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Monster black bear killed by combine
A huge hibernating male black bear was killed Nov. 26 in northern Dunn County when it was hit by a combine.
Read complete story from Wisconsin's The Dunn County News

Dog clings to life and saves another
Even with some of the fanciest technology around — and an owner who loved him enough to pay for it — the veterinarians thought Clyde, a burly, loose-jointed Labrador retriever, would be long dead by now. If the cancer had gotten him, Gloria Mitchell might be dead, too.
Read complete story from North Carolina's The News & Observer

Safe from hunters, deer found locked inside vacant building
It was the last day of shotgun season for deer hunting and the state forest was the place to be to bag a buck before the sun went down. Or a land bank property. Or a private estate, for those with permission. No hunter would have thought to look inside the old Edgartown School, where one deer was either smart enough or lucky enough to avoid the business end of a shotgun.
Read complete story from Massachusetts' Vineyard Gazette

U.S. proposes protecting 7 penguin species
Seven penguin species have reason to have happy feet: The Bush administration is moving to protect them. But three other types of penguin — including the stars of recent movies — got the cold shoulder. The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list six species of penguin as threatened species and one — the African penguin — as an endangered species.
Read complete story from Connecticut's The News-Times

Kempthorne says Salazar will make fine Interior secretary
President-elect Barack Obama's choice for Interior Secretary, Colorado Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, brought wide praise from both environmentalists and industry. But some environmentalists are disappointed Obama chose a westerner who won't dramatically change the policies of President George Bush and the current secretary Dirk Kempthorne. The former Idaho governor, said Salazar will be a fine secretary.
Read complete story from the Idaho Statesman

Doomed Ohio deer's head stuck in plastic bucket
A deer living behind an Ohio home has gotten its head stuck in a plastic container, and the the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has no plans to help it.
Read complete story from Cleveland.com

Impacts have hunters howling
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials in Northwest Montana are hearing from many hunters concerned about the rapid growth of packs and wolf numbers and an obvious decline in white-tailed deer populations. Regional Wildlife Manager Jim Williams said staffers at six game check stations heard plenty about wolves, particularly from hunters who were passing through the "no game" lanes.
Read complete story from Montana's The Daily Inter Lake

Mont., fed gov't loosen rules on Yellowstone bison
State and federal officials have agreed to allow bison to migrate into parts of Montana from Yellowstone National Park — a move expected to slow but not stop an annual slaughter of the animals. The agreement carves out two areas next to Yellowstone where bison can winter, ending a long-standing stalemate on the issue. That means at least some bison leaving the park could avoid a widely criticized slaughter program meant to guard against transmissions of a disease, brucellosis, to cattle.
Read complete story from Connecticut's The News-Times

Feds say N.J.'s wayward dolphins doing just fine
A panel of federal wildlife experts says New Jersey's wayward dolphins are just fine where they are. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration held a teleconference Wednesday to reassure those concerned that plunging temperatures would cause the 12 bottlenose dolphins to freeze to death in the rivers.
Read complete story from Connecticut's The News-Times

Nev. woman injured by mountain lion
A Virginia City Highlands woman is recovering for minor injuries suffered from a wildlife attacks, Storey County Sheriff's Office deputies said in a release. The attack happened near Calaveras Road on Geiger Summit. The animal in question is believed to be a young mountain lion. The victim heard a commotion in her yard, which she believed involved her dog. Upon checking, she found her dog embroiled in a confrontation with the cat. The injuries sustained are believed to have come from the cat swatting at her, not from a bite. The dog also suffered minor injuries.
Read complete story from the Nevada Appeal

Obama interior secretary nominee Ken Salazar grounded in land issues
Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), a Western Latino with deep grounding in water and land issues, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead the Interior Department. Two senior Democrats confirmed that Obama will name Salazar to the post, rounding out an energy and environmental policy team introduced Monday at a Chicago news conference. The Senate's confirmation of Salazar would likely put the brakes on several controversial Interior Department decisions on energy development.
Read complete story from the Chicago Tribune

Protected habitat proposed for sea otter in Alaska
A federal agency proposed nearly 6,000 square miles of southwest Alaska shoreline be protected habitat for a threatened population of northern sea otters. About 90 percent of northern sea otters live in coastal Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands population was declared threatened three years ago under the Endangered Species Act.
Read complete story from South Carolina's The Post and Courier

Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field
Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun's violent blasts, researchers reported Tuesday. The discovery was made last summer by Themis, a fleet of five small NASA satellites.
Read complete story from South Carolina's The Post and Courier

Over 2T tons of ice melted in arctic since '03
More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.
Read complete story from South Carolina's The Post and Courier

