http://www.enn.com/ ENN RSS News http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36437 The U.S. decision to list polar bears as a threatened species has indigenous Alaskans like Aalak Nayakik worried that hunting the animals they rely on for food and warmth could be banned. Standing on the edge of the receding sea ice-shelf offshore from Barrow, some 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Nayakik, a member of the Inupiat peoples who have inhabited northern Alaska for centuries, says polar bears are a staple food for his family. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36417 The world's species are declining at a rate "unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs", a census of the animal kingdom has revealed. The Living Planet Index out today shows the devastating impact of humanity as biodiversity has plummeted by almost a third in the 35 years to 2005. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36390 World biodiversity has declined by almost one third in the past 35 years due mainly to habitat loss and the wildlife trade, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Friday It warned that climate change would add increasingly to the wildlife woes over the next three decades. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36415 Nearly 200 governments will say next week they are unlikely to meet a target of slowing the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010, a failure which could threaten future food supplies. Up to 5,000 delegates and some heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will try to agree at the Convention of Biological Diversity in the German city of Bonn on ways to save plant and animal species. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36345 You might think that stocking the Great Lakes with things like trout and salmon would be good for the herring gull. The birds often eat from the water, so it would be natural to assume that more fish would mean better dining. But a new report published in the April journal of Ecology by the Ecological Society of America says that the addition of species such as exotic salmon and trout to the area has not been good for the birds, demonstrating that fishery management actions can sometimes have very unexpected outcomes. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36296 Polar bears were listed on Wednesday as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because their sea ice habitat is melting away. But the new protection was not accompanied by any proposals to address either climate change, which environmentalists say causes the deterioration of the bears' habitat, or drilling in the Arctic for the fossil fuels that spur the climate-warming greenhouse effect. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36275 Elephants and other wildlife damage millions of dollars' worth of poor farmers' crops each year, which could be avoided with proper fencing and better land use, a leading environmental group said on Wednesday. The Swiss-based WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, said wild elephants cost Namibian communal farmers $1 million a year, and up to a quarter of the household incomes of poor farming families in Nepal. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36270 It's a classic stand-off between one of the world's best loved animals and one of its most unpopular leaders, between the planet's largest bear and its most powerful man. And it comes to a head this week. On Thursday, by order of a federal judge, George W Bush must stop stalling on whether to designate the polar bear as a species endangered by global warming. The designation could have huge consequences for his climate-change policies; his administration would, by law, have to avoid doing anything that would "jeopardise the continued existence" of the mammal whose habitat is melting away. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36266 Pointed wings together with carrying less weight per wing area and avoidance of high winds and atmospheric turbulence save a bird loads of energy during migration. This has been shown for the first time in free-flying wild birds by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Montana, and the German Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. They state in PLoS ONE&rsquo;s May 14th edition that climate change might have a critical impact on small migrants&rsquo; energy budgets if it causes higher winds and atmospheric instability as predicted. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36265 A Swiss marine biologist and an Australian quantum physicist have found that a species of shrimp from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, can see a world invisible to all other animals. Dr Sonja Kleinlogel and Professor Andrew White have shown that mantis shrimp not only have the ability to see colours from the ultraviolet through to the infrared, but have optimal polarisation vision &mdash; a first for any animal and a capability that humanity has only achieved in the last decade using fast computer technology. The findings are published in the journal PLoS ONE. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36184 BEIJING (Reuters) - Some 60 giant pandas at a Chengdu research centre near the worst hit part of the massive China earthquake are safe, Xinhua reported on Tuesday. But there was no word yet on the fate of pandas at another research centre at Wolong, near the epicentre of Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36091 <p> Some 300 tons of locusts have been killed by people in the northwestern province of Badghis alone in recent weeks, Abdul Ghafar Ahmadi, a senior official from the agriculture ministry, said on Saturday, citing provincial officials.</p> http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36055 New research shows increased temperatures and carbon dioxide levels are a threat to the Australian national icon, the koala. Professor Ian Hume, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and his students from the University of Sydney have been researching the effects of CO2 increases and temperature rises on eucalypts. