The district's governing board voted 6-0 to begin detailed talks with the company, and it budgeted money for appraisals and environmental assessments of the land.

Although the initial terms were negotiated through the governor's office, the acquisition would be done by the water management district, which oversees drainage, water supplies and Everglades restoration.

Carol Wehle, the water management district's executive director, called today "a very historic and exciting day."

Board members expressed concern about the cost of the deal and the economic impact on the communities around the lake, which would lose a major employer.

Read the rest of this article online at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The whale was euthanized on Tuesday after it became stranded in the surf that afternoon.

"We are measuring the layer of blubber to see how puny the animal was from using its reserves while in distress," said Tim Tristan, a veterinarian with the Texas State Aquarium who oversaw the necropsy of the young 8- to 10-ton male mammal.

The whale showed no physical signs of injury, such as a ship propeller gash or skin infection, and no obvious cause was found in the daylong necropsy, he said.

No one in this area has performed a necropsy on this whale species, said Tony Amos, Port Aransas coordinator of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, which coordinated the effort.

"We were surprised by the about 5-inch thickness of the blubber; it seems fairly substantial," Amos said. "But there's a lot of literature to review before we can make a specific determination (on cause of death)."

Read the rest of this article online at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Copyright 2008 WWLTV. All rights reserved.

“I saw your first report, and I also went to the web site and got more information on it, and then from there, I went out and started noticing them immediately,” said Gretna resident David Schmidt.

Schmidt seldom sees the adult apple snails, because they live below the surface of the water, but after the first Eyewitness News report about the new species being found in south Louisiana waterways, he became a man with a mission, scraping the eggs into the water to kill them. "The first pass I made out here, I knocked probably 30 pods off the pilings. Any little stick in the water, they climb up and lay their eggs on,” he said.

Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries officials report the snails are turning up in Gretna, throughout Terrytown and Belle Chasse. They say apple snails were first spotted in Gretna in 2006. After the first Eyewitness News report, callers pinpointed two-apple snail populations to Wildlife & Fisheries experts, in Gretna and in the Houma, Thibodaux and Schriever areas.

Read the rest of this article online at WWLTV.com.

Copyright 2008 Environment News Service. All rights reserved.

Oil related compounds from motor vehicles and shipping activities continue to flow into coastal waters daily, NOAA reports. These compounds, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, have been monitored by NOAA scientists for decades so baseline data exist to help define the extent of environmental degradation.

For example, PAH levels following the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay showed concentrations at the monitoring site near the spill were the highest ever recorded.

The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that some PAHs "may reasonably be expected to be carcinogens." What is of concern is that there are contaminants that continue to be problematic, including oil-related compounds from motor vehicles and shipping activities," said Gunnar Lauenstein, manager of the NOAA Mussel Watch program, which produced the report.

The longest continuous national contaminant-monitoring program in U.S. coastal waters, the Mussel Watch program analyzes chemical and biological contaminant trends in sediment and bivalve tissue collected at over 280 coastal sites from 1986 to present.

Read the rest of this article online at Environment News Service.

Copyright 2008 Texas Marine Education Association. All rights reserved.
Article by Nathan Veatch ~ Photos by Steve Alexander

Dubbed "Ila," this Kemp's Ridley sea turtle had come ashore, crossed a rock groin, and proceeded to dig a nest and deposited 109 eggs. The eggs were collected and were transported to the Padre Island National Seashore where they will be incubated until they hatch and then released.

It was determined from Ila's tags that she was one of the 1992 "Head Start" sea turtles who were reared and tagged at the Galveston NOAA Sea Turtle Facility as part of an attempt to save this endangered species. She is one of only a few of these "Head Start" turtles to have returned to nest on the Texas coast.

Ila was taken to the NOAA Sea Turtle Facility where she was examined and fitted with a satellite-tracking device. The following link provides tracking information about Ila, showing where she has traveled since her release: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=272.

Read the rest of this article online at Texas Marine Education Association.

Copyright 2008 Environment News Service. All rights reserved.

In the first study of its kind, lead author Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin-Madison modeled the effects of biofuel production on nutrient pollution in an aquatic system.

The researchers looked at the estimated amounts of land and fertilizer needed to meet future production goals for corn-based ethanol.

The new U.S. Renewable Fuels Standard, signed into law in December 2007 as part of the revised energy bill, calls for the production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels, mainly ethanol and biodiesel, annually by 2022.

Not all of those billions of gallons of biofuels will be ethanol made from corn. An estimated 21 billion gallons will come from advanced biofuels, which can be produced using a variety of new feedstocks and technologies. Of this, roughly 16 billion gallons is expected to be from cellulosic biofuels, derived from plant sources such as trees, grasses and agricultural waste.

Read the rest of this article online at Environment News Service.

Officials said another dolphin was discovered Tuesday, bringing the total to 21.

Monday’s discovery on the Bolivar Peninsula follows an unusually high number of dolphin deaths about the same time last year but may provide just as little in the way of answers.

Almost 70 dolphins washed up on Galveston County shores between Feb. 27 and March 23, 2007.

Those dolphins were badly decomposed, hampering efforts to test tissue samples. Of those tested, the results were either inconclusive or showed no abnormalities, said Blair Mase, who coordinates regional efforts involving stranded marine animals for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The dolphins found Monday are also badly decomposed, so drawing conclusions from tissue samples could again prove difficult, Mase said. Members of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network were collecting samples Monday.

Mase did not know exactly where the dolphins were found or who reported them. Efforts to reach members of the stranding network were unsuccessful.

Read the rest of this article online at HKOU.com.