Rare N.M. fish to swim free in Texas
Biologists braved the cold and snow as they loaded thousands of endangered minnows into trucks for a 12-hour trip to Texas, where the tiny fish will be released into the Rio Grande near Big Bend National Park.
Read complete story from South Carolina's The Post and Courier

Scientist says he has found oldest spider web
The tiny tangled threads of the world's oldest spider web have been found encased in a prehistoric piece of amber, a British scientist said Monday. Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier said the 140-million-year-old webbing provides evidence that arachnids had been ensnaring their prey in silky nets since the dinosaur age.
Read complete story from South Carolina's The Post and Courier

In Berlin's boar war, some side with hogs
Thousands of wild, tusked ancestors of domestic pigs have discovered the charms of urban living in Germany's capital city. Some humans are happy to coexist, while others see the boars as a pest that should be eliminated.
Read complete story from the Wall Street Journal

Amarillo boy, 10, spends day with McCoy, Shipley
Brock Mooneyham was excited to watch Saturday's Heisman Trophy presentation on television. And why not? How many 10-year-old fourth-graders get to spend a day hunting deer and having half his steak dinner gobbled up by one of the three Heisman candidates?
Read complete story from Texas' Amarillo.com

Listen to McCoy talk about football, hunting

More than 1,000 species discovered in Mekong: WWF
Scientists have discovered more than 1,000 species in Southeast Asia's Greater Mekong region in the past decade, including a spider as big as a dinner plate, the World Wildlife Fund said Monday. A rat thought to have become extinct 11 million years ago and a cyanide-laced, shocking pink millipede were among creatures found in what the group called a "biological treasure trove".
Read complete story from Yahoo! News

Hunting group wants bird license plate
A hummingbird cupping its wings graces one of Tennessee's latest proposed specialty license plates. What's not said in the plea for support is that the sponsor is a longtime hunting and fishing advocacy group. While the Tennessee Wildlife Federation actively backs conservation of non-game species, such as hummingbirds, much of its lobbying and programs are tied to hunting and fishing.
Read complete story from Nashville's The Tennessean

Geist duck-hunting battle simmers
Aside from the occasional sound of gunfire, all was quiet Sunday at Geist Reservoir, but a dispute between duck and goose hunters and residents simmered under the surface. Residents who live in upscale homes on the Marion County side of Geist have complained that a duck-hunting ordinance that took effect last year is not being regulated, 6News' Sarah Cornell reported.
Read complete story from Indianapolis' TheIndyChannel.com

One fish, two fish: Angler lands pair of bass at once
Given the abundance and variety of fish in South Florida, anglers never know what they might pull out of a local lake or canal. Sometimes, they get a lot more than they expected. Lukas Volpe of Southwest Ranches had a two-for-one special fishing in a neighborhood canal.
Read complete story from Florida's SunSentinel.com

Wardens arrest men for illegal deer trapping, sale
Game wardens in the Special Operations Unit of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Law Enforcement Division have arrested six men and executed two search warrants as part of Operation Texas Shuffle, a year-long investigation into the black market deer trade in Texas.
Read complete story from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Web site

Wolves may be delisted — again — this week
The Bush administration could remove wolves from the federal endangered species list this week, an official said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had previously announced its intention to delist gray wolves in the Northern Rockies by the end of this year.
Read complete story from Wyoming's Star-Tribune

Almanac: Duck stamp sales won't reach 100,000 for 1st time in 20 years
The trend is disturbing. For the first time in 20 years, Minnesota has sold fewer than 100,000 state duck stamps. The Department of Natural Resources has sold 95,467 licenses in 2008, and the duck season is over. Last year, it sold 100,134. In 1999, it sold 128,000.
Read complete story from Minneapolis-St. Paul's StarTribune.com

Nearly frozen sea turtle heading to rehab
His name is Herb, and he was very, very cold when he was found on a Cape Cod beach. The 75-pound loggerhead sea turtle was discovered by volunteers from the Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary at Wellfleet Bay and was taken to the New England Aquarium in Boston for a slow but steady warmup.
Read complete story from AllAroundPhilly.com

Seeds of hope: Freezing vaults guard Earth's flora
The underground bunker can block nuclear fallout, withstand a direct hit by a jetliner, and is cooled to a deathly chill. The ultramodern facility in the tranquil English countryside looks like a perfect lab for a James Bond villain, but it doesn't hide anything sinister. The only thing kept here are seeds, lots of them — more than a billion, in fact.
Read complete story from AllAroundPhilly.com

Rower rescued off Australia after 10-month journey
An Italian adventurer who spent 10 months rowing more than 9,500 nautical miles (18,000 kilometers) across the Pacific was rescued a mere 65 nautical miles short of his goal - Australia - after rough weather sapped him of his final shreds of energy.
Read complete story from Texas' The Monitor