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Australia's Northern Territory is home to the cunning, powerful and deadly saltwater crocodile — the world's largest. And in the territory's capital, Darwin, the crocodile is both feared and beloved.

Back from near-extinction, the gray wolf will soon be removed from the endangered species list. Now, Wyoming has struck a deal with the federal government to allow trophy hunting of the predator in certain parts of the state. But the move has drawn the ire of environmentalists.

What if a dinosaur was found in Africa? Would you consider it worthy of conservation? If so, why — and why not a horseshoe crab species that's even older? That's what photographer Piotr Naskrecki wants to know.

After years of trying, Russian scientists say they have drilled into an Antarctic lake that is buried beneath more than two miles of ice. They are looking for signs of life that haven't been exposed to sky in 20 million years.

Russian researchers in Antarctica are on the verge of piercing a hole through two miles of ice into an ancient lake, untouched by the light of day for some 20 million years. But it'll be a delicate process to break through without disturbing the pristine waters. Guest host David Green speaks with Antarctic researcher John Priscu about the process.

Sturgeon have been swimming around for more than 200 million years, but their eggs are sought after for caviar. This week, the National Marine Fisheries Service placed the Atlantic sturgeon on its endangered species list. Guest host David Greene speaks with Dr. Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University.

A new map from the USDA has some northern gardeners hoping to grow plants that used to be considered too fragile for cold weather zones. The hardiness zone chart is about a half zone warmer than the last one issued in 1990. The USDA says the changes are not due to global warming, but to more sophisticated mapping methods. Seed sellers and buyers say that, whatever the reason, the warmer temperatures expand possibilities for planting this spring.

For snow fans in the contiguous US, this winter has left much to be desired. The warm and mild season in the lower 48 and the wild snow dumps and cold weather up north in Alaska can be blamed largely on a weather pattern called "arctic oscillation." Audie Cornish gets an explanation of the weather phenomenon from meteorologist Jeffrey Masters.

Researchers counted more than 5,000 ticks to calculate the risk of Lyme disease in the Eastern U.S. Turns out the risk is high in the Northeast and nearly zero in the South.

A new study wants to rectify beef's image as an environmental miscreant. It says modern beef production is a lot kinder to the environment than it was 30 years ago.

Burmese pythons have been slithering around south Florida for decades, but scientists now say the invasive constrictors are so bad, they're eating their way through the swamps. The snakes have decimated populations of mammals like raccoons, possums and white-tailed deer.

At current rates of overfishing, jack mackerel stocks in the southern Pacific could collapse soon, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reports.

A niche industry of tour companies is taking people into wolves' habitat at Yellowstone National Park. Montana Public Radio's Dan Boyce went on an expedition with a man who recognizes the problems wolves bring to the landscape even as he makes his living off of them.

This week's Please Explains is the second in our series on how to save the world—ways to approach complex global problems such as climate change, food supply, garbage disposal, the global water supply, and violence. Today we're looking at the population explosion—there are now 7 billion people on the planet. We're joined by Hania Zlotnik, director of the population Division at the Department of Economics and Social Affairs at the United Nations, and Dr.Joel E. Cohen, mathematical biologist and the head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, and author of How Many People Can the Earth Support?

We're kicking off a series of Please Explains on how to save the world—ways to approach complex global problems such as climate change, food supply, garbage disposal, population control, and violence. Today's topic is how to protect the world's water supply. Upmanu Lall, Director of the Columbia Water Center, and Sandra Postel, founder of the Global Water Policy Project and National Geographic Freshwater Fellow join us to discuss the state of fresh water around the globe.

Gernot Wagner, economist at the Environmental Defense Fund explains why the things individuals do—buying local produce, eating less meat, bringing reusable bags to the grocery store—won’t end up making much of a difference in halting global warming. Instead he argues that economics will. In But Will The Planet Notice: How Smart Economics Can Save the World he puts the onus for curbing global climate change on smarter economics, not science, politics, or activism.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service recently announced that White Nose Syndrome has killed more than 5.7 million bats in North America. Mylea Bayless, of Bat Conservation International, gives us an update on what’s happening to bat populations and efforts to save them.

On Wednesday the Obama administration denied a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project. TransCanada, the company behind the proposal, hopes to build a 1,700 mile pipeline that will carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries lining the Gulf Coast along Texas. Although it will cost $ 7 billion to build, TransCanada claims the project will create ten of thousands of jobs. Environmentalist are most concerned about the water supply in ecologically sensitive in Nebraska's Sand Hills region, which TransCanada claims it has addressed by creating a new proposal that circumvents the Sand Hills.

The Atlantic sturgeon has been around for more than 85 million years, but years of overfishing, habitat loss, and warming ocean temperatures have pushed the species to the brink of extinction. OnEarth contributing editor Bruce Stutz talks about the efforts to save the sturgeon.

Small Planet Institute co-founders, Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe, argue that it isn't physical challenges like climate change that threten us the most, but how we think about them. Frances, author of Diet for a Small Planet, also discusses her new book EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want.