Tom Smylie / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Ocelots, nocturnal cats that can weigh up to 30 pounds, have been nearly wiped out in the U.S., with just 100 or so still living in the wild.

How did a pro baseball pitcher (Josh Beckett of the L.A. Dodgers), ocelots and a natural gas pipeline builder make it into the same news headline? They’re all part of a lawsuit filed by Beckett after the company used eminent domain to clear land on his 7,000-acre hunting ranch in south Texas.

Beckett alleges the company, Eagle Ford Midstream, violated the Endangered Species Act by clearing land that was habitat for the ocelot, of which only 100 are thought to be left in the wild in the U.S. 

On Wednesday, two Beckett companies filed a restraining order against Eagle Ford from continuing work inside the ranch.

That followed a lawsuit filed Tuesday that states "multiple big cat tracks" were photographed there as recently as June and that Beckett saw ocelots as recently as last November, MySanAntonio.com reported. 

Eagle Ford engaged in "willful destruction" by clearing land after a notice of intent to sue was filed in August, according to the lawsuit by Beckett Ventures Inc and Hall of Fame Land Ventures LP.

Beckett also claimed Eagle Ford was urged to choose a shorter, direct path rather than the diagonal swath that was cleared. 

Ocelots are protected in Texas and at the federal level. A company found to have destroyed habitat could face fines and be forced to do mitigation work.

Eagle Ford did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment, but it filed a response with the court Wednesday, arguing that hunting on the ranch posed a greater threat than their pipeline.

Beckett owns the Herradura Ranch in LaSalle County and runs a hunting lodge out of the premises. "The Herradura has offered superb dove, quail and trophy whitetail (deer) for over a decade," its website states.

Eagle Ford, in its court response, alleged that "the protection of the ocelot was merely a sham to leverage additional money from (Eagle Ford) in exchange for an easement." 

A state court earlier this month denied Beckett's similar request to halt the project, the company added.

It also noted that e-mails it received from Beckett's lawyers in April made no mention of ocelots and instead requested an alternative route because of the impact on an irrigation system and the ranch's hunting business.

Eagle Ford's environmental consultant earlier determined the land "does not exhibit the necessary density, coverage or structure generally described for potential ocelot habitat," adding that the nearest known population of ocelots was 120 miles away in Kenedy County.

Based on that information, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined no further action was required. 

Nocturnal wild cats that can weigh up to 30 pounds, ocelots prefer dense shrub habitat. While abundant in Central and South America, ocelots in the U.S. have been reduced to an estimated 100 in Texas and Arizona.

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A key ocelot habitat in Texas has been the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but "more than 95 percent of the dense thorn scrub habitat (there) ... has been converted to agriculture, rangelands, or urban land uses," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted in its plan to help the species recover.

Other problems facing the Texas and Arizona population, the service added, include inbreeding, border fences separating the natural range that goes into Mexico, and ocelots becoming roadkill.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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In Portage, Utah, they're everywhere: on children, on dogs, in the food, in basements and along window sills. Residents there and in much of Utah are used to seeing these visitors, known as boxelder bugs, but not in the numbers that this year has produced.

"They've just been awful this fall," Keith Wadman told NBC station KSL-TV. "They're in your food, they're in your house ... they just crawl everywhere."

"They're in the kitchen, they're in the bathroom, they're in the bedroom. They walk right on the dogs even," added Lisa Bryant, one of the few hundred residents of Portage, a town near the Idaho state line.

"Every time the kids come in, we play a little game to see how many they have on them," said Nick Tree, "then we kill 'em."

Tree added that while he constantly vacuums them from his basement, "somehow they creep back in."

Diane Alston, a bug expert at Utah State University, had some advice for terminating the bugs until the winter cold does it for them.

"At my house I like to use an insecticidal soap product and just spray it up on the sides of the house," she told KSL. "That soap will break down the wax covering on their body and dry them out."

The university also has a list of tips for dealing with boxelder bugs, among them: "Avoid squishing adults because they can leave a stain on fabrics and can release a foul odor."

The university suspects this year has been particularly bad because of wet weather last year, a mild winter and then a warm summer.

