This week's Topic in Depth focuses on a variety of themes related to endangered species around the world. The first Web site from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1) includes a searchable database of threatened and endangered species worldwide. The World Wildlife Fund International Species Programme Web site (2) details biology, habitat, and threats to a...

The second edition of the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Living Planet Report (last discussed in the October 9, 1998 Scout Report) has been placed online. The report attempts to quantify the speed at which nature is disappearing from Earth and trace human pressures on the natural environment. The first part of the report, the Living Planet Index (LPI), measures natural wealth and how it has changed...

This site is provided by the San Diego Zoo. Visitors may view real time footage of pandas at the zoo with Panda Cam, have their questions answered at the Panda Facts page, or read up on each panda with Panda Profiles. And of course, no one should miss the features devoted to panda Hua Mei, who seems to have spent nearly every minute of her life in front of a camera since her birth at the San Diego...

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced Monday that it would form a special project for protection of apes, for whom "The clock is now standing at one minute to midnight," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP. Poaching, habitat loss, and war are blamed for the serious decline in populations of apes, the group composed of gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos....