Most plants need to be pollinated by birds, bees, bats and other animals and insects to reproduce, and scientists say a decline in pollinators may spell trouble for crops.
Honeybees and bumblebees have been infected by the introduction of a parasite, while destruction of cave roosts has led to a decline in the bat population.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15316711/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)
A crab fishing program started in 2005 in Alaske to stop overfishing and ensure fishermens safety has given fishing rights to corporations, put individual fishermen out of work, and risked the marine ecosystem.
The program, called “crab rationalization,” effectively privatized a once-public resource by granting certain individuals and corporations exclusive crab quotas – how much crab they can harvest each year. Grantees received the prerogative to either catch the crab themselves, join a cooperative to pool quotas, or lease or sell their quotas to the highest bidder. Additionally, a handful of major processing companies gained exclusive buying rights to nearly all of crab brought to shore.
[Read](http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3761 “Read the Story”) (The NewStandard)
*In the first season of [The Deadliest Catch](http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/deadliestcatch/deadliestcatch.html), all of the fishermen who commented had negative things to say about the new program. In the second season of the show, the new rules were in effect, and the fishing season lasted considerably longer than the previous year, but did the accident rate improve?*
California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work so that the creatures can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost. The employees are then invited to take the stuff home and use the all-natural fertilizer in their gardens and on their houseplants.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15224793/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)
Alligators have been dragged from abandoned swimming pools. Foxes had to be removed from the airport. Coyotes are stalking rabbits and nutria a sort of countrified rat in city streets. And armadillos are undermining air conditioning units.
In the year since Hurricane Katrina drove out many of the people of New Orleans, wild animals have been moving in. Some were blown in by the winds or redistributed by the floodwaters. Others were drawn by the piles of rotting garbage and by the shelter afforded by all the abandoned homes and tall weeds.
The influx of wildlife was something Rick Atkinson, curator of swamp exhibit at Audubon Zoo, predicted even before the floodwaters receded.
“The three things wild animals need is food, water and cover,” Atkinson said. “We’ve always had food and water, but now, there are no people, so the animals have all the cover they want.”
Complaints about rats have soared.
“They have more to eat than before the storm. Just look at all the piles of garbage, the stuff lying around, the empty buildings. This is a rat’s paradise,” Erick Kinchke, owner of Audubon Pest Control.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15251721/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)
Palm and pumpkin seed oil could soon be generating electricity to help power cell phone networks across Africa under a plan to replace fossil fuels with sustainable biofuels made from crops grown by local farmers.
[Read](http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71936-0.html?tw=rss.index “Read the Story”) (Wired)
Supplies of ultra-clean diesel fuel should be readily available at pumps when rules take effect on Sunday, U.S. officials said Tuesday. That will mean less pollution, fewer health issues and possibly the start of a renaissance for diesel cars.
“Cleaner diesel fuel will immediately cut soot emissions from any diesel vehicle by 10 percent,” the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council and the industry group Diesel Technology Forum noted in a joint statement. “But when combined with a new generation of engines hitting the road in January, it will enable emission reductions of up to 95 percent.”
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15211662/ “Read the Story”) (MSNBC)
Breaking and entering, ransacking refrigerators, and defecating in posh homes, big monkeys traveling in groups of about 30 are showing what can happen when civilization comes to the wild.
[Read](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061004-baboons.html?source=rss “Read the Story”) (National Geographic)
A 1959 nuclear reactor meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, which is northwest of Los Angeles, may have caused hundreds of cases of cancer in the community, and chemicals threaten to contaminate ground and water.
[Read](http://wtopnews.com/?nid=106&sid=934886 “Read the Story”) (AP via WTOP)
Oyster season in the Chesapeake Bay is off to a good start, watermen say.
The season, which started Oct. 2 and runs until March 30, is particularly strong in Maryland waters, though some dead oysters are being found in Virginia’s James River. In Virginia, dry weather conditions set the stage for oyster-killing parasites blamed for catches that were as much as 90 percent dead, environmental experts said.
[Read](http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=934165 “Read the Story”) (WTOP)
Wild salmon migrating downstream toward the sea are being killed en route by sea lice from salmon fish farms, a new study finds.
The fatalities range from 9 percent in the early spring, when lice populations are low, to 95 percent in late spring, when the parasites form massive clouds that young salmon have to swim through.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15108622/ “Read the Story”) (LiveScience via MSNBC)
Within the annual growth rings of old longleaf pines, scientists are discovering a previously unknown record of hurricane activity in the Southeast.
A University of Tennessee-led team has found that hurricane rain can leave a chemical mark in the woody tissue of these shallow-rooted trees that can date when storms occurred. That might provide a high-resolution, precisely dated biological archive of climate that could be extended back for centuries, and even millennia.
[Read](http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/tree_rings_offer_insights_to_h.php “Read the Story”) (AP via SEED Magazine)
A cave network with large passages and rooms — many more than 50-feet wide and some containing ancient animal skeletons — has been discovered within the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in central California, the National Park System announced.
Its still unknown how far the network goes, but the find is “so significant,” the agency said in a statement Monday, that park staff believe that if the cave were not already within the National Park System it would certainly qualify.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15012809/ “Read the Story”) (MSNBC)
*This certainly blows away [Luray Caverns](http://www.luraycaverns.com).*
The worlds booming shark fin trade is killing up to 73 million sharks per year—about three times more than the official catch number reported to the United Nations, a new study concludes.
Scientists worry that the demand for shark fins could soon outpace the abilities of sharks to reproduce. This is probably already happening for one species, the blue shark, the researchers say. Their findings suggest that the current trade in blue sharks is close to or possibly even exceeding the species’ maximum yield levels.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15020727/ “Read the Story”) (LiveScience via MSNBC)
As lawmakers consider expensive plans to restore Louisiana’s vanishing coastal wetlands, a new study suggests that hurricanes themselves can do the job.. The researchers estimated how much sediment Hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed ashore in 2005 and have concluded that hurricanes could supply all the silt and other inorganic sediment that healthy wetlands in this region need.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14927077/ “Read the Story”) (MSNBC)
Experts say [Phytophthora Root Rot](http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/pp318/profiles/pc/pc.html “North Carolina State University’s Root Rot Disease Profile Page”), is killing Fraser firs, the most popular Christmas tree species, and leaving the soil unsuitable for the trees for up to __20 years__. At [Virginia Tech](http://www.vt.edu “Virginia Tech’s Home Page”), scientists are hoping a long-term study can figure out how root rot works.
Determing how the rot spreads is the subject of a study by Virginia Tech Scientist [Gary Griffin](http://ipm.ppws.vt.edu/faculty/griffin.html “Gary Griffin’s Virginia Tech Page”). His research has found a “disease center” – __a cluster of diseased trees whose roots intertwine with healthy trees__ and, researchers believe, spread the disease. The rot also can be carried in the soil by animals such as moles.
Phytophthora Root Rot also killed the [American Chestnut](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chestnut “Wikipedia’s American Chestnut Article”) trees.
[Read](http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=908222 “Read the Story”) (AP via WTOP)