Authorities received a call at 11:30 p.m. from a surf-fishing visitor who witnessed a side-by-side utility terrain vehicle hit a horse standing on the beach near milepost 20, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund said in a social media post.

The driver fled the scene, but bystanders gave a detailed description and the UTV registration returned to 57-year-old Porter Williamson of Chesapeake, said Currituck County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Jeff Walker.

While towing the UTV, deputies saw Williamson return to the scene, but he fled again and was caught after a short foot pursuit, Walker said. Williamson was charged with resisting, delaying or obstructing law enforcement and jailed on a $10,000 bond. Deputies also charged his wife, Rhonda Williamson, on the same charge for “false information to law enforcement,” Walker said. She was jailed on a $5,000 bond.

Bullwinkle, a 10-year-old stallion, suffered skin trauma, a broken right hind leg with fracture of the lower femur, left hind trauma and internal injuries from the force of impact, the CWHF said.

“Bullwinkle’s injuries were severe and ultimately fatal. Our veterinarian arrived on the scene early Saturday morning to humanely euthanize him,” said the CWHF, which manages the herd of about 100 wild mustangs roaming the northernmost beaches and swamps of the Outer Banks.

Last week, the CWHF posted a video of Bullwinkle fighting with another stallion, vying for the older stallion’s mares.

“He was in the prime of his life, and went from being a symbol of what it means to be wild and free to a tragic example of how irresponsible, reckless human behavior can cause pain, suffering, and irreparable damage to the herd in an instant,” the horse fund wrote. “Bullwinkle will never produce any foals. His genetics are gone from the herd forever and with such a small, endangered population the ramifications of that will last for generations.”

Meg Puckett, herd manager for the wild horse fund, said Bullwinkle died as he lived: wild.

“At no point did he welcome our intervention and he remained wary and defensive even as he laid on the dune unable to stand anymore,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “The fight drive that he was always known for never left him, right up to the end. He was exactly what a wild Banker stallion is supposed to be, and we are glad that he at least never had to leave the beach — he was never meant to.”

Bullwinkle was buried this weekend at the edge of the meadow where he was filmed last week fighting for a harem of his own.

The brawl was recorded Thursday in the Corolla area and involved a young stallion doing his best to steal an older stallion’s family, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund reported.

Herd manager Meg Puckett called it an example of the “herd dynamics” tourists don’t often witness.

“The darker stallion has been with the black mare and her two-year-old filly for the last couple years. The lighter brown stallion tried to steal them from him a few weeks ago, but was unsuccessful,” Puckett wrote on the horse fund’s Facebook page.

“Since then he’s been trailing the trio, and will regularly try to sneak in and grab the mares. The first stallion has to stay vigilant all the time. It must be exhausting, but he is really doing a good job of protecting his mares from the challenger!”

The video starts with the smaller stallion kicking the older one to no avail.

A staredown begins, and the larger horse eventually intimidates the younger one into backing away.

“It will be interesting to see how this drama plays out,” Puckett wrote.

“At the end of the video you’ll see the darker stallion put his head down and move his mares away from the other one. This is called snaking, and it’s one of the few times you’ll see a stallion seriously bossing his mares around.”

The norm is for stallions to let “mares run the show,” except in those moments when there is a threat, she said.

Corolla has a herd of over 100 wild horses tended and protected by the nonprofit Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

In a study published last week, researchers tested 13 sharks off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and found that all had traces of cocaine in their liver and muscle tissues. The levels of cocaine found in these sharks were reported to be as much as 100 times higher than in previously observed marine life.

“We were actually dumbfounded,” said Rachel Ann Hauser Davis, a co-author of the study and a biologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil. “We were excited in a bad way, but it’s a novel report. It’s the first time this data has ever been found for any top predator.”

This was the first study to analyze cocaine in sharks, following various studies on smaller species, including mollusks, crustaceans and even eels. All 13 sharks examined were found to have unfiltered cocaine in much higher concentrations than in previous studies on other animals, indicating chronic exposure to the drug.

But the study examined only a small sample, leaving many questions about whether the exposure harms the sharks or the humans who eat them.

The study in Brazil was conceived earlier this year after researchers discovered high levels of cocaine in the rivers that form Rio de Janeiro’s watershed. Other marine experts had looked into whether sharks in the Gulf of Mexico were ingesting cocaine from the numerous packages lost or dumped in the waters in a 2023 documentary titled “Cocaine Sharks,” which served as an inspiration for the title of last week’s study.

The team of biologists from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation — an organization affiliated with Brazil’s Ministry of Health — were particularly interested in testing top predators inhabiting these watersheds. Having previously conducted tests on sharks for other contaminants, they sent to a lab samples of the Brazilian sharpnose — a relatively small species of shark from Rio de Janeiro’s coastal waters often consumed by locals.

Hauser Davis said there were several hypotheses as to how cocaine found its way to the marine creatures, including illegal labs refining cocaine or cocaine packages lost or dumped by traffickers. But she believes these account for only a small amount of the drug found in the ocean.

“We feel that the major source would be excretion through urine and feces from people using cocaine,” she said. Most wastewater treatment plants worldwide cannot effectively filter these substances, leading to their release into the ocean.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

After a week of tracking and near-misses, a crew from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration freed the juvenile humpback whale Friday.

On July 13, a whale-watching boat encountered the rope-snarled animal and reported it to NOAA. For the next week, crews from its large whale entanglement response network made near-daily excursions to find the injured whale, said Justin Viezbicke, the agency’s California marine mammal response stranding coordinator.

On July 15, the team spotted the whale off Dana Point, but the weather turned bad before they could attempt to free it. The next day they found the animal in the same area, but nearby jet skiers accidentally scared it away before rescuers could get close enough to help.

It was seen near Newport Beach on Wednesday and Thursday, then returned to Dana Point on Friday. The rescue attempt was on.

For several hours, the NOAA boat traveled alongside the animal as it surfaced for air and dove back into the sea. The mammal was about 30 feet long, with rope from fishing equipment wrapped tightly around both tail flukes.

“Being in the right place at the right time was very difficult,” Viezbicke said. “This whale was super skittish and wasn’t comfortable with us being around it.”

At last the crew got close enough to cut through the rope. For the next 60 to 90 minutes, the whale swam, dove and slapped its tail against the water in an effort to dislodge the remaining equipment, Viezbicke said. Once it had, it slipped back into the water and swam off. Whale-watching boats in Orange County have spotted it swimming in the days since.

Though the rope is gone, there is still concern for the animal’s future. NOAA estimated that the mammal had been entangled in the fishing line for at least three to six months, causing “some serious damage” to the flukes, Viezbicke said. It also appeared to have a significant amount of whale lice, which is often an indicator of poor health.

“We are hopeful that with the gear off it will make a full recovery,” he said.

Instances of humpback whale entanglements with fishing gear have climbed sharply in the last decade, thanks to a chain of events sparked by warming seas.

From 2014 to 2016, a Pacific Ocean heat wave forced anchovies and other humpback prey closer to shore and into the path of Dungeness crab fishing equipment. The same heat wave also delayed the crab fishing season to a time that coincided with the whales’ migration season.

Statewide, NOAA typically receives 15 