Biodiversity

"A plan to release a horde of 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida and Texas is a step closer to fruition after a state regulator approved the idea, over the objections of many environmentalists."

"Rescued from Australia's fires, a small fleet of wild platypuses is launched back into their wetland home and into an uncertain future."

"The status of some coastal grey whales differs in Canada and the US, leading to a brewing conflict."

"B.C. is considering a proposal for a new coal mine, planned in the heart of critical habitat for the endangered Quintette caribou herd in the province’s Peace region."

"Titanic swarms of desert locusts resembling dark storm clouds are descending ravenously on the Horn of Africa. They're roving through croplands and flattening farms in a devastating salvo experts are calling an unprecedented threat to food security. On the ground, subsistence planters can do nothing but watch — staring up with horror and at their fields in dismay."

"The International Space Station, orbiting some 240 miles above the planet, is about to join the effort to monitor the world’s wildlife — and to revolutionize the science of animal tracking."

"A sudden drop in the number of red knots visiting the beaches of Delaware Bay during migration this spring has renewed concern among scientists about the survival of the threatened shore bird’s Atlantic Coast population." "Every May, these birds stop in the Delaware Bay on their way to Arctic Canada. But a shortage of food this season puts their flight at risk."

"Poaching of the big cats is on the rise, and a new study links their slaughter to corruption as well as investment from Chinese companies."

"Luminous yellow and blue fish dart through the fragments of coral hanging from rows of pipes anchored to the seabed in Guanahacabibes, in western Cuba, while scientists in diving gear annotate their observations on waterproof clipboards."

"It has long been our planet’s greatest and oldest murder mystery. Roughly 445 million years ago, around 85 percent of all marine species disappeared in a geologic flash known as the Late Ordovician mass extinction. But scientists have long debated this whodunit, in contrast to clearer explanations for Earth’s other mass extinctions."