A wildfire complex ignited by lightning strikes at Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida has spread to more than 4,000 acres, with only about 20 percent of the fires contained, according to park officials.

Florida panther's existence is threatened, as 30 animals died in 2014, the majority on the state's highways.

I’ve spending an awful lot of time thinking about the birds no one sees. That’s not something birders, or anyone, ponders often. We like to think about our lists, talk about the birds we’ve seen and the ones others have seen that we just missed. We don’t talk about the birds that no one ever sees, mostly because we don’t know anything about them.

Students of National Park Service history are well-familiar with the National Park Service Organic Act, particularly the section of it that reads that the agency's primary mandate is, "....to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein..." But there should be a caveat inserted, one that permits the agency to look away from that mandate.