A man was Friday convicted on 24 charges of possessing illegal wildlife products, including orangutan and tiger skulls, following the biggest seizure of such items in Australian history.

John Kolettas, 44, pleaded guilty after police raided his Sydney home last year and found 78 illegal products made from 24 threatened species.

The forked tailed drongo bird of Africa -- quite the trickster -- imitates multiple species' warning calls to scare off other animals and steal their food, a study published Thursday revealed.

The birds often use their own danger alert to trick their fellow bird and beast into abandoning a meal, but researchers were puzzled why animals never wise up to the false-warning scheme. 

Scientists have for the first time measured the rotation of a planet in another solar system -- a juvenile, gassy giant spinning at a breakneck 90,000 kilometers per hour, they reported on Wednesday.

Orbiting a star about 63 light years from Earth, Beta Pictoris b is more than 16 times larger and 3,000 times more massive than our planet, but its days last only eight hours.

Isle Royale National Park's inbred gray wolf population remains dangerously low for a third consecutive year, while the moose on which they feed have doubled during the same period — trends that could lead to long-term problems for the Lake Superior archipelago's ecosystems, scientists said Wednesday.

Only nine wolves roamed the park this winter — one more than the eight recorded last year, which was the lowest total since wildlife biologists began observing the relationship between Isle Royale wolves and moose in the late 1950s. The study is the world's longest of a predator-prey relationship in a closed ecosystem.

UNESCO on Thursday condemned a decision to allow the dumping of dredge waste in Great Barrier Reef waters and recommended the Australian marine park be considered for inclusion on the World Heritage in Danger list.

The decision in January to allow three million cubic metres of dredge waste to be disposed of in park waters followed a decision by the government to give the green light to a major coal port expansion for India's Adani Group on the reef coast in December.

President Barack Obama's administration scored a major victory Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court revived regulation limiting harmful emissions that blow across state lines.

A coalition of six progressive and conservative justices clinched the 6-2 vote overturning a lower court decision that a 2011 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule overstepped the agency's authority.

Researcher Leonid Moroz emerges from a dive off the Florida Keys and gleefully displays a plastic bag holding a creature that shimmers like an opal in the seawater.

This translucent animal and its similarly strange cousins are food for science. They regrow with amazing speed if they get chopped up. Some even regenerate a rudimentary brain.

Brazilian Ministers of Environment, Foreign Affairs, and Defense, and the Commander of the Navy, during the opening session of XXXVII Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Brasilia on April 28, …more

Increased tourism on the world's iciest continent and its impact on the environment were set to top discussion at an annual Antarctic Treaty meeting that began Monday in Brasilia.

Earthlings get their first solar eclipse of the year Tuesday. But you have to be well south of the equator to see it.

The solar eclipse will be visible to skygazers in Antarctica, Australia, and the southern Indian Ocean about 0600 GMT (2 a.m. EDT). It's one of two solar eclipses in 2014, when the moon lines up between Earth and the sun. This one is a rare type of annular eclipse, meaning the sun will appear as a ring around the moon.

Greenpeace on Monday sent a protest ship to meet a Russian tanker carrying the first oil drilled offshore in the environmentally fragile Arctic.

The ship, Rainbow Warrior, is captained by Peter Willcox, who was among campaigners detained by Russian authorities last year after staging a high-profile protest against Arctic drilling.