As you might expect, boxelder bugs are a hot topic not just in Portage but across Utah. KSL reader comments on the story included these:

• One suggested using the dead bugs as garden fertilizer. "Sounds a little grotesque, but hey, maybe it would be a good solution for some folks."
• Deploying chickens to eat live bugs was suggested by a few readers. "We have had a dozen free-range chickens for years and NEVER see one," posted a reader.
• A mix of water and dishwater soap to kill them was endorsed by several. "I used 3 spray bottles full and soon we had snow-shovels full of dead bugs to dump in the garbage," one reader stated.
• "I think I perpetuated the problem by bringing about 20 plus back in the crevices of my car from the Idaho side of Cache valley," lamented another reader. "It's not cool when you're driving and they pop out at you in the car. This is the first year however that they have gotten inside our house."
• And from nearby Rose Canyon, a reader had this to say: "They are bad here!! You can't even tell the color of my house during the day."

Wadman, the Portage resident, did see a silver lining. "The only redeeming quality they have," he said of the bugs, "is that they don't bite."

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Jeff Burrell / Wildlife Conservation Society

Pronghorn cross a new overpass on Wyoming's U.S. 191.

The fastest land animal in the U.S. now has safe passage across a Wyoming highway -- extending a seasonal migration that's been going on for 6,000 years.

Pronghorn antelope have started using two overpasses atop Highway 191 that were completed this fall, the Wildlife Conservation Society announced this week. Eight-foot high fencing channels the animals to the crossing points.

“The importance of these overpasses and their use by pronghorn cannot be overstated,” Joel Berger, a Wildlife Conservation Society scientist, said in a statement announcing the first successful crossings. “They eliminate the danger of collisions and will help to preserve a spectacular element of our natural heritage -- the longest mammal migration in the 48 contiguous United States.”

The group has been tracking pronghorn in the area and provided data for Wyoming to decide where to put the overpasses.

The entire $10 million project includes six underpasses used by deer, moose, elk and other animals. Pronghorn got the overpasses because they don't like going into tunnels.

The eight passages are along a 13-mile stretch of Highway 191. The state's aim was to reduce car-wildlife crashes -- from 2002 and 2006, 49 deer and three pronghorn were killed in crashes. 

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Able to run at speeds up to 70 mph, pronghorn probably numbered around 35 million in North America two centuries ago, the Wildlife Conservation Society stated. Today, Wyoming is home to more than half of the estimated 700,000 pronghorn left in North America. 

The pronghorn use the corridor to get back and forth between winter sagebrush in the Upper Green River Basin and summer grounds in Grand Teton National Park.

Several hundred make the 93-mile migration each season -- and now they have the chance to do it without stopping at Highway 191. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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From the Dakotas to Oklahoma, city folks are more often seeing, and sometimes smelling, a varmint not much welcome in their parts. Skunks, it turns out, are showing up in more places these days, thanks to the drought covering most of the U.S.

In South Dakota, the city of Aberdeen has set all its skunk traps and could use more -- if it had them.

"It's been my life here for the last month or so," animal control officer John Weaver told AberdeenNews.com. Weaver normally catches two skunks a month, but over the last three weeks, he has already netted 13.

"From everything people are telling me, and what I've discussed with other folks who are in the animal control business, it has to do with the drought," Weaver added. "Farmers are cutting things down, so the skunks are looking for food and water and are coming to town for that."

A veterinarian urged residents to make sure pets are vaccinated, because skunks can carry rabies.

"There isn't a monster invasion of rabid skunks or anything like that," said Tim Sahli. "It's just a concern, and if we stay on top of it, it won't be a problem."

In North Dakota, a golf course that has seen greens damaged by skunks trapped 13 skunks in just one month -- using marshmallows as bait.

"We thought we'd catch one or two and that would be about it," Hillcrest Municipal Golf Course Superintendent Marlyn Bertsch told ValleyNewsLive.com.

"In the past we never really noticed any out here," he said of the course in Jamestown. "You could smell 'em every once in a while, but never had any damage."

