A survey of the Iriomote cat, believed to number fewer than a hundred in 1994, is offering evidence that the cat's already small population is shrinking, experts warn.

A recent UN report says that Afghanistan now accounts for 93 percent of the world's production of opium, the raw material for heroin.

Evidence that ancient organisms in permafrost stay just barely alive suggests that similar life might exist in the frozen soils of distant worlds, a new study says.

Two golf-oriented developments may create a water shortage that irreversibly damages the rare and teeming Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, researchers say.

The financial and environmental costs of exploiting fuel reserves under the seabed might outweigh potential gain, experts say.

See a roundup of this week's news: New neutron star discovered, German police test gyrocopter, Egyptians seek sand treatment, and more.

Hurricane Dean caused 20 deaths and billions of dollars of damage in Mexico and Jamaica-and may be a harbinger of additional powerful storms, forecasters say.

Despite its new "critically endangered" status, the Okinawa dugong might see even more of its habitat destroyed due to a U.S. airbase expansion, conservationists warn.

After ravaging the Yucatán Peninsula, the hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico and made second Mexican landfall with 100-mile-an-hour (160-kilometer-an-hour) winds.

The first Category 5 storm to make landfall in 15 years, Dean is expected to cause catastrophic damage as it crosses the Yucatan Peninsula.

The sea ice is melting much faster than computer models predicted, and may be gone altogether by 2030, experts say—prompting talk of a tipping point.

Refugee cattlemen in a popular Uganda reserve are poisoning predators to protect their livestock, government officials say—but the cattlemen claim otherwise.

Satellite imagery and scenes of destruction illustrate the first chapter of the storm's story as it heads for Mexico and the U.S.

Vampire bats in Latin America are turning their fangs on cattle as rain forest is being cleared to make way for livestock, new research shows.

Some 2,000 animals are undertaking a great migration—by truck—to repopulate a national park devastated by crime and poaching.