Rare Animals

Traders in the Indian-held portion of Kashmir handed over truckloads of animal skins and fur garments to wildlife officials. The skins belonged to tigers, leopards, snow leopards and other rare animals. A 1997 law provides for up to six years in prison for killing the animals. More than 200 traders are expected to hand over more than 800,000 skins and fur garments, stocks they held when the ban was imposed, officials said. It took nearly 10 years to get $2.3 million in payments approved.

The imperiled Devil's Hole pupfish, which has been clinging to existence in a remote rock tub in the Mojave Desert since the Ice Age, may not survive another year, federal biologists warned. Regional groundwater pumping, mysterious changes in mating behaviors and habitat disruptions inadvertently caused by scientists who have been trying to protect the pupfish are being blamed for decimating the species, long regarded as a symbol of the desert conservation movement.

In one of the world's most isolated jungles, the Foja Mountains of western New Guinea, naturalists have discovered a vast unexplored preserve of exotic species new to science. During a 15-day expedition in December, the researchers found hundreds of rare birds, more than 20 new species of frogs, five kinds of previously unknown palms, four new breeds of butterflies, and giant rhododendrons with white blossoms the size of bread plates -- believed to be the largest on record.

An expedition found evidence of at least 13 Sumatran rhinos deep in the jungles of northern Borneo, giving hope to conservationists that a species thought to be nearly extinct could flourish. The rhinos were tracked into the dense jungles of Sabah state on Borneo last year by a team of 120 government wildlife officials, academics and members of WWF-Malaysia, the World Wildlife Fund said. The survey team did not see any rhinos but found clear tracks of 13 individuals.

Like any good bird-lover, Gabriel Gottfried knew what to do when he spied the huge creature perched on a tree branch outside his Topanga Canyon home. He grabbed his camera to document what experts say may be the first California condor to fly the canyon's skies in more than 100 years. His action photo of the elusive bird taking wing was remarkable enough. But perhaps not as remarkable as the fact that Gabriel is 5 years old. "I'm five-and-a-\o7hal\f7\o7f\f7!"

An expert on the ivory-billed woodpecker is questioning evidence that purportedly shows the rare bird, once thought to be extinct, in the swamps of southeast Arkansas. Jerome A. Jackson, a zoologist at Florida Gulf Coast University, is challenging a blurry video that other scientists say shows one of the birds, saying the four-second clip does "no more than suggest the possibility" that the bird still exists.

This time of year, ducks flock by the hundreds to the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, where bands of white-tailed deer graze under a canopy of 1,000-year-old trees. Near a cypress swamp, the sun warms the autumn air, making this bottomland a paradise for wild turkeys, foraging squirrels and insects the size of kumquats.

Los Angeles authorities filed criminal charges Thursday against two men suspected of dumping an alligator named Reggie into a popular urban lake, which has been closed since last summer because the reptile has eluded capture. "The victim here is all of us," City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said as he announced the charges at 53-acre Lake Machado in the Harbor City section of Los Angeles. The recreational waterway is ringed by orange plastic-mesh fencing to keep visitors out.

Human error may have contributed to the deaths of at least six rare animals within the last three years at the National Zoo and its research facility in Virginia, in addition to those of two red pandas accidentally poisoned by pesticide and two zebras killed by hypothermia and malnutrition, according to interviews and zoo records.