A rabid black bear trying to rip out a window air conditioner lost its tug-of-war with a terrified housewife when her husband blasted the beast with a shotgun.
The bear rushed the Maryland house after she yelled out her screen door to try to scare it away from a goat pen.
[Read](http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=62508 “Read the Story”) (AP via WUSA9)
Taking your dog for a walk could be having an impact on local birdlife, a study suggests.
An Australian team found dog-walking was prompting birds to take flight, causing numbers to plummet by 41%. The researchers said the birds were fleeing because they viewed the dogs as potential predators.
[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6978272.stm “Read the Story”) (BBC)
A virus has emerged as a strong suspect in the hunt for the mystery disease killing off North honeybees.
Genetic research showed that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) turned up regularly in hives affected by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
If IAPV does turn out to be a major factor causing CCD, there may be little that scientists or beekeepers can do about it.
[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6978848.stm “Read the Story”) (BBC)
Over-reliance on just a few breeds of imported farm animals is putting others in poor countries at risk of extinction, researchers warned.
Dependence on a handful of breeds like high milk-yielding [Holstein-Friesian](http://www.answers.com/topic/holstein-cattle “Answers.com”) cows, egg-laying [White Leghorn](http://www.answers.com/topic/leghorn-chicken “Answers.com”) chickens and fast-growing [Large White](http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/swine/largewhite/index.htm “Oklahoma State University”) pigs is causing the loss of one breed on average every month, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) scientists say.
It’s estimated that 90 percent of cattle in industrialized countries come from only six very tightly defined breeds.
[Read](http://www.enn.com/animals/article/22608 “Read the Story”) (Environmental News Network)
National parks in Africa, originally set up to conserve endangered species, are failing to protect wildlife within their boundaries, a study claims.
Researchers say a decline in the number of large mammals, such as antelopes, was a result of increased pressures on the reserves’ ecology. They said the parks faced an uncertain future as a greater number of people increased the demand for resources.
The main cause behind the animals’ decline was human activity – many parks are subject to the ravaging impact of illegal hunters.
[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6972416.stm “Read the Story”) (BBC)
It looks like a clump of soiled sheep’s wool, a cottony green or white mass that’s turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways. Already a scourge in New Zealand and parts of the American South and West, the aquatic algae called “rock snot” is creeping into New England, where it is turning up in pristine rivers and alarming fishermen and wildlife biologists.
The algae has the potential to bloom into thick masses with long stalks, blanketing the bottoms of some streams, threatening aquatic insect and fish populations by smothering food sources.
[Read](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=3523844 “Read the Story”) (AP via ABC News)
As the nation’s coal-fired power plants work to create cleaner skies, they’ll likely fill up landfills with millions more tons of potentially harmful ash.
More than one-third of the ash generated at the country’s hundreds of coal-fired plants is now recycled — mixed with cement to build highways or used to stabilize embankments, among other things. But in a process being used increasingly across the nation, chemicals are injected into plants’ emissions to capture airborne pollutants.
That, in turn, changes the composition of the ash and cuts its usefulness. It can’t be used in cement, for example, because the interaction of the chemicals may keep the concrete from hardening. That ash has to go somewhere — so it usually ends up in landfills, along with the rest of the unusable waste.
Coal ash naturally contains arsenic and mercury, and if the elements leach into groundwater they can contaminate drinking supplies. The EPA says ash disposed of in landfills could pose significant risks when mismanaged, and there are gaps in state regulation.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20462296/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)
The Toronto Dominion Centre is the most distinctive set of office towers in the city’s financial district. Three of the five black buildings were designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in the late 1960s. So was their air conditioning.
The three original towers, which contain about 3 million square feet of office space, were among the first buildings connected to Toronto’s Deep Lake Water Cooling System in September 2004, saving the local electric utility 7.5 megawatts of electrical demand every working day.
