Wildlife

Illegal logging on a key sanctuary in Mexico threatens monarch butterflies already decimated by herbicides sprayed on milkweed in the U.S.

"Widely-used pesticides made by Bayer CropScience and Syngenta pose a risk to bees, the European Union's food safety watchdog said on Wednesday, reinforcing previous research that led to EU restrictions."

"California legislators aiming to pass more stringent regulations on the sale and dissemination of ivory and rhinoceros horns received a boost last Friday when a San Francisco man pleaded guilty to selling an undercover federal agent two black rhinoceros horns for $55,000. The art dealer Lumsden Quan and Mill Valley man Edward Levine will face sentencing in December."

"Here’s a sobering update on efforts in Mexico, Hong Kong and mainland China to stave off the extinction of the vaquita, a critically endangered porpoise inhabiting Mexican waters at the north end of the Gulf of California that is the world’s smallest, and rarest, cetacean."

"Humans are throwing ecosystems out of whack by not only killing a large number of animals, but by killing adults and top carnivores in particular, a study suggests. One answer is to act more like animal predators."

"If humans hope to fish the oceans more sustainably, they are going to have to start fishing like fish, a new study suggests.

That means harvesting younger, smaller fish to leave more of their elders to continue maturing and reproducing. And it means fishing quotas that are more in line with what nonhuman predators consume.

"The natural world is abuzz with the sound of animals communicating — crickets, birds, even grunting fish. But scientists learning to decode these sounds say the secret signals of African elephants — their deepest rumblings — are among the most intriguing calls any animal makes."

"FRONT ROYAL, Va. — The five red panda cubs in large boxlike cribs at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute here are bottle-fed, sleepy and wobbly on their legs. They have bandit masks and thick, rich fur, and they make soft squealing noises and something called a huff-quack, which sounds like … a huff-quack."

"A toxic algae bloom that began off the West Coast this spring now stretches from California to Alaska. It’s poisoning marine life from shellfish to sardines to sea lions, and scientists say it’s one of the worst they’ve seen."

"YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Even for a park with a history of unhappy encounters between people and wildlife, 2015 is shaping up as an eventful year for Yellowstone and its bison. Since mid-May, five visitors have been hurt — gored, trampled or tossed into the air — in run-ins with the park’s most famous residents."

"A mother grizzly bear, linked by DNA testing to the fatal mauling of a hiker whose body was found partially eaten in Yellowstone National Park, was euthanized on Thursday, park officials said."