Environmental science and conservation news

These big, blubbery beasts are sensitive souls that dislike being disturbed by people. Unfortunately for them, warming Arctic temperatures are bringing more shipping and tourism to their home waters.

Declining fertility and rising mortality, exacerbated by fishing industry, prompts experts to warn whales could be extinct by 2040

‘Catastrophic breeding event’ leads to demands for a marine protected area to be set up in East Antarctica

Three of the 15 bumble bee species found in Vermont are thought to be extinct and at least one other species is in decline.

Across the Far North, populations of caribou — an indispensable source of food and clothing for indigenous people — are in steep decline. Scientists point to rising temperatures and a resource-development boom as the prime culprits.

Five years after they were forced to come up with strategies to protect habitat for the boreal caribou, not a single province has met that deadline, according to a federal government progress report released today.

The size of a large caribou herd in Alaska's Arctic region has dropped by more 50 percent over the last three years, and researchers who have tentatively ruled out hunting and predation as significant factors for the decline are trying to determine why.

Restrictions on bag limits and season length will start July 1 for both the Western Arctic and Teshekpuk herds, whose numbers are dropping. Restrictions will affect both resident and nonresident hunters.

A hunter from Fort Resolution, N.W.T., is angered by what he claims is the harassment of caribou hunters by officers from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

As global temperatures rise, the lives of countless plants and animals are changing in response. That includes king penguins, which a new study predicts will see profound, climate-driven changes in their numbers and the location of their breeding grounds over the next century.

A study in Biological Conservation led by a WSU scientist documents the steep decline of monarch butterflies in the West. They could be functionally extinct within a few decades.