Free Republic

Honeybees will die out in Britain within a decade as virulent diseases and parasites spread through the nation's hives, experts have warned. Whole colonies of bees are already being wiped out, with current methods of pest control unable to stop the problem. The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) said that if the crisis continued, honeybees would disappear completely from Britain by 2018, causing "calamitous" economic and environmental problems. It called on the Government to restart shelved research programmes and to fund new ones to try to save the insects. Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and...

MARSHALL, Calif. (AP) - One of California's rarest plants was nearly wiped out of existence when Marin County workers used a backhoe to clear a plugged roadside drain in the species' sole habitat. The Baker's larkspur, a purplish plant that blooms April through May and grows up to 2-feet tall, is found in only one place in the world: near a a drain along the Marshall-Petaluma Road in western Marin County. Last October, heavy rain pushed debris down a hillside into the culvert, backing it up and flooding the road. When county crews came out to clear the roadside drain...

Mary Wiper, the leader of the Sierra Club in New Mexico, died Sunday after being struck by lightning while hiking with friends in Breckenridge, Colo. "This accident— it's just about as random as anything nature can serve up," said Lawson LeGate, the senior Southwest region representative for the Sierra Club and Wiper's boss. Wiper, 28, and two others were struck during a thunderstorm. The other two regained consciousness but were unable to revive Wiper. Wiper took over last May as Sierra Club's associate field representative for the Southwest. She oversaw projects in New Mexico, including the Sierra Club's participation in...