Biodiversity

"With button-brown eyes, striped cheeks and a bushy orange-black tail, the Inyo chipmunk has darted among the gnarled pines of the Sierra Nevada for centuries. But it has apparently vanished."

"Japanese police have launched a probe after nets on holding pens for dolphins in the coastal town of Taiji were cut during an annual hunt, possibly by foreign activists, a press report said Wednesday."

"One in five of the world's 380,000 plant species is threatened with extinction and human activity is doing most of the damage, according to a global study published on Wednesday."

"New efforts to measure what warming temperatures are doing to forests, streams and animals at a regional level are at the core of a strategic plan by the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to the effects of climate change."

Asian stink bugs have invaded the East Coast, are spreading, and are getting into people's yards and houses. When disturbed, they emit an unpleasant smell.

Are fireflies vanishing from the U.S. and Canada because of light pollution? A new study by the Museum of Science Boston aims to use the backyard observations of hundreds of citizens to find out.

"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."

"We've always played with our food — even before we knew about genes or how to change them. ... Now comes an Atlantic salmon that is genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as a regular salmon. If U.S. regulators approve it, the fish would be the first such scientifically altered animal to reach the dinner plate. Scientists have already determined that it's safe to eat. They are weighing other factors, including environmental risks, after two days of intense hearings."

"A number of the playful marine mammals are being poisoned by an ancient microbe that appears to be on an upsurge in warmer, polluted waters around the world."

"The world's most deadly form of human malaria, a parasite known as Plasmodium falciparum, is of gorilla origin, and not chimpanzee, bonobo or ancient human origin as scientists previously thought."