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36054 Investigations continue into the cause of a mysterious illness that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of bats since March 2008. At more than 25 caves and mines in the northeastern U.S, bats exhibiting a condition now referred to as &ldquo;white-nosed syndrome&rdquo;� have been dying. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued a Wildlife Health Bulletin, advising wildlife and conservation officials throughout the U.S. to be on the lookout for the condition known as &ldquo;white-nose syndrome&rdquo;� and to report suspected cases of the disease. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35972 Australia's unique duck-billed platypus -- an egg-laying, furry animal with web feet that spends most of its time underwater -- is in fact part bird, part reptile and part mammal according to its gene map. A team of international scientists released the platypus genome on Thursday, saying its complex sequence would aid the study of human evolution -- particularly the development of the immune, nervous and reproductive systems. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35937 LONDON: Scientists have suggested that due to the adverse effects of Arctic ice melting, the hybrid of a polar bear and grizzly bear - dubbed the 'grolar bear', might rise in numbers. According to a report in The Sun , the effects of climate change means that the hybrid bears could become more common as their habitats increasingly overlap due to global warming. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35931 Walking through the last rainforests on the volcanic island of Mauritius, located some 800 km east of Madagascar, one is surrounded by ghosts. Since human colonisation in the 17th century, the island has lost most of its unique animals. The litany includes the famous flightless dodo, giant tortoises, parrots, pigeons, fruitbats, and giant lizards. It is comparatively easy to notice the los­­s of a species, but much more difficult to realise how many interactions have been lost as a result. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35928 uthorities in India's remote northeast said they were increasing security in the world's biggest reserve for the endangered great one-horned rhinoceros to save them from poachers. Poachers have killed at least 10 rhinos in two national parks in Assam state since January, eight of them at the Kaziranga National Park. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35879 Fourteen tiger cubs have been spotted in a leading Indian sanctuary, a rare piece of good news in the country's fight to protect its dwindling population of big cats from poachers and habitat destruction. The cubs have been sighted regularly over the past few weeks in Ranthambore National Park in western Rajasthan, R.N. Mehrotra, the state's chief wildlife warden, told Reuters on Tuesday. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35876 The quality of pollen a plant produces is closely tied to its sexual habits, ecologists have discovered. As well as helping explain the evolution of such intimate relationships between plants and pollinators, the study -- one of the first of its kind and published online in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology -- also helps explain the recent dramatic decline in certain bumblebee species found in the shrinking areas of species-rich chalk grasslands and hay meadows across Northern Europe. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35872 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Polar bears may have it relatively easy. It's the tropical creatures that could really struggle if the climate warms even a few degrees in places that are already hot, scientists reported on Monday. That doesn't mean polar bears and other wildlife in the polar regions won't feel the impact of climate change. They probably will, because that is where the warming is expected to be most extreme, as much as 18 degrees F (10 degrees C) by the end of this century. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35782 In the Southwest U.S., biologists are talking about returning beavers to rivers they once inhabited in order to fight droughts &mdash; which are expected to get worse as the globe warms. Beaver dams create great sponges that store lots of water. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35715 An adult lesser white-fronted goose named Mánnu was found dead at Lake Kerkini, south of the Greek-Bulgarian border, in an area where hunting is prohibited. An autopsy confirmed a poacher killed the bird with a shotgun. The death represents some 5 per cent of the Fennoscandian (Northern Europe) breeding males, according to Scandinavian partners in a project to protect the birds which breed in northernmost Norway. &ldquo;This is dramatic, because loss of adult reproductive birds has significant negative impact on the recruitment of the small population&rdquo;�, said Dr. Ingar Jostein Oien from BirdLife Norway. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35713 The U.S. government on Thursday closed almost all of the ocean off the West Coast to salmon fishing, clearing the way for governors of states hard hit by years of declining catches to seek federal relief aid for losses estimated at $290 million. West Coast salmon populations have declined sharply in the last few years, with experts citing a variety of reasons including climate change and hungry sea lions. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/35682 The death of about 500 ducks that landed in a pond of oily, toxic sludge operated by Canada's biggest oil sands producer was tragic, the chief executive of Imperial Oil Ltd said on Thursday. Imperial has a 25 percent stake in oil sand producer Syncrude Canada Ltd, owner of the tailings pond in northern Alberta, where the ducks died earlier this week because a warning system meant to keep them off wasn't operating.