"Reindeer are shrinking on an Arctic island near the North Pole in a side-effect of climate change that has curbed winter food for animals often depicted as pulling Father Christmas' sleigh, scientists said on Monday."

"The giraffe, the tallest land animal, is now at risk of extinction, biologists say."

"The elusive weasel-like mammal poked its head out of the wooden crate, glanced around and quickly darted into the thick forest of Mount Rainier National Park – returning to a landscape where it had been missing for seven decades."

"U.S. wildlife managers at Yellowstone National Park are reporting an unusually high number of grizzly bear deaths, 55, linked to humans this year in a trend believed tied to a growing number of the bruins harming livestock or challenging hunters over freshly killed game."

"Eighteen states are challenging the Obama administration's recent changes to critical habitat rules, asserting they allow the federal government to designate 'entire states' as habitat for imperiled species."

"Every year for over a thousand years, hundreds of pilot whales have been rounded up, cornered and slaughtered by hand on the beaches of the Faroe Islands."

"The GOP electoral sweep has Alaska Republicans feeling upbeat on the prospects for a priority that has eluded them for decades — opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration and drilling."