Wildlife

A federal lawsuit filed yesterday seeks to stop the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware from allowing farmers to plant genetically engineered crops at the major waterfowl sanctuary. The groups that filed the suit contend that the use of such crops on refuges is a national problem. As many as 80 others, including the Cape May National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, also have allowed genetically-engineered crops, they said. The groups, which include Delaware Audubon Society and the nonprofit Center for Food Safety, said the crops can harm wildlife, in part by killing beneficial insects.

Rolling along the sun-blazed strip of road, it's all glorious. The 81-degree breeze strokes the saw grass prairie for miles. A great blue heron stretches Jurassic wings before lurching into an infinite South Florida sky. In the bordering canal and hammocks, birds hunt, fish gather, and turtles watch their backs. Then, a behemoth appears on the horizon - a big bull alligator easily 10 feet long and 3 feet across its lolling belly. Quite a sight when you're on a raised boardwalk, or on the tram that winds through this 15-mile loop at the park's Shark Valley area.

The Trenton alligator was snared yesterday. A check of traps set by New Jersey wildlife experts at a Stacy Park pond found the four-foot-long reptile, whose presence caused a children's fishing tournament to be canceled last weekend. Apparently, chicken legs and chicken livers did the trick - along with a bigger trap, said Darlene Yuhas, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Chicken wings - "without the sauce" - didn't work a couple of weeks ago, after the first sightings, she said.

The settlement of a long-running lawsuit will allow New Jersey to buy 78 acres of open space at the Shore, while an additional 27 would be acquired with federal money moving through Congress, officials announced this week. A settlement announced yesterday ended 17 years of litigation between the state and developer East Cape May Associates, which sued after the Department of Environmental Protection declined permit requests to build on 96 oceanfront acres in Cape May. "I'm delighted that we are finally closing the book on litigation and opening a wonderland of undeveloped coastal property that serves as a refuge for birds and many other species of wildlife," Mark Mauriello, acting commissioner of the DEP, said in a statement.

The world was alerted to the dangers that birds pose to aircraft when geese crippled both engines of a US Airways jet that made an emergency landing on the Hudson River in January. But wildlife experts have known for years about the rising hazard of bird strikes and have worked to minimize risks. Airports, with open fields and grass, are particularly vulnerable to birds. Many of the nation's busiest airports are next to rivers, bays, oceans, marshes, swamps, or wildlife sanctuaries that attract birds.

Set in the wooded foothills of the Australian Alps, just 1 1/2 hours northeast of Melbourne, the cream-colored, red-roofed Marylands Country House has welcomed visitors for the last 75 years. And for most of this century, so has Dior the cat. Visiting the estate in 2004, I drove in through the six acres of gardens, parked under a giant oak, and walked up to the entrance to find the main doors opening as if by magic. There was no bellman in sight - just the delicate black-and-white shorthair lying near the motion sensor.

A new national wildlife refuge - the third in Pennsylvania - has been approved for scenic Cherry Valley in the Pocono Mountains. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service yesterday announced the designation and established a boundary that encompasses 20,466 acres of forests, wetlands, farm pastures and private homes. Within that area, mainly in Monroe County, the service can purchase land from willing sellers, or protect it through conservation easements or similar measures. Cherry Valley, just 75 miles from both Philadelphia and Manhattan, is the first national wildlife refuge to be designated in the Northeast in nearly a decade.

At the Cape May National Wildlife Refuge, situated beneath one of North America's premier migratory bird flyways, every new parcel of land is as important as the center square in a patchwork quilt. This month, 437 more acres of grasslands, salt marshes and forests were purchased by government agencies and conservation groups and added to properties that have been pieced together like scraps of fabric since 1989. The latest acquisition, along Bidwell Creek in the southern part of the refuge, expands the wildlife refuge to 11,496 acres across Dennis, Lower, Middle and Upper Townships in Cape May County.

IT ALMOST would be amusing if it were not so serious that President Bush has commenced last-minute pardons for all of his criminal friends. As you may already know, he has either pardoned or commuted the sentences of those convicted of misdeeds that include drug offenses, tax evasion, wildlife violations and embezzlement. A few months ago, when then-candidate Barack Obama spoke of "change we can believe in," who would have thought that such an example of his premise would be so necessary, to so many of the American people, so soon?

For most of her adult life, Pat Brundage's dream was to renovate an old house. As a mortgage broker, she was in the business of homes and began squirreling away money for her own place. She even knew exactly where she wanted it to be - on a little swath of land ("the island," as locals call it) between the Delaware River and the canal in Titusville, N.J. "It is a special community," says Brundage, president of the Audubon Wildlife Society in New Jersey and a member of several conservancy groups.