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ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The "ghost cat" is just that. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday declared the eastern cougar to be extinct, confirming a widely held belief among wildlife biologists that native populations of the big cat were wiped out by man a century ago. After a lengthy review, federal officials concluded there are no breeding populations of cougars — also known as pumas, panthers, mountain lions and catamounts — in the eastern United States. Researchers believe the eastern cougar subspecies has probably been extinct since the 1930s. Wednesday's declaration paves the way for the eastern cougar to...

Ancient food source may offer neuroprotectionNutritional supplementation with Spirulina, a nutrient-rich, blue-green algae, appeared to provide neuroprotective support for dying motor neurons in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, University of South Florida neuroscientists have found. Although more research is needed, they suggest that a spirulina-supplemented diet may provide clinical benefits for ALS patients. A spirulina dietary supplement was shown to delay the onset of motor symptoms and disease progression, reducing inflammatory markers and motor neuron death in a G93A mouse model of ALS. Spirulina, an ancient food source used by the...

This column comes to you from sunny Rajasthan, India, where I have taken my family to look for leopards (and crocodiles and monkeys and black buck…). As you can imagine taking the kids somewhere so exotic at half term is costing me an arm and a leg I can ill afford. But I want them to share with me the almost matchless pleasure of seeing big cats (or big anything else: sharks are good too; and bears; and elephants…) in their native habitat. Being amid unspoilt nature, whether it’s walking in the Welsh or Scottish hills or going on safari...

“World Ends! Amphibians, Cartilaginous Fishes Hardest Hit.” That was the headline yesterday in newspapers all over the country as editors reacted to a press release from Science magazine which described a broad study of species loss. Even the Wall Street Journal, which is not known for overreacting, ran this: “A War Against Extinction: The Number of Species Keeps Falling, but Conservation Racks Up a Few Successes.” Golly! A war! What makes this headline odd is that this same paper, and many others, not one month ago, announced to us: “Census of Marine Life unveils 6,000 new species.” That’s a lot...

A fifth of world's plant species at risk of extinctionThe Irish Times - Thursday, September 30, 2010 LONDON – 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 yesterday. Scientists from Britain’s Botanic Gardens at Kew, London’s Natural History Museum and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), found that more than 22 per cent of species were endangered, critically endangered or vulnerable. “The single greatest threat is conversion of natural habitats to agricultural use, directly impacting 33 per...

Viewed from a distance, the natural world often presents a vista of sublime, majestic placidity. Yet beneath the foliage and hidden from the distant eye, a vast, unceasing slaughter rages. Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their prey. Agonized suffering and violent death are ubiquitous and continuous. This hidden carnage provided one ground for the philosophical pessimism of Schopenhauer, who contended that “one simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal...

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems. Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans - from hunting to climate change - are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and...

5 Distasteful Bets You Can Make On The Gulf Oil Spill Gus Lubin Jun. 11, 2010, 9:27 AM There's markets and wagers for everything, including all your burning questions about the Gulf Oil Spill (via The Barrel). Paddypower.com offers bets on the next CEO of BP: Ian Conn -- 3/1 Sir John Brown -- 7/2 Robert Dudley -- 7/2 ... and Tony Blair -- 100/1 First to become extinct: Kemp's Ridley Turtle (pictured) -- 4/5 Bluefin Tuna -- 6/4 Brown Pelican -- 8/1 BP share prices at year end (LSE): 360p - 420p -- 9/4 420p - 500p -- 10/3...

Jun 2010 - The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, the largest extinction in history, could have been caused by huge, worldwide methane explosions, says Dr. Gregory Ryskin, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University Could such explosions have created the Carolina Bays? (More than two million huge holes were gouged into the ground about 12,000 years ago at the Gothenburg magnetic reversal. Some of the holes - which are still there - are bigger than nearby cities. Those holes are now collectively known as the Carolina Bays.) During the Great Permian Extinction, when up to 95% of all species went extinct, Dr....

The worst-case scenario of the consequences of global warming - mass extinctions - appears to be a reality for lizards, according to a new report in Science. The authors found that 12 percent of local populations of lizards have already disappeared from hundreds of sites in Mexico. Furthermore, within the next 70 years, the authors predict that 1 in 5 lizard species will no longer exist anywhere on the planet, all the result of rising global temperatures. Although a growing amount of data is showing the impact of climate change on species, these lizard extinctions were somewhat surprising, said Jack...

The Anglican Church in Canada – once as powerful in the nation's secular life as it was in its soul – may be only a generation away from extinction, says a just-published assessment of the church's future. The report, prepared for the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, calls Canada a post-Christian society in which Anglicanism is declining faster than any other denomination. It says the church has been “moved to the far margins of public life.” According to the report, the diocese – “like most across Canada” – is in crisis. The report repeats, without qualification or question, the results...

Researchers believe they have identified the source of fatal tumours that threaten to wipe out the wild population of Tasmanian devils. Writing in Science, an international team of scientists suggest cells that protect nerves are the likely origin of devil facial tumour disease (DFTD). The disease is a transmissible cancer that is spread by physical contact, and quickly kills the animals. DFTD has caused the devil population to collapse by 60% in the past decade. "To look more closely at the tumours' origin, we sequenced the genes that are expressed in this devil cancer and compared them with other genes...

But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying.....in ...... escalating numbers.....

The Tasmanian devil, the spaniel-size marsupial found on the Australian island of Tasmania, has been hurtling toward extinction in recent years, the victim of a bizarre and mysterious facial cancer that spreads like a plague. Now Australian scientists say they have discovered how the cancer originated. The finding, being reported Friday in the journal Science, sheds light on how cancer cells can sometimes liberate themselves from the hosts where they first emerged. On a more practical level, it also opens the door to devising vaccines that could save the Tasmanian devils. “It’s a great paper,” said Katherine Belov, a geneticist...

Climate change threatens the survival of dozens of animal species from the emperor penguin to koalas, according to a report released Monday at the UN climate summit. Rising sea levels, ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice are taking a heavy toll on species already struggling to cope with pollution and shrinking habitats, said the study from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an intergovernmental group. "Humans are not the only ones whose fate is at stake here in Copenhagen -- some of our favourite species are also taking the fall for our CO2 emissions," said Wendy Foden,...

Researchers from Imperial College London believe that when species become asexual they could be on their way to extinction... P. marneffei is a fungus which causes disease in people with damaged immune systems, such as HIV/AIDS patients, and it is only found in parts of south-east Asia... Dr Bill Hanage, one of the paper's authors, from Imperial College London, adds: "By being asexual, P. marneffei is not only limiting its ability to adapt, it may be at risk of becoming extinct. If it is unable to adapt to new environments, it will be unable to adapt to changes in its...

Pandas face a difficult future, despite great efforts to preserve them. With their dwindling population, shrinking habitat, and weakening genetic strength, one evolutionist has suggested that these longstanding symbols of the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) should be allowed to die out...

Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. We have observed, Hawking points out in Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter (below), which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth,...

Comet strikes are an unlikely cause of past mass extinctions on Earth, according to computer simulations. Scientists used the simulations to model the paths of long-period comets, to determine the likelihood of these "dirty snowballs" striking our planet. The University of Washington, Seattle, research appears in Science journal. How many mass extinctions in Earth's history were caused by these icy bodies crashing into our planet has been a subject of considerable debate. Many scientists agree that an asteroid strike 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs. But there is uncertainty about how many other such events were triggered by...

"These findings are inconsistent with the alternative and already hotly debated theory that overhunting by Clovis people led to the rapid extinction of large mammals at the end of the ice age, the research team argues in the PNAS paper."