Today, Monday, June 8, we recognize the first U.N.-sanctioned World Oceans Day. The event comes after years of pressure from conservation groups and thousands of activists who clamored for everyone to know and understand what's happening in our oceans.
You can blame it on out-of-towners.
If we don't know our history, then we can't know our future. Historians arguing the relevance of their subject often repeat that mantra.
Advances in the study of coral in the last few years has led a group of scientists to conclude that corals almost rival humans in their genetic complexity and their relationship to algae is key to their survival.
A white tiger mauled a zookeeper to death at a New Zealand wildlife park Wednesday as a group of tourists watched in horror, police say.
Scientists hailed Tuesday a 47-million-year-old fossil of an ancient "small cat"-sized primate as a possible common ancestor of monkeys, humans and other primates.
As people across China's Sichuan province continue to rebuild their lives one year after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake leveled some towns and cities, the region's famed giant pandas are still struggling due to the devastation wreaked by the deadly temblor.
Around 200 new species of frogs have been found in Madagascar, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.
A polar bear falls through thin Arctic ice while searching for food for his family. A humpback whale guides her calf on a perilous 4,000-mile journey. A herd of African elephants in search of water battles a sandstorm in the Kalahari Desert.
A British consortium pledged Tuesday to spend up to £10 million ($14.5 million) in research grants to find out what is causing a serious decline in bees and other pollinating insects.
Today, Monday, June 8, we recognize the first U.N.-sanctioned World Oceans Day. The event comes after years of pressure from conservation groups and thousands of activists who clamored for everyone to know and understand what's happening in our oceans.
You can blame it on out-of-towners.
If we don't know our history, then we can't know our future. Historians arguing the relevance of their subject often repeat that mantra.
Advances in the study of coral in the last few years has led a group of scientists to conclude that corals almost rival humans in their genetic complexity and their relationship to algae is key to their survival.
A white tiger mauled a zookeeper to death at a New Zealand wildlife park Wednesday as a group of tourists watched in horror, police say.
Scientists hailed Tuesday a 47-million-year-old fossil of an ancient "small cat"-sized primate as a possible common ancestor of monkeys, humans and other primates.
As people across China's Sichuan province continue to rebuild their lives one year after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake leveled some towns and cities, the region's famed giant pandas are still struggling due to the devastation wreaked by the deadly temblor.
Around 200 new species of frogs have been found in Madagascar, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.
A polar bear falls through thin Arctic ice while searching for food for his family. A humpback whale guides her calf on a perilous 4,000-mile journey. A herd of African elephants in search of water battles a sandstorm in the Kalahari Desert.
A British consortium pledged Tuesday to spend up to £10 million ($14.5 million) in research grants to find out what is causing a serious decline in bees and other pollinating insects.
Conservationists have found a new population of orangutans in a steep, mountainous corner of Indonesia -- a discovery that significantly adds to the number of the endangered red-haired primates.
North Atlantic right whales, sort of the homely underdogs of the whale world, birthed a record number calves this year off the coast of the southeast United States, giving some scientists hope that the uber-rare and often overlooked species can recover.
The Irrawaddy, one of the world's rarest species of freshwater dolphins, have been found in surprisingly large numbers deep in the waterlogged jungles of Bangladesh.
Juan Lopez reads meters with one eye and looks for snakes with the other. Lopez is a member of the "Python Patrol," a team of utility workers, wildlife officials, park rangers and police trying to keep Burmese pythons from gaining a foothold in the Florida Keys.
More than 100 years ago, J.A. Loring had his eyes on the California sky and his hand on a pen.
An Indonesian fisherman has been killed by Komodo dragons after he was attacked while trespassing on a remote island in search of fruit, officials said Tuesday.
Bird populations native to several areas of the globe are in decline, with some teetering on the brink of extinction, according to a multi-agency report, the first of its kind, released Thursday.
Most of us have grown used to conservation charities putting charismatic animals front and center of their fundraising campaigns.
The Humane Society has accused a federally funded primate center of mistreating chimpanzees and other primates, saying that some animals showed signs of psychosis and self-mutilation.
Rescuers have saved more than 50 whales and five dolphins that stranded themselves on a beach in Tasmania, officials said Monday.
In the wake of a highly publicized chimpanzee attack, the U.S. House made its first official move to ban humans from owning primates as pets.
Shark attacks on humans were at the lowest levels in half a decade last year, and a Florida researcher says hard economic times may be to blame.
The actress helps intensify the debate over killing wolves and bears in Alaska
There's the cobra, the cat and the downward-facing dog.
The problem of planes hitting birds comes down to a key fact: "We're competing for airspace," says Richard Dolbeer, a biologist who spent 20 years studying the problem at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
There is no animal on earth more vilified than the shark. Pop culture references and annual, over-hyped reports of attacks on swimmers or surfers have put sharks on the top of the list of the world's most feared living things.
