Biodiversity

"A northern white rhinoceros, one of just four left on Earth, died on Sunday at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park after suffering from a bacterial infection and age-related health issues, zoo officials said."

"After decades of review and endless controversy, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the nation's first genetically altered animal -- a salmon genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as its natural counterpart."

A new discovery in genetic engineering seems to have profound potential for good or bad consequences. Changes can be made to an organism which will propagate through an entire species."

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday signed off on a new genetically modified type of corn developed by Monsanto Co after a review concluded it posed no significant threat to agricultural crops, other plants or the environment."

"Drought, more frequent wildfires and rising temperatures due to climate change are upsetting the delicate balance between life and death conditions for Joshua Tree National Park’s peculiar namesake plant."

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday unveiled measures to help the threatened bull trout, a native fish whose cold-water streams in Western states could be warming due to climate change, but conservationists said the plan was too timid."

"Syria's civil war has prompted the first withdrawal of seeds from a 'doomsday' vault built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global food supplies, officials said on Monday."

"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- On a muddy hill above a World War II ordnance plant that made material for atomic bombs, a fracking crew will drill thousands of feet underground in a search for life itself. The drilling is a hunt for microscopic organisms, first introduced hundreds of millions of years ago, which have evolved to live in the shale 7,000 feet below the ground, at pressures 600 times that of the surface, and temperatures around 160 degrees F."