In Oklahoma, a self-styled "Skunk Whisperer" has been busy trying to rid backyards of skunks.

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

Striped skunks like this one are native to much of the Midwest, where drought has made them much more visible.

"They have three things that they want: food, water, shelter," Ned Breuha told NewsOn6.com. "And when they can't get one of those things, they go to greener pastures," like the backyards.

"This is a green, green pasture," he said of the yard he was working in when interviewed.

Breuha said some property owners try to trap the skunks themselves, then release them in other areas. One of those has been at Oklahoma City's Lake Hefner, where residents are complaining of a skunk spike.

"I saw a skunk twice, two days apart ... leaving from my rose garden," said Arthur Bay, who has lived at the lake for 43 years and never before seen a skunk. "He's not welcome."

Related: 2012 likely to be warmest year on record in US
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Lake Hefner Golf Club was seeing about a dozen skunks every morning until it hired a trapper.

"He trapped 60 skunks" over three weeks, said club employee Daniel Mills, "and we still have skunks."

Anyone coming across an aggressive skunk should shoot it in the body so the head can be tested for rabies, South Dakota's state epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger told SiouxCityJournal.com.

"We don’t want hunters just going out and blasting skunks, and we don’t want road kill," Kightlinger said.

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Arizona Game and Fish Dept.

This orphaned black bear cub was found inside a home in southeast Arizona on Thursday.

A hungry, orphaned black bear cub that entered an Arizona home -- eating chocolate cake before being discovered by the awakened homeowners -- has been sent to a local zoo, according to wildlife officials who called 2012 a "difficult" one for southeast Arizona bears due to wildfires and drought.

Arizona Game and Fish Department officers on Thursday responded to a call of a black bear inside a home in the Sonoita area, the agency said in a statement.

"Homeowners awoke to find a bear cub had entered their home through an open kitchen window and eaten some chocolate cake," the agency stated. "Since there was no sign of an adult bear in the area, Game and Fish removed the cub and transferred the orphaned bear to the Heritage Park Zoo in Prescott."

Since the cub is too young to fend for itself in the wild, it's expected to become part of a future zoo exhibit.

"This year has proved difficult for bears in southeastern Arizona," the agency added. "The combination of last year’s fires and ongoing drought has resulted in a scarcity of natural food sources."

The agency posted a photo of the bear cub on its Facebook page, along with a warning. "Remember: Bears have an incredibly keen sense of smell even from long distances and human food is very attractive to them!" it said.

Arizona has an estimated 2,500 black bears, the only bear species found in the state. 

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STANWOOD, Wash. -- Cougar sightings are concerning neighbors of a city north of Seattle, Wash., including one woman who lost her two dogs.

“My heart is broken, I don’t want anyone to feel that way, it hurts,” Suzanne Karelsen told NBC station KING5 after her family lost the dogs over two weeks in Stanwood.

Others have reported missing pets and many fear the cougars are responsible.

Karelsen said she called wildlife officials but that no one has come to investigate.

“It’s very frustrating. All I wanted them to do is acknowledge this, maybe come and check the area,” said Karelsen.

The local county has only three people available to investigate incidents like this, said Sgt. Jennifer Maurstad.

Due to budget cuts and limited staffing, it needs proof there’s a sighting.

“Often times it’s a cat, it’s a dog. So just to weed through that process and save time we will normally only respond if it’s a confirmed sighting,” said Maurstad.

Julie Goforth said she came within 300 feet of a cougar. “He literally looked right at me,” she told KING5.

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A Virginia man found dead in his home, surrounded by 24 caged snakes, died of complications from a snakebite, the state's medical examiner's office concluded.

Chesterfield resident Jack Redmond, 70, was found dead with bite marks that appeared to be from a Chinese palm viper on a finger, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Friday.

While poisonous, that snake is not typically deadly, but experts said Redmond's age and health -- he was battling prostate cancer and taking medications for that -- might have played a role.

"It's not simply a black-and-white issue, whether you're going to live or you're going to die if you're bit by the snake," J.D. Kleopfer, a state game and fisheries officials, told the Times-Dispatch. "A person's age and their health — those are other factors that kind of come into play, along with the location of the bite."