"Planet in Peril: Battle Lines" traveled to a place off the coast of South Africa known as "shark alley," one of the best places in the world to see great white sharks.
Watch "Planet in Peril: Battle Lines" on Thursday, December 11, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CNN, hosted by Anderson Cooper, chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and "The Oprah Winfrey Show" correspondent and National Geographic host Lisa Ling. CNN's award-winning series examines the environmental conflicts between growing populations and natural resources. After watching "Planet in Peril," use these questions to focus students' attention on the concepts explored in the program.
Summer is over in the northern hemisphere, but it's been another chilling season for researchers who study Arctic sea ice.
For the first time in 400 years, the beaver has returned to Great Britain.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted sanctions placed on the Navy over its underwater sonar testing, a setback for environmental groups that claimed the warfare technology was harming whales and other marine mammals.
In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Barack Obama promised his daughters Sasha and Malia that they'd get to bring a new puppy with them to the White House in January.
Retired Army Spc. Scott Winkler had many scary encounters while serving in Iraq, but they were nothing compared with his recent experience at the world's largest aquarium: swimming alongside a massive whale shark.
Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark
Nearly a fourth of the world's mammals are threatened with extinction, a leading international conservation group said Monday as it unveiled its latest global study of the problem.
Flying penguins are unusual. Especially when they fly on a C-130 Hercules military plane.
The Supreme Court appeared conflicted Wednesday as it juggled national security and environmental concerns in a case over whether the U.S. Navy is doing enough to protect whales from underwater sonar tests it conducts.
Nearly a fourth of the world's mammals are threatened with extinction, a leading international conservation group said Monday as it unveiled its latest global study of the problem.
How habitat loss and degradation are driving down the numbers of thousands of mammalian species
Conservationists have taken the first detailed look at the world's mammals in more than a decade, and the news isn't good
One of North America's renowned bird migration and bird watching areas is strangely silent. Blame Hurricane Ike
Polar bears will now be listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
Whether or not cuteness is a trait that evolves in the fittest, in some cases it sure boosts a species' chance for survival
Thousands of boats, ships and barges sink every year in American waters, and most of them remain abandoned forever wreaking havoc to undersea ecology
Setting one species up to scare off or even kill another is nothing new.
It looks like a scene from an old episode of The X-Files: As a red-tailed hawk circles overhead and a wild pronghorn sheep grazes in the distance, a dozen people in dark sunglasses move methodically through a vast field of golden barley, eyes fixed to the ground, GPS devices in hand. They're searching for bodies.
Everyone knows Boston is a city steeped in history, but on a steamy hot summer day, one of the best places to experience the city is from the ocean or the harbor.
In the world's largest aquarium, where most inhabitants settle for swimming, Nandi soars gracefully through her new home on majestic 9-foot wings.
Despite anguished cries of "Murder!" and "Shame!" from protesters who thought it could still be saved, wildlife officials on Friday euthanized the animal, which had strayed into the waters off north Sydney nearly a week ago
An abandoned baby whale that has been trying to suckle from yachts in an Australian harbor appeared to be weakening Wednesday as wildlife workers considered ways to save it.
The humpback whale, nearly hunted into history four decades ago, is now on the "road to recovery" and is no longer considered at high risk of extinction, an environmental group said
Almost 50 percent of the world's primates are in danger of extinction, according to a report from an international conservation group that cites habitat destruction and hunting as the two greatest threats.
Three tigers attacked a worker at an exotic animal park in southwestern Missouri on Monday -- the state's second tiger attack in as many days
Standing atop an island cliff, Ed English looks out over the Strait of Belle Isle. "In March," he says, "this looks like peppered porridge -- a sea of ice floes speckled with seals." Now, on a soft summer evening, it's a salty blue stew flecked with white froth from waves and breaching whales. In the distance float the glacial fragments that give this part of Newfoundland (newfun-LAND) its nickname: Iceberg Alley.
Drive past a car accident, everybody slows down to look. Tell a toddler, "Don't touch that," and of course he or she does.
Global warming and overfishing have turned the surf off France's south coast into a gelatinous mass swarming with menace
A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies
The motherland of bullfighting is about to adopt a new law protecting humans' closest relatives. Rights for bulls, though, is otra cosa
One-third of reef-building coral are threatened, scientists say, making corals the Earth's most endangered species
Out of Australia comes the story of a big fish out of its normal waters. Experts have their doubts, but there's one mighty frightened fisherman down under
Medicine has much to learn from nature. There are literally millions of medical compounds out there that could cure diseases, help improve treatment and even protect us from some types of bacteria.
