May 20, 2011 is recognized as Endangered Species Day, but this year certainly doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate. The Obama administration’s recent controversial decision to allow Congress to remove the gray wolf from endangered species protection — establishing a precedent that could lead to political meddling in future listing decisions — smacked of [...]

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that more than 110,000 Laysan and black-footed albatross chicks – about 22 percent of this year’s albatross production – were lost as a result of the tsunami and two severe winter storms preceding it in January and February, it was hard to imagine how so many birds [...]

The Star-Times in Wisconsin is reporting that Necedah National Wildlife Refuge will no longer be the Wisconsin home of Operation Migration, which uses ultralight aircraft to train migrating endangered whooping cranes.
Richard King, NNWR biologist, said that recent completion of the 10-year plan by Operation Migration has led to the ultralight-led chick training being held elsewhere [...]

Oldest Albatross Survives Tsunami Damage to Midway Atoll

Making Tracks: Florida Panther Week Kicks Off

Where the wild things are: Chicago’s backyard national refuge

Stockton Teams Up With Forsythe to Train Naturalists

Is The Florida Panther Up Next For Extinction?

US Fish and Wildlife Service approves 15-year conservation plan for W.Va. wildlife refuge

Sea-Level Rise Already Affects Wildlife

We’ve been watching for news about how Midway Atoll NWR and other Pacific refuges fared after the tsunami passed today. We gather the humans could make it to higher ground, but we know a lot of birds are nesting on the islands now, including the Laysan albatross named Wisdom and the famous short-tailed albatross — [...]

This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied Endangered Species Act protection to the Mount Charleston blue, a rare Las Vegas butterfly that government scientists have said needs federal protection to avoid extinction. The population of this highly endangered species has declined drastically since 1995, with recent counts resulting in only 17 butterflies found.
As [...]

The St. Petersburg Times reports that the Center for Biological Diversity, the Florida Panther Society and two other groups have petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to transplant endangered Florida panthers to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, parts of which exist in both Georgia and Florida, thus creating a panther colony outside their current range.
As [...]

The Endangered Species Coalition is holding their annual 2011 Endangered Species Day Youth Art Contest. Started in 2006 by Congress, Endangered Species Day recognizes the importance of endangered species and is an occasion to educate the public on how to protect them. The youth art contest lets young people learn more about endangered species and [...]

The endangered Delmarva fox squirrel is named for the location of its historic range on the Delmarva Peninsula, which includes Delaware, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and eastern Virginia (DEL-MAR-VA). The largest natural population of the Delmarva fox squirrel is located at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland, although a growing population lives at Chincoteague [...]

Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge is located on 50,000 acres in southeastern Indiana — land that was the location of the Jefferson Proving Ground (JPG). JPG was established by the Army in 1940 as an ordnance testing installation and closed in 1995. Beginning in 1996, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managed the wildlife [...]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is maintaining a blog — titled “Return of the Red Wolf: Tails from the Swamp” — for their Red Wolf Recovery Program, and some of the recent entries offer an interesting look at how wolves are safely trapped and fitted with radio telemetry collars in order to track their [...]

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and one of the challenging activities taking place at this beautiful and important refuge is the protection and recovery of the endangered Steller’s eider.
Steller’s eiders are the smallest eiders in size and are restricted to northern latitudes where they breed in freshwater [...]