Redmond probably could have survived had he been treated soon after he was bitten, added Dr. Ruddy Rose, director of the Virginia Poison Center. It was not clear how much time passed before Redmond's wife called for help and first responders reached the home.

Redmond had considered himself an amateur naturalist but was violating an ordinance banning the possession of venomous snakes and wild and exotic animals.

The 24 snakes at his home were all venomous, and most were rattlesnakes, copperheads or vipers. The state game agency hopes to find zoos and nature centers to take the snakes.

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Snakebite deaths are very rare in the U.S., said Rose, who could recall only two deaths in the past four decades in Virginia "that were really proven to be the result of a snakebite."

"It's unusual to die from a snakebite in this part of the world," he added. "There are deaths that occur in Asia and South America and Africa, but it's very unusual in North America, if you get medical treatment."

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Defenders of Wildlife

This gray wolf is part of a pack near Ketchum, Idaho, that might have been the intended targets of poison-laced meat.

Fearing that someone is trying to kill gray wolves in central Idaho, an environmental group and a sheep ranch this week put up a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever laced meat with poison that instead killed one dog and sickened another.

That the poisoning happened wasn't so much a surprise. The resurgence of gray wolves across the Pacific Northwest is controversial, including this area of central Idaho known as the "sheep superhighway."

But Defenders of Wildlife and the Flat Top Ranch hope their reward will galvanize locals and showcase the value of using non-lethal tools to try to minimize wolf conflicts.

"It would be a real shame for incidents like this to undermine all our hard work," Suzanne Stone, the Defender of Wildlife's Northern Rockies representative, said in a statement announcing the reward. "We hope the community will use this as a rallying cry to continue promoting greater tolerance for all native wildlife."

John Peavey, owner of Flat Top Ranch, acknowledged that the resurgence of wolves has meant "many challenges," but he added that "we must meet them within the framework of our laws. Those responsible need to be brought to justice." 

The poisonings happened in mid-August, when two dogs fell sick after eating chunks of meat while on separate hikes with their owners outside Ketchum, a town that also is home to the world-famous Sun Valley Lodge and ski resort.

One dog died a few days later, while the other recovered.

The meat was poisoned with Xylitol, an artificial sweetener used in human food but which can be lethal to animals by causing a surge in insulin and becoming toxic to its liver.

Xylitol first surfaced in connection with wolves in 2010 when anti-wolf activist Toby Bridges blogged that many hunters were packing "a healthy dose of the sweetener whenever they head out for big game."

He also warned hunters to make sure their dogs didn't get near poisoned carcasses.

Stone told NBC News she didn't know of any confirmed cases of wolves being poisoned with Xylitol, but added that federal and state officials with whom she met suspected the batch eaten by the dogs was meant for wolves.

Gray wolves used to be abundant across the Northwest, but settlers a century ago nearly wiped them out.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began an effort to return them to the northern Rockies, bringing 66 wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho from Canada.

The wolves eventually went beyond the park's borders and into other parts of Wyoming and neighboring states. About 1,400 are in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where wolves were taken off the federal endangered list due to their rising numbers.

The poisoning incident comes after several years of progress with local sheep ranchers in minimizing wolf attacks, she added.

Defenders of Wildlife

A hidden camera used to track wolves captures the alpha female of a pack near Ketchum, Idaho, in mid-August along with her pups.

Part of what's known as the Wood River Wolf Project, those non-lethal tools include:

• Using more sheepdogs during parts of the year;
• Tracking the local wolf packs with motion sensitive cameras; 
• Firing starter guns or air horns to scare wolves;
• Deploying portable strobe light/alarm systems to alert herders that wolves are near;
• Electrified barriers made with small flags to keep wolves out;
• Keeping humans with bands of sheep at night.

Lava Lake Lamb

A herder with Lava Lake Lamb sets up a fence made with flags to deter gray wolves as part of the Wood River Wolf Project in Idaho.

"Our field crew has spent more than 70 nights camping with the sheep bands this summer," Stone said. "The deterrents are working very well despite the almost constant presence of wolves near sheep." 

