Biodiversity

"A major new survey of the world's coral reefs finds that they are in trouble. Big trouble"

"The Supreme Court declined [Tuesday] to take up whether federal regulators and courts take account sufficiently of the economic impacts of "critical habitat" designations under the Endangered Species Act."

"Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding."

"Over the past 100 years, some two-thirds of the large predator fish in the ocean have been caught and consumed by humans, and in the decades ahead, the rest are likely to perish, too."

"As an algae with a gross nickname invades pristine trout streams across the U.S., Maryland is about to become the first state to enforce a ban on a type of footgear the organism uses to hitchhike from stream to stream: felt-soled fishing boots."

"Bottom-feeding fish in the Hudson River have developed a gene that renders them immune to the toxic effects of PCBs, researchers say."

"Japan abandoned the rest of its whale hunting season in Antarctic waters Friday citing repeated harassment by Sea Shepherd activists, after netting only a fifth of its targeted catch of 850 whales."

"Japan has suspended its annual whale hunt in the Antarctic for now after a hardline anti-whaling group gave chase to its mother ship and it may call the fleet back home, a government official said."

"Monarch butterfly colonies in Mexico more than doubled in size this winter after bad storms devastated their numbers a year ago, conservationists said on Monday although the migrating insect remains under threat."