Wildlife

"About a month after an anti-predator device spit sodium cyanide in the face of an unsuspecting boy and killed his dog, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced it is ending its use of the M-44 mechanisms in Idaho indefinitely."

"A global ban on horn trade remains in place but a proposal to end the domestic ban was initiated from private rhino owners who say they need to harvest and sell horns from live animals to afford spiraling security costs over protecting the rhinos from poachers."

President Trump signed a Congressional override of a Fish & Wildlife Service rule prohibiting Alaska from killing predators to support moose and caribou populations on federal wildlife refuges.

"Japan's whaling fleet returned on Friday from its months-long Antarctic hunt in the name of scientific research with a take of more than 300 minke whales, a hunt that prompted complaints from Australia."

"Manatees were taken off the U.S. Interior Department's list of endangered species on Thursday and reclassified as threatened, a move condemned by conservationists who say it weakens protections for the giant marine mammal, also known as a sea cow."

"Prairie dogs in Utah won a turf battle against property developers on Wednesday when a U.S. appeals court reinstated restrictions on development in areas inhabited by the threatened animals."

"A notorious fungus that’s killing bats by the millions is now in Texas, the state with the nation’s largest diversity of bats and, in a cave outside San Antonio, one of the world’s largest colonies of a single species."

"On a day of cozy coastal grays — soft cloud cover, a silver foil-wrap sea — a dozen gray fur balls brought visitors the most comfort. Bobbing 20 feet from a harbor walkway, the sea otters were part of a record number in California. They once were believed to be as extinct as the dodo bird or the Tyrannosaurus rex."

"The Senate voted Tuesday to abolish a rule restricting specific hunting practices on national wildlife refuges in Alaska — including trapping, baiting and aerial shooting — on the grounds that state officials should be able to set the terms for wildlife conservation on public land within their own borders.