Out of more than 10,000 sheep in the area, she added, just four were lost this summer.

Those four sheep belonged to a project partner who initially wanted the wolves killed but then backed off when it was realized the pack was a new one that hadn't been tracked, Stone said.

"As a result of his support," she said, "no wolves were killed and our nonlethal deterrents kept wolves from killing more sheep since that event in early July."  

Related: Killing of wolf pack draws anger of key lawmaker

This week and next, field crews will sleep with a band of sheep as it makes its way down the "sheep superhighway" and then through Ketchum on Oct. 13 for the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival, Stone said.

"We have wolves right where the sheep are now," she told the Idaho Mountain Express. "We’ve had our field crew intercept wolves coming in to howl and bark at the dogs. So far, the deterrents have been holding."

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It was unusual even by standards in Montana, where black bears have to be euthanized every so often after incidents with humans: 7 bears, including 2 cubs, had to be put down over the last week because an individual had been feeding them and many others -- reportedly for years.

"The last thing we wanted to do is remove these bears," Lee Anderson, a warden with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, said in a statement Wednesday by the agency after five bears were killed in recent days. "But we had no choice because of the danger they pose to local residents."

Two more were found and euthanized later Wednesday.

"This was very unusual," spokesman John Fraley told NBC News. "I can’t remember this many bears euthanized in such a short period of time in the past decade or more in our area."

The agency responded after getting reports that a resident of Heron, a town close to the border with Idaho, was feeding bears.

"One male black bear weighed 485 pounds, and one female weighed nearly 300 pounds," the agency stated. "These are unusually heavy for black bears, reflecting their condition in response to artificial feeding."

A woman told the local newspaper, the Sanders County Ledger, that she had been feeding the bears, many of them orphans, as a way of "teaching them to survive in the wild."

"I taught them to run from outfitters and pickups," said Barbara Sweeney, who added that she and her late husband had run an animal refuge at their property for 22 years.

"I taught them how to hibernate, too," she said. 

"People have known I've been doing this for years" and without any problems, she added. "If they would have said something, I would have stopped."

The case is under investigation, and the local county attorney could press charges. Montana law bars the feeding of bears and other wildlife.

Montana does allow seasonal hunting of black bears, which are not an endangered species.

The department said it could not find a zoo willing to take the bears and that releasing them somewhere else could pose new problems.

"It would be irresponsible to release these potentially dangerous bears somewhere else when the bears are in such a food-conditioned state," said Department Wildlife Manager Jim Williams.

Such bears have a history of attacking humans, including an attack in late September in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, he added.

"This is a very unfortunate example of how feeding bears directly leads to their death," noted Jim Satterfield, supervisor for the area where the bears were fed. "This is why we tell the public that feeding a bear is the same as signing its death warrant."

The euthanized bears were buried in a landfill to prevent contact with humans or wildlife, the agency said.

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Rich Pedroncelli / AP

This logo will be changing on Jan.1.

Call them words of war between hunters and wildlife activists: Starting Jan. 1, California's Department of Fish and Game will become Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The change, hunters say, reflects a move away from traditional hunting and fishing values and is part of a bigger push by the Humane Society of the United States to eliminate hunting across the nation.

Environmentalists and animal activists say it reflects a move to manage all wildlife in the state, not just "game" for hunters.

California's change will leave just 12 states using "game" in the name of the agency overseeing wildlife, according to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. (Those are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming.)

Eighteen states use "wildlife," while the others use "natural resources" or "conservation."

Moreover, data from the association and the National Conference of State Legislatures indicates the shift away from "game" is accelerating, the Associated Press reported.

California's change was made in state legislation signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown last week. The bill was one of six signed by Brown that the Humane Society championed as "reinforcing California’s standing as a national leader in animal protection."

The change was made "to accurately reflect the state agency's broader mission," bill sponsor Sen. Jared Huffman, a Democrat who previously was an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. 

Huffman said the proposed name change came from a majority on the 51-seat advisory panel convened to discuss the department's strategic vision.

The Humane Society, which was on the panel, said the change reflects a department "representing an ever-expanding constituency."

