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• Obama is one of five new species of darter fish discovered by researchers • The freshwater fish has distinctive bright orange and blue colours and is generally found in fast-flowing rivers around America • Other species named after Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and vice president Al Gore A new species of fish has been named after President Barack Obama by the researchers who discovered it. The freshwater fish has distinctive bright orange and blue colours and is generally found in fast-flowing rivers around America. It is one of five new species of darter - the smallest member...

Up to a million species live in the seas, and two-thirds of those ocean-dwellers may still be undiscovered, according to a new study that also cataloged all of the known species that dwell beneath the waves. The findings, published today (Nov. 15) in the journal Current Biology, suggest that the oceans remain a vast, uncharted territory. The new registry could help guide marine conservation efforts by giving scientists a universal way to describe the underwater creatures. "If you want to understand life on Earth, then of course you need to know what life there is on Earth," said the study's...

As climate change progresses, the planet may lose more plant and animal species than predicted, a new modeling study suggests. This is because current predictions overlook two important factors: the differences in how quickly species relocate and competition among species, according to the researchers, led by Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut. Already evidence suggests that species have begun to migrate out of ranges made inhospitable by climate change and into newly hospitable territory. "We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change," Urban said in a statement. "But in real life, animals move around, they...

A group of Sacramento-area property owners and land managers on Wednesday threatened to sue the federal government if it does not proceed with removing a native beetle from the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initially proposed removing the valley elderberry longhorn beetle from the endangered species list in 2006. But the process has dragged along and the beetle remains protected. On Wednesday, the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based nonprofit law firm, said the delay may have cost its clients millions of dollars over the past five years. Those clients include land owners, levee maintenance districts and...

From the mighty polar bear to the tiny house sparrow, many of Earth's species appear to be shrinking in size, a new study reports. And the authors think it's probably due to global warming, a little like wool sweaters that shrink when washed in hot water. But other experts say that conclusion goes too far, blaming global warming for what may be natural changes. ... The shrinking victims, according to the study, include cotton, corn, strawberries, bay scallops, shrimp, crayfish, carp, Atlantic salmon, herring, frogs, toads, iguanas, hooded robins, red-billed gulls, California squirrels, lynx and wood rats. Two years ago,...

The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark - from the melodic golden-winged warbler and slow-moving gopher tortoise, to the slimy American eel and tiny Texas kangaroo rat. ... With a Friday deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act... Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawprofessor at the University of Vermont. "They are moving through this large...

“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...

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...

Idyllwild, Calif. (AP) -- Researchers have released dozens of tadpoles into a Riverside County stream in hopes of reviving a frog species endangered in the region. San Diego Zoo officials say zoo researchers bred the 36 mountain yellow-legged frog tadpoles that were released Tuesday into a stream near the town of Idyllwild. The mountain yellow-legged frog is on the federal Endangered Species List in Southern California and has recently been proposed for listing under the California Endangered Species Act.

A rare basket star, seen riding on its intricate network of arms, is among a haul of strange and previously unknown deep-sea creatures recently found in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists announced Tuesday. Ten potentially new species—including "mountaineering" sea cucumbers and possible "missing links" between invertebrates and backboned animals—were discovered during the six-week expedition. The voyage, which ended July 3, was the last of the MAR-ECO project, a series of biological surveys of unexplored waters along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the underwater mountain range that bisects the Atlantic Ocean from north to south. Star of the Deep Photograph courtesy...

Emergencies: As frustration with the federal response grows, Louisiana's governor lashes out at the feds for doing little except blame BP for the Gulf oil spill. Meanwhile, Congress sees a chance to raise your gas taxes. While the Obama administration continues on its quest to fundamentally transform America, the largely unabated Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to fundamentally transform the ecosystems and economy of Louisiana and the Gulf region. The federal government's response so far has consisted largely of scapegoating BP and ignoring its own responsibilities and lack of preparation, railing against Big Oil, while Congress...

Immigration: Arizona moves to protect its citizens from a raging border war, and the administration and its activist supporters cry racism. Why is antelope protection more important than protecting American lives?

Island Gray Fox Photograph by George H.H. Huey, Corbis With fewer than a thousand individuals left, the island gray fox (pictured) may not be able to outfox extinction, according to the new Wildlife Conservation Society report "Rarest of the Rare." The island gray—the smallest fox in the United States—is found only on California's Channel Islands (see map). The tiny mammal has succumbed to predation from golden eagles as well as diseases from domestic dogs introduced to the islands, experts say.

Looking like a creature from the Alien movies, this nightmarish "longhead dreamer" anglerfish (Chaenophryne longiceps) was until recently an alien species to Greenland waters

Politics: The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley. Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform. One could chalk it up to good fortune or just good constituent service. But in the middle of a contentious health care debate marked by Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases, we may be forgiven if we find an announcement by the Department of the Interior regarding California's water supply a tad too coincidental. On Tuesday, the Department of the Interior announced it was increasing...

Competitiveness: The latest index of economic freedom shows America falling fast, being ranked for the first time as "mostly free." We've fallen behind Canada, and it's look out below. Our accelerating descent into a command-and-control economy with government pulling the strings is taking its toll. The Heritage Foundation's 2010 index of leading economic indicators shows that the land of the free is only mostly free, falling to eighth in the world from sixth last year, now sandwiched between Canada and Denmark. That Canada, long considered a bastion of socialized medicine, is ranked as economically freer may surprise some. But our...

Global Warming: The Alaskan governor who knew polar bears weren't endangered says the planet isn't either and challenges the oracle of climate change. Al Gore says despite the CRU e-mails, the situation is of the utmost gravity. In a Dec. 9 Washington Post op-ed, Sarah Palin noted that the Climate-gate e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia "reveal that leading climate 'experts' deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures and tried to silence their critics from publishing in peer-reviewed journals." This did not sit well with Gore. "The entire North...

NEW SPECIES PICTURES: 850 Underground Creatures Found The newfound blind cave fish Milyeringa veritas, seen above, inhabits the same Cape Range aquifers as a blind cave eel found during the same survey of Australia's underground habitats. The only blind cave fish known in Australia, the 2-inch-long (5.1-centimeter-long) species is "remarkably versatile," living in freshwater or seawater in underground coastal regions during various stages of its life, researchers say."

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...