Endangered Species

When it comes to water, penguins aren't naturals. "Some of them are terrified," says Bethany Wlaz , a keeper at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. So each time African penguins are born into the zoo's breeding program for the endangered birds, someone like Wlaz becomes their swimming coach. But first comes the introduction to being wet. Soft as a cotton ball and about the size of a roasted chicken, Male One — hatched on Oct. 12 — is lowered into a stainless steel sink by Wlaz and Betty Dipple, another animal keeper.

Reporting from Philadelphia -- The Philadelphia Eagles have put together the truest of fantasy teams. Getting to the playoffs is looking like pure make-believe. Michael Vick says, "Lord willing, maybe we can wind up 10-6," but he knows it would be easier for Vince Young — a career 57.9% passer — to thread a deep ball through the eye of a needle. At 3-6, the Eagles would have to win their remaining seven games, starting with Sunday night's against the New York Giants. By all indications, Young will start in place of Vick, who has two broken ribs.

Alan Mootnick, a self-taught primate specialist who rose to become a leading authority on gibbon biology and conservation, died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications following heart surgery, relatives said. He was 60. A self-described modern-day Tarzan, Mootnick founded the nonprofit Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita in 1976. In interviews, he stated that his aim was to advance the study, propagation and protection of the endangered species.

The California golden trout — the official state fish — will not receive protection under the Endangered Species Act after a 10-year review of scientific information and conservation programs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday. "Conservation measures throughout the trout's historic range have done much to protect the species," service spokeswoman Sarah Swenty said in a statement. "In large part because of those measures, the service determined that the intensity of threats does not indicate the species is endangered, or likely to become so in the foreseeable future.

A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science. " But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.

A U.S. District Court judge Tuesday ordered three federal agencies to "take all necessary measures" to better protect 40 endangered species in four national forests in Southern California. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's action followed a 2009 federal court decision that management plans for the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino national forests failed to ensure that human activities not jeopardize already-imperiled plants and animals. Photos: Threatened with extinction Patel gave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Forest Service six months to develop and implement long-term safeguards for the 40 species, which include the California condor and California gnatcatcher.

A proposal to build a large water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is incomplete, confused and plagued by a number of scientific gaps despite years of study, according to a National Research Council report. The document bolsters criticisms that the agencies overseeing the project are not seriously evaluating alternatives and are instead pursuing a preordained outcome without examining the effects. "The lack of an appropriate structure creates the impression that the entire effort is little more than a post-hoc rationalization of a previously selected group of facilities," write the authors, an independent panel of scientists and other experts.

Following Congress' unprecedented move to excise wolves from endangered species protections in Idaho and Montana, the U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday declared wolves fully recovered in most of the Northern Rockies, opening the door for hunts in the fall. The announcement means that wolves will no longer be protected under federal law in much of the region and will be managed like other wildlife species by state game managers. They will remain classified as an endangered species in Wyoming pending additional discussions with the state, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

It used to be you could look across the ridge from Ron Gillett's house and a couple of dozen elk would be foraging for grass. Then you'd hear a scary kind of howling, and the elk would take off, a pack of wolves close on their heels. It got so that Gillett couldn't stand to see the spindly elk calves fall into the wolves' hungry embrace -- not when hunting elk has been part of his livelihood for much of his life. He'd get screaming mad at wolf advocates who came to watch in wonder as the packs executed their skillful and deadly dances around their prey.

Some of the most fearsome military personnel in the world train on this rocky, windswept island: Marine infantry and Navy SEALs. But the largest mammal native to the island ? average size, 3 to 4 pounds ? is not afraid of them at all. That's a problem on a 22-mile-long island with a ship-to-shore/air-to-ground bombardment range on its south end, beaches for amphibious assault training on the north and a heavily traveled road down its spine. The San Clemente Island fox ( Urocyon littoralis )