[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0830/p13s01-stgn.html “Read the Story”) (Christian Science Monitor)
Huge concrete slabs from the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge are being dumped into the Chesapeake Bay to create a deep water, artificial reef for fish, oysters and underwater grass beds.
In all, more than 1,000 tons of the old bridge will be placed in the waters to create the Ceder Point Fish Haven at the mouth of the Patuxent River.
In all, about half the old Wilson Bridge has been used for reefs, creating more artificial reefs in the Chesapeake than has been done in the past 10 years.
[Read](http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1228938 “Read the Story”) (WTOP)
Cat owners have been urged to watch the waistlines of their pets as a rising number of felines are diagnosed with obesity-related diabetes.
Overweight cats are said to be more than three times as likely to suffer from diabetes, which develops when the body has problems making insulin. Neutered males that do not get adequate exercise are particularly at risk.
Cat lovers have been warned to crack down on treats for their pets if they are to avoid the risk of them developing the potentially fatal condition.
[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6933482.stm “Read the Story”) (BBC)
Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Shenandoah National Park, a mystery lies in the shadows of stony cliffs and sinkholes. That mystery is a 3- to 4-inch-long salamander that hasn’t been found anywhere else in the world — the Shenandoah salamander.
Officials don’t know how many of the salamanders live in the 300-square-mile park, but park officials hope that will soon change. A biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, will study the salamanders at the Shenandoah National Park for the next three years to determine their population numbers and come up with a long-term management plan. The health of the salamanders is a reflection of the health of the park’s entire ecosystem.
[Read](http://www.dailynews-record.com/news_details.php?AID=11433&CHID=2 “Read the Story”) (Harrisonburg Daily News Record)
They congregate on patios, slip into stairwells and, if they’re crunched under foot, oh do they stink. Crickets have arrived in force, annoying Texans earlier than usual – thanks to the year’s wet weather in much of the state.
The problem is so bad at the University of Texas at Austin that school officials are taking the unusual step of darkening the 307-foot-tall bell tower for three nights the next two weekends in hopes of keeping the insects away. The bugs are attracted to lights.
Typically, field crickets head into cities from their normal rural habitat in early fall for mating flights after rain, once the ground becomes soft enough for egg-laying. This year, after weeks of soaking summer rain, the ground is soft earlier than usual.
[Read](http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2007-07-26-cricket-invasion_N.htm “Read the Story”) (AP via USA Today)
Hot, dry weather isn’t just hurting farmers’ crops. Maryland watermen say blue crabs have become scarce in the peak midsummer period because of warmer, saltier water in parts of the Chesapeake Bay.
The summer slowdown has put a damper on some Maryland crabbers, but projections show the state still may meet last year’s haul of 28 million bushels if crabbers do well this fall.
[Read](http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1197216 “Read the Story”) (AP via WTOP)
Desertification represents one of the “greatest environmental challenges of our times” and, coupled with global warming, could set off mass migrations of people fleeing degraded homelands, a United Nations report warned Thursday.
The report called on governments in arid regions to revise rules on land use to halt overgrazing and unsustainable irrigation practices. It also urged better coordinated policies to address the problem of desertification.
The report said about 2 billion people, a third of the Earth’s population, are potential victims of desertification, which is defined as land degraded by human activities like farming and grazing.
If the problem is left unchecked, some 50 million people could be forced from their homes over the next decade.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19479607/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)
[BE-Cooperative](http://www.be-cooperative.org/ “BE-Cooperative Website”) is ready to set up a 1,000 gallon B-10 Bio-Diesel fueling station in Roanoke. They need 20 members who will commit to using 30 to 50 gallons per month at this fueling station. The cost per gallon will be about the same as regular diesel.
They can also help people find used diesel cars and trucks to purchase.
Contact BE-Cooperative at (540)354-2791 or at their website – [http://www.be-cooperative.org](http://www.be-cooperative.org “BE-Cooperative Website”).