Biodiversity

"The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals deals a blow to a years-long effort by Drakes Bay Oyster Co. to extend its lease in Point Reyes National Seashore."

"Researchers in the key corn-growing state of Illinois are finding significant damage from rootworms in farm fields planted in a rotation with a genetically modified corn that is supposed to protect the crop from the pests, according to a new report."

"Mark Lynas has done the world a service in providing on-the-ground reporting from the Philippines, digging in on some vital questions related to the destruction of field trials of non-commercial, genetically modified, vitamin-fortified Golden Rice there in early August. ... The same is true for Amy Harmon, who wrote an incisive analysis of the research vandalism that ran in The Times on Sunday. The two pieces powerfully strip away distortions and myths surrounding the latest instance of anti-biotechnology violence and the grain that was the focus of the assault."

"SILVER CITY, N.M. -- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose increased recovery territory for Mexican gray wolves in Arizona and New Mexico and will drop plans to capture wolves entering these two states from Mexico, under two agreements reached [Monday] between the agency and the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- To protect bees and other pollinators, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed new pesticide labels that prohibit use of some neonicotinoid pesticide products where bees are present. Environmentalists want the agency to take these pesticides off the market."

"TRENTON, N.J. -- Recent warmer-than-usual winters that may be attributable to climate change have brought a troublesome and potentially dangerous new effect, according to a Mercer County scientist: expanding swarms of Asian tiger mosquitoes."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- The first new carnivore species to be identified in the American continents in 35 years was introduced to the public today by the Smithsonian Institution scientist who recognized it from skins and skulls tucked away in the collection of the Chicago Field Museum."

"The beepocalypse is on the cover of TIME, but it looks like managed honeybees will still pull through. Wild bees—and wild species in general—won't be so lucky in a human-dominated planet."

"MELBOURNE, Fla. — The first hint that something was amiss here, in the shallow lagoons and brackish streams that buffer inland Florida from the Atlantic’s salt water, came last summer in the Banana River, just south of Kennedy Space Center. Three manatees — the languid, plant-munching, over-upholstered mammals known as sea cows — died suddenly and inexplicably, one after another, in a spot where deaths were rare."

Research biologists are studying the elusive Cascades frog, which lives in alpine meltwater ponds in Washington's Olympic Mountains, to understand how warming climate might affect the ecosystems they depend on.