HABITAT DAMAGE CATEGORIES
High - main trunk pushed over and/or uprooted
Medium - damage to the main trunk (not pushed over) and more than 50% of branches and foliage damaged
* Low - no damage to the main trunk and minimal damage to branches and foliage
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"They will do everything from digging with their front legs, pulling up grass to knocking down big trees. So they actually change the shape of the landscape."

He added that elephants' digestive system was not very good at processing many of the seeds that they eat.
"As the faeces are also a great fertiliser, the elephants are also able to rejuvenate the landscape by transporting seeds elsewhere," Dr Schulte told BBC News.

"Eighteen herpetofaunal (amphibians and reptiles) species... were sampled in areas of high elephant damage. Medium damage areas were comprised of 12 species, while areas of low damage had 11 species.
"The control site (fenced area) had the lowest species richness with only eight species."

"She can cover some ground," he said. "She walks 2, 3 miles an hour. So, in a single day she can potentially walk 10 miles easily."
Robin said this is typical of Sulcata tortoises, which are native to North African deserts.
"She was seen by several people in Brighton. They put her in a field, believing she was wild," he added.
Even more stunning, Lucy briefly found her way back home.
"She followed her scent all the way from Brighton back to our house," Sheila Rockley said.
Alas, the couple was out of town when Lucy crawled up.
"There was no one there to let her in. So she walked over to the neighbor's house, where a new family was moving in," Sheila said.
"A mover saw her, picked her up and took her to his house," she said. "The mover's wife said that she didn't want her. So he went and dropped Lucy off at a pond in Lafayette."
But Lucy, not being a water-loving turtle, wasn't thrilled with pond life.
She's likes people -- and food.
"She walked over to the Lafayette feed store, because she's very, very smart. She's like, 'I'm not eating this outdoor crap,'" Sheila said.

The croc had been hidden in a passenger's sports bag - allegedly with plans to sell it - but it tore loose and ran amok, sparking panic.

A stampede of terrified passengers caused the small aircraft to lose balance and tip over in mid-air during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The unbalanced load caused the aircraft, on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu, to go into a spin and crash into a house.

A lone survivor from the Let 410 plane told the astonishing tale to investigators.

Ironically the crocodile also survived the crash but was later killed with a machete by rescuers sifting through the wreckage.

But over the years, Timberline has spent time, effort and more than $100,000 to protect Cheat Mountain salamanders living adjacent to the ski trail, as part of a mitigation effort for habitat loss that occurred when the trail was cleared, opening the forest canopy, back in the early1980s.

Timberline is the only ski area in the Mid-Atlantic area to operate on U.S. Forest Service land, although only about 40 acres of Monongahela National Forest property is crossed by the ski trail, according to Tom Blanzy, the resort's mountain manager. The first major turn on Timberline's Salamander run is known as Government Curve by the resort's staff, since it marks the point where the trail enters federal property.
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This year, the resort completed its most ambitious mitigation project, designed in cooperation with Monongahela National Forest environmental biologist Terri Evans. A 20-head sprinkler system that simulates an inch of natural rainfall over a four-hour period showers a five-acre chunk of known salamander habitat twice a week.

The three new species, dubbed Callulina laphami, C. shengena, and C. stanleyi, were discovered by an international group of scientists, including Tanzanian scientists. Dwelling in forest habitat, Callulina frogs spend their days hidden away in trees or under the leaf litter; at dusk they climb into the trees where they spend the night before descending again to the ground.

The researchers recommend that each of the frogs be categorized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List as Critically Endangered, given their incredibly small ranges: C. shengena has the largest habitat of the three at 13.5 square miles (35 square kilometers) and C. stanleyi the smallest at 3.7 square miles (9.7 square kilometers). The remaining habitats are threatened by forest clearing due to agriculture.

Crews did not find any dead Eastern hellbender salamanders, an endangered species that lives in Captina Creek, Shelton said. They found and relocated three hellbenders to uncontaminated parts of the creek.
But Lipps, who studies hellbenders, thinks the relocated salamanders won't survive.
"Hellbenders live under giant rocks. You don't find them in the middle of the stream," he said. "The only reason (the crews) found these hellbenders is because they were dying."
Murray Energy will pay cleanup costs and fines assessed for each animal that was killed, Shelton said.
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This was the sixth large spill blamed on the company in the past decade.
In 2000, the company paid a $100,000 fine for a spill. In 2005, the company paid a $50,000 fine after slurry polluted 2,300 feet of the creek and killed thousands of fish. In 2008, a plume from a spill reached the Ohio River. The EPA is continuing to investigate that spill.
"This is like the drunk driver that keeps hitting kids in the crosswalk, yet the state keeps giving him his license back," said Jack Shaner of the Ohio Environmental Council, an advocacy group.

She was taken illegally from a New York stream and then resurfaced at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The poacher turned Helen in himself, but was uncooperative as to where he got her. The Ohio DNR determined her origin because Helen had been tagged by the New York Department Of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
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Penny Danielewicz of the Buffalo Zoo said, "If you have a decreasing amount of amphibians in a stream or wetland, you should really pay attention to that because it's our water, too. What's affecting them ultimately may affect us as well."

Though the hellbender may not be the most beautiful creature around, it's unique nature and importance to the environment make it one worth fighting for.

Of the more than 25,000 eggs that were relocated, 14,676 successfully hatched and were released into the Atlantic Ocean, he said. That means more than half of them hatched — in fact, nearly six out of 10 made it into oil-free water.

"We do feel it was a success that we got that number of hatchlings into the sea," said Patricia Behnke, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "Of course, what happens to them after that, we don't know. But we never do."

"These guys are about two or three years old," said Dr. Jeff Schmid, Environmental Research Manager at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

The turtles were rescued off the coast of Louisiana, cleaned up at a lab there, then rehabilitated at Seaworld. On Thursday, biologists brought them to Collier and released them near the 10,000 Islands.

"The most logical site is to release them where Kemp's are known to occur in the wild," said Dr. Schmid. "The resources are there, the food, and the habitat for them to survive and thrive."

This was the 6th release in Collier since the spill.

Scientists examining dead animals that were discovered along the Gulf Coast in the wake of the BP oil spill are observing strict laboratory protocols, knowing everything they touch could become evidence in what may prove to be the biggest environmental case in U.S. history.

Like detectives on a murder case, government scientists — and outside experts under contract to the government — are using CSI-style techniques to determine whether the oil is to blame for the wildlife deaths.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether those responsible for the spill violated environmental laws that carry civil and sometimes criminal penalties, and the scientists are taking extraordinary steps to make sure their findings hold up in court.

"What we want to do is to make sure that the findings and the results we get aren't called into question in court based on chain of custody or other legal issues," said Dr. Michael Ziccardi, a veterinarian. "We're treating oiled wildlife response like a crime scene."

Justice Department spokeswoman Hannah August declined to comment on the investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder said in June that the government will prosecute violations of such laws as the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act.

One by one, the 10 baby saltwater crocodiles poked their noses through their eggshells and started hatching.

Walkowich and Reptile Curator Kevin Torregrosa helped them by peeling away some of the eggshell.

Torregrosa helps the hatchlings out of the shells because, "the eggs in the wild would naturally deteriorate because of the soil they're incubated in. We try to recreate that here, but we can't really do it. So because of that the eggs can be a little harder."

Walkowich laughed as one of the tiny crocs sat in her hand with its toothy mouth open. "He looks just like his father," Walkowich chuckled, "with his mouth wide open!"