It ranges "from hunters to people who head into the woods to hike and watch wildlife," Casey Pheiffer, wildlife policy director for the group, told NBC News. "Wildlife face so many threats, from poaching to habitat loss, and the agency harnessing the support of all Californians — not just one constituency — is so important moving forward."

But some hunting groups opposed the change and were vocal about it.

Mike Faw, spokesman for the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, told NBC News that besides "re-printing a mountain of papers, creating new signs and logos, and the enormous cost to go through the state publications and eradicate the old name," he heard from numerous hunters that they oppose the name change.

"Generally, that means a shift toward butterflies, endangered species and other stuff like that," he told the Associated Press.

The California Outdoor Heritage Alliance was also opposed, and said its partners were vastly outnumbered on the department's strategic vision advisory panel.

Earlier the group had been telling supporters that the Humane Society "will attack hunting in California first, taking it one species at a time, until all types of hunting are eliminated — then take their forces to other states."

That group cited another bill signed by Brown last week as a case in point. It outlaws the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats in the state, making it "easily the most severe anti-hunting legislation ever passed into California law," the group stated.

The law, it added, "sets precedent placing the hunting of pigs, deer, pheasants, quail, ducks and other species with dogs in serious jeopardy."

The Humane Society does oppose hunting in principle but Pheiffer said it was not on a campaign to ban it nationwide. "Absolutely not," said Pheiffer. "The threat to hunting comes from extreme groups ...  You can’t just shut your eyes and ignore the fact that 99 percent of Californians don’t hunt and then just decide that their values are negligible."

The Outdoor Heritage Alliance earlier cried foul when the Humane Society launched a campaign to remove the director of the California Fish and Game Commission, a regulatory body separate from the department.

The commission board last August removed Dan Richards as director after the Humane Society and others protested when Richards was photographed in a hunting magazine with a mountain lion he had shot in Idaho. It's legal to do so in Idaho, but not California.

Huffman, the state senator, said he understood the nervousness of hunters but insisted hunting and fishing still have a place in California.

"I think people will just have to bear with us and have this play out over time," he told the Associated Press. "I am very confident this is going to be good not only for hunting and fishing but for all aspects of the department's mission."

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The chairman of the state Senate committee that oversees Washington's Department of Fish & Wildlife tells NBC News that the killing of a gray wolf pack in recent days was "inexcusable" and that he is demanding answers about why the agency thought it was necessary.  

"I find it inexcusable that we allowed ourselves to get to a place where killing the entire pack was the necessary decision when other non-lethal options – within the department and with ranchers – were not totally exhausted first," said Sen. Kevin Ranker, chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee. 

"I find it ironic that the attacks on livestock that caused this situation ... took place on a ranch that has been outspoken about the removal of the pack and has refused to work with the department to implement prevention measures successfully adopted by other ranchers," he added.

The department gave the order to kill the entire pack, estimated to be eight wolves, after the pack became accustomed to attacking cattle instead of relying on wild prey.

"To say I am disappointed in the department's actions would be a gross understatement," Ranker said. "I can tell you, however, as the chair of the committee with oversight over the Department of Fish & Wildlife, this story is far from over."

In a letter Friday to the department, Ranker demanded to know:

• What specific actions the department took before authorizing the kill;
• Exact costs associated with killing the pack;
• What actions the department will take to avoid a repeat.

The department "has provided very general descriptions of a few non-lethal measures taken" under the state plan for managing gray wolves, he said in the letter. "The wolf plan however includes an extensive list of husbandry techniques, non-lethal deterrents, and relocation options that were not utilized in the case of the Wedge pack. The fact that the Department pursued removal of not just individual animals, but the entire pack, clearly evidences the agency's failure to effectively use these non-lethal tools to deter wolf-livestock depredation."

Ranker also said the department's strategy for managing gray wolves could backfire. "I fear that the Department’s actions ... will be viewed by some who do not support wolf recovery as setting a precedent that localized public pressure can dictate wolf plan implementation, including lethal removal decisions," he stated.

Related: Wolf pack eliminated, state says
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