Animals
The illness -- reported in at least 22 states -- is threatening the livelihood of beekeepers, honey production and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
"You can't just stand by and watch animals starve," Agriculture Minister Eskil Erlandsson said in a statement as his ministry earmarked 37 million kronor (4.06 million euros, 5.3 million dollars) in aid.
Warnings posted said hundreds of bull sharks and lemon sharks have been seen swimming along the surf, the sand bar and farther out in the Atlantic Ocean.
A recent trend toward increasingly mild winters is disrupting normal hibernation patterns for many high-latitude and high-elevation species-and in some cases it may be a matter of life or death.
From marmots in the Rocky Mountains to bears in the Moscow Zoo, animals are spending less time napping. The change may be placing some species fatally out of synch with their environment.
When animals hibernate they're able to conserve the energy stored in their fat during periods when food is scarce. So when they are abnormally active, they risk using up their stored energy before they can replace it.
There has been no improvement since the last regional fish survey was conducted in the late 1980s, according to a federal survey based on data collected mainly in 2002 but only recently released.
Avian cholera affects birds so quickly that they have been known to sometimes literally drop out of the sky or die while swimming, according to the National Wildlife Health Center. Approximately 40 percent of the affected birds die; those who don't become carriers.
The Bucks Herald launched an inquiry after we were contacted by a number of readers who discovered the dead birds - all in the Southcourt area of the town.
The fourth Waterbird Population Estimate found that 44 per cent of the 900 species globally have fallen in the past five years, while 34 per cent were stable, and 17 per cent rising.




