Wildlife Management

Go ahead, stretch out in the soft grass. It's comfortable. You're surrounded by a smorgasbord of prey. You may belong half a world away, but here in the Everglades, life is good. Except you're a Burmese python, and the state wants to hunt you down and kill you. It hasn't put a bounty on your head, but it may as well have: If caught, you're decapitated. In this moonlit world of marsh, bug and fanged danger, snake hunter Jeff Fobb is top predator.

More than 1 million pounds of carp that were threatening endangered fish have been pulled out of Utah Lake this winter, with most of it going to a farmer's fields and a nearby mink farm. The carp are being removed to save the June sucker, an endangered fish that lives only in Utah Lake and its tributaries. When carp feed on the lake bottom, they tear up vegetation that provides important places for young June suckers to hide. Wildlife officials say around 5 million pounds of carp must come out of lake each year to make enough room for the June sucker.

They look like hamsters on growth hormones, bark like dogs and swim as fast as otters -- all reasons why chiguiros, the world's largest rodents, are an object of unending fascination for zoologists and wildlife enthusiasts. But ranchers here in northeastern Colombia fail to see the attraction. They claim that the rodents, which stand knee-high to humans and weigh as much as 120 pounds, consume valuable pasture, foul drinking water and spook their horses and cows.

The wild fox population on Santa Catalina Island is so robust that biologists said Tuesday they may seek to have the small animals taken off the federal endangered species list next year.

The turtle tank at Nam Hoa Fish Market is empty, but not to worry: The manager of this bustling Chinatown store says he has plenty in back. "Big ones," he says, spreading his hands as wide as a Christmas turkey. He nods to a worker, who slides a large, waxed-cardboard box from a stack behind the counter and strips off the lid. Inside is a squirming burlap bag, from which he dumps two 15-pound softshell turtles that hit the concrete with a clop, then flail helplessly on their backs.

Researchers have concluded that female elephants living in protected environments in Asia and Africa live longer than elephants in captivity in European zoos, saying that "bringing elephants into zoos profoundly impairs their viability." The study, to be released today in the journal Science, also found that for an Asian elephant -- the more endangered of the two elephant species -- being born in a zoo or separated from its mother at an early age can mean a shorter life.

For years, controversy has swirled around the elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo. Every elephant death was scrutinized; every public hearing about the animals was filled with protesters. It's no coincidence that the largest land mammal has prompted the largest and longest-running public relations problem for the zoo. Critics contend that the zoo has never had sufficient space to keep the lumbering behemoths.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will round up fewer wild horses and try to shuffle funds within the agency to hold off killing large numbers of the animals to control herds and spiraling costs. Deputy Director Henri Bisson said maintaining the wild horse and burro program for another year would allow a search for possible solutions and let "cooler heads prevail." About 33,000 roam the open range in 10 Western states.

Beavers that took up residence in a downtown creek here are staying put despite a noisy three-week construction project to shore up the bank near their lodge, relieved beaver supporters say. The eight beavers that live in Alhambra Creek near the city center have been spotted entering and leaving their lodge at dusk, even though workers drove 25-foot-long metal sheet piles into the ground a few feet from their burrow.

Pulling into the parking lot on West Campus Drive at Cal State Long Beach, Dorothy Burstein figured that the cats would recognize the rumble of her Honda Accord. If that didn't perk up their ears, the sound of her popping open the car trunk surely would. "That means food," she said. Burstein is a volunteer with a small nonprofit group that for the last 10 years has been quietly feeding the dozens of feral cats that live on the fringe of the university campus.