Orangutan numbers have declined sharply on the only two islands where they still live in the wild and they could become the first great ape species to go extinct if urgent action isn't taken
Almost half the coral reef ecosystems in United States territory are in poor or fair condition, mostly because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a government report released Monday
The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say
The Navy has adopted a new plan for training in Hawaii waters that it says will allow it to accelerate some exercises and hold them more frequently while continuing to limit the effects of its sonar on marine mammals
The vintage bush plane banks sharply to starboard, allowing me a bird's-eye view of a giraffe trotting along the red-orange Namibian desert floor.
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide if the Navy is doing enough to protect whales from the effects of its sonar testing.
Initial post-mortem examinations on some of the 26 dolphins found dead in southwestern England this week fail to explain why the animals swam ashore in Britain's biggest mass stranding of marine animals for nearly 30 years, scientists said Thursday.
The British Royal Navy rejected claims Wednesday that one of its vessels using sonar could have caused 26 dolphins to fatally strand themselves in shallow water off the southwest coast of England.
Tearful researchers at the world's most famous panda reserve in China on Tuesday buried one of their animals killed by the massive earthquake that hit the country last month.
Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers
Humans hunting the docile creatures for research, food and blubber left the population unsustainable, say biologists who warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next to go
Rodolphe Guenoden, 39, originally from Noyon, France, is an animator at Dream Works, and a martial arts veteran. He's worked on blockbusters like Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, and Madagascar.
The Caribbean monk seal has gone the way of the dodo
City dwellers across the country are rapidly discovering the appeal of urban beekeeping
Whaling fleets nearly wiped out North Atlantic right whales last century. Now these huge mammals are threatened by other human behavior: big ships, fishing gear and entanglement in federal bureaucracy.
No one could even remember a shark attack along this resort-studded stretch of Mexican coast popular with surfers and Hollywood's elite. Many of the large predators had been pulled from the ocean by fishermen
Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpback whales have made a dramatic comeback in the North Pacific Ocean over the past four decades, a new study says
Marine scientists surveying a large undersea mountain chain were amazed to find millions of tiny starfish swirling their arms to capture food in the undersea current
China's giant pandas are believed to be safe after Monday's earthquake, but concern is growing over how they will get their next meals.
Analysis: The US finally rules that global warming is indeed threatening the species' survival. Not that it will make any difference
It's a tale of homeland security concerns blocking wildlife management, and the hue and cry that ensues.
A colossal squid being examined by scientists in New Zealand this week is yielding amazing facts about one of the ocean's shy leviathans
Ling Ling, the superstar denizen of Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, has died. Will China, which has stopped exporting pandas, make an exception and offer a replacement?
Beaches along the San Diego, California, coast will be closed Saturday after a 66-year-old man was fatally attacked by what authorities suspect was a great white shark.
A shark believed to be a great white killed a 66-year-old swimmer with a single, giant bite across both legs Friday as the man trained with a group of triathletes
Neil Sims is standing on the deck of a 35-foot feed boat off the coast of Kona, Hawaii, staring at a dorsal fin slicing through the calm morning sea below. For the past hour we've been snorkeling around the submersible cages owned by his aquaculture company, Kona Blue Water Farms. The nets house nearly half a million fish, a species of yellowtail known as Kona Kampachi.
Borneo's pygmy elephants may be descendants of an extinct Javan elephant race, saved by chance by an 18th century ruler
The gray wolf was officially removed from the Endangered Species Act's "threatened" list Friday after three decades -- a decision that has stoked controversy among environmentalists and ranchers.
From krill to king crabs, the collapse of a 160-square-mile portion of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica could mean many changes for wildlife at the bottom of the world.
Home to up to 10 percent of all known species, Mexico is recognized as one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.
Animal handlers in China have developed a "sexercise" program to try to encourage extinction-threatened pandas to overcome their notoriously low sex drives.
An organization that accredits zoos says the San Francisco Zoo had an "impressive" response to a tiger escape on Christmas Day but could have done more initially, according to a report the zoo released Tuesday.
An endangered and secretive animal rarely seen in the wild has been caught on camera in West Africa.
A shark-attack death in the Bahamas raises the issue of who is responsible when thrill vacations go awry: the tourist or the tour operator?
Mention a dolphin to someone in the United States and they'll think about a trip to Sea World or the 1960s-era TV program "Flipper."
The leader of a shark tour whose customer was mauled to death Saturday was warned that his practice of allowing people to swim close to hungry sharks could lead to tragedy, a colleague said.
A new study finds that rising temperatures are in danger of wiping out the king penguins of Antarctica
Fishermen in Bangladesh beat a rare river dolphin to death because they had not seen "this kind of creature before," according to local news accounts.
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