animals."

"It’s the best of times in recent memory for Chesapeake Bay oysters. It’s just the opposite, though, for the Maryland and Virginia watermen who make a living harvesting them."

"The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found."

"The Pentagon is behind the first-ever request to convene the “God Squad” to exempt all oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act due to national security reasons, the Justice Department said in a Wednesday court filing."

"New research shows the carbon absorbed by the Everglades is equal to 10 percent of the emissions coming from Florida roadways, but the watershed’s methane emissions complicate the picture."

"Folklore dating to ancient Egypt has held that cats have nine lives and in modern times that mystique certainly seems true for the Florida panther. Sometimes it feels like everything in the world is trying to snuff out the panthers — everything human, that is. The panthers, a mountain lion subspecies, nearly went extinct in the 1990s, when the population dwindled to 20. That would have been embarrassing for Florida, which — thanks to a 1981 vote by schoolchildren — had designated the panther as the official state animal."

"Trillions of insects embark, largely unnoticed, on epic journeys every year across mountain ranges, deserts and seas, and it is only now, as their numbers suffer huge declines, that scientists are tracking their movements"

"The Interior Department was hit with a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the agency of illegally convening the Endangered Species Committee to waive protections for animals in the Gulf of Mexico in order to allow for more offshore drilling there."