"In a sharp rebuke of state plans for a massive water tunnel system in Northern California, federal environmental officials say that the project would violate pollution standards and could worsen conditions for imperiled fish species."

"FLATEY ISLAND, Iceland – When the days grew long, seabirds flocked to this hamlet on the edge of the Arctic to rear their chicks under the midnight sun. “Kria,” shrieked the terns, calling summer up from the slumbering ground. Black cliffs were transformed into snowbanks of white kittiwakes. Puffins whirred between land and sea. Murres plied the shoreline, fulmars patrolled the skies. Everywhere sounded their vibrant chorus."

The wolf known as OR7 prompted some reflective writing -- and a flood of reader response -- in the Pacific states. The coverage reminds us that there is room for the personal and evocative as well as the objective and informative in environmental journalism. And it restored Sacramento Bee writer Matt Weiser's faith in the newspaper.

"PITT MEADOWS, British Columbia – On an early spring morning the Pitt River flows so calmly that the peaks of the Coast Range seem to pause to admire themselves in its glassy waters. A motorboat lifts a wake, and the docks of the marina moan. Still tucked in for the winter, the pleasure boats stir then rock themselves back to sleep."

"Environmentalists and a South Florida community want to limit aerial spraying for mosquitoes — saying it's ineffective and harmful to wildlife. Two butterfly species were added to the endangered list."

"The ice of Antarctica doesn’t faze birds. Nor does the heat of the tropics. They thrive in the desert, in swamps, on the open ocean, on sheer rock faces, on treeless tundra, atop airless mountaintops and burrowed into barren soil."

"Nearly four decades after grizzly bears were declared threatened in the Lower 48 states, long-stalled efforts to bring the species back to Washington's North Cascades are rolling again."

"Michigan State University environmental toxicology professor Matt Zwiernik presented part two of the results from the 2013 dead bird collection in St. Louis to the Pine River Superfund Taskforce Wednesday. Zwiernik’s team monitored 60 active nests not only in the nine-block residential area surrounding the former Velsicol plant site but also 15 kilometers downstream. As was the case with the first batch of results, American robins eggs collected contained DDx levels far above those found to induce death in laboratory settings."

"The National Park Service has banned drones from flying over the Appalachian Trail."

"For the better part of a century, from 1840 to around 1940, the U.S. was the world's biggest buyer of ivory. Hunters killed hundreds of thousands of elephants, and uncounted numbers of Africans were enslaved to carry the tusks to ships bound for America. Most of that ivory went to a tiny town in Connecticut — a town that's now grappling with this dark part of its past."