Animals & Pets News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Suspected swine flu is sweeping a traditional Eskimo whaling village on a remote Alaska island — prompting an urgent medical mission to deliver help.

OKLAHOMA CITY - An animal rights group on Friday asked a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency to look into an owner's treatment of a circus elephant that escaped and was hit by a sport utility vehicle on a northwestern Oklahoma highway.

OSLO - Norway has joined Canada in asking the World Trade Organization to settle its seal hunt dispute with the European Union.

GENEVA (AFP) - More than 1,000 freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction, reflecting the strain on global water resources, an updated global "Red List" of endangered species showed Tuesday.

GENEVA - A rare Panamanian tree frog, a rodent from Madagascar and two lizards found only in the Philippines are among over 17,000 species threatened with extinction, a leading environmental group said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Agriculture Department should tighten regulations for the transport and slaughter of veal calves to ensure they are not treated cruelly, the Humane Society of the United States said on Monday.

LOS ANGELES - The population of endangered green sea turtles at SeaWorld in San Diego grew by 82 in October when the eggs hatched on Shipwreck Beach without human help.

NAIROBI, Kenya - The world's fastest man adopted the animal kingdom's fastest sprinter Monday, as Usain Bolt welcomed a new baby cheetah named Lightning Bolt into his life.

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - European palm oil buyers who are refusing to purchase expensive eco-friendly palm oil were named and shamed Monday by environmental campaigners WWF International.

SYDNEY (AFP) - A massive oil leak off Australia's northwest coast poses an "immediate risk" to dozens of marine species, with untold numbers possibly dying and sinking to the Timor Sea floor, a report has said.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has revealed he dislikes whale meat, a newspaper reported Saturday, in an unusual confession for the prime minister of a country that defies Western criticism of whaling.

MADRID (AFP) - Scientists who advise fisheries regulators support a ban on trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, a sushi staple, to protect the species from over-fishing, environmental groups WWF and Greenpeace said Thursday.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Tigers could become extinct in the wild in two decades unless the world ramps up conservation efforts to halt the decline in their population, wildlife experts said on Wednesday.

ALBANY, N.Y. - Wildlife biologists studying a mysterious fungus killing off hundreds of thousands of bats around America want to find out if they can repopulate caves decimated by the disease.

KATMANDU, Nepal - The world's tiger population is declining fast despite efforts to save them, and new strategies are urgently needed to keep the species from dying out, international wildlife experts said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Thursday announced plans to designate more than 200,000 square miles in Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears, a key step towards increasing protection for the threatened species.

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - The equivalent of 36 football fields are being stripped from the world's forests each minute, the environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in a statement released here on Thursday.

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The state of Alaska filed suit in federal court asking that the U.S. government’s designation of the polar bear as a threatened species because of climate change be overturned.

GENEVA (AFP) - Proposals to restrict or ban international trade in those three products are due to be studied when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) holds its next triennial meeting in Qatar next year.

HONOLULU - Environmental activists are petitioning the federal government to put 83 coral species on the endangered species list.

KIHEI, Hawaii - Witnesses say a 54-year-old surfer made it to shore on his own after a shark attack off Maui.

TOKYO - Japan said Monday it has caught 59 whales — one short of the maximum allowed by international guidelines — under a research program that critics say is a cover for commercial whaling.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The world has five years to start a "low carbon industrial revolution" before runaway climate change becomes almost inevitable, a new report commissioned by global conservation group WWF said on Monday.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Spotted seals off Alaska's coast do not merit endangered species protection despite losses of Arctic sea ice from global warming, a federal agency announced Thursday.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canadian rivers are at risk from a variety of environmental challenges, including global warming, expanding agriculture, the construction of hydro-electric dams and increased urban consumption of water, a study said Thursday.

LONDON (AFP) - Botanists at Britain's Kew Gardens have collected seeds from 10 percent of the world's wild plants, their first goal in a long-term project to protect all endangered species, they said Thursday.

BEIJING (AFP) - Paleontologists in east China may have discovered the remains of a new species of dinosaur at what is said to be the world's largest group of fossilised dinosaur bones, state media said Wednesday.

SYDNEY (AFP) - There's a 100-year-old shot putter, a 90-year-old sprinter and a swimmer who lost a leg in a shark attack 35 years ago.

Many species of large cats, including the leopard, are particularly fussy about where they live, actively avoiding certain areas, a new study in Tanzania finds.