Wildlife

"When Groundhog Day arrives Saturday, don't waste much time expecting to see your local groundhog. It's too early. Normal emergence in the Washington area is late February or early March — but a steadily warming world might change that."

"Last fall, remote cameras in a rugged expanse of desert grasslands in Southern Arizona captured arresting images of a jaguar slinking through the underbrush, its yellow eyes fixed on some distant sight. The photos add to the dozen or so documented sightings of the endangered cat on American soil in the last century."

"A new method for monitoring the decline in bee populations may prove a useful tool in much-needed conservation efforts. It requires only a few hundred pan traps: bright shallow bowls partly filled with soapy water or propylene glycol."

"The world's most widely used insecticide has for the first time been officially labelled an 'unacceptable' danger to bees feeding on flowering crops. Environmental campaigners say the conclusion, by Europe's leading food safety authority, sounds the 'death knell' for the insect nerve agent."

"A bat from Mammoth Cave National Park has been confirmed to have developed the deadly white-nose syndrome, authorities announced today."

"The dozen trapped orcas swam free after changing weather conditions cracked the sea ice in northern Canada."

"Inuit people call for Canadian government to send icebreaker to free pod of mammals that are struggling to surface for air."

"A mysterious new virus on the West Coast is believed to be causing fatal brain cancer in raccoons -- an alarming sign given the animals' frequent interactions with humans and the fact that tumors of any type were previously rarely found in the animals."

"Two Americans face federal arraignment next week in Maine on charges that they were part of a smuggling ring that brought narwhal tusks into the United States from Canada for illegal sale."

"The pheasant, once king of Iowa’s nearly half-a-billion-dollar hunting industry, is vanishing from the state. Surveys show that the population in 2012 was the second lowest on record, 81 percent below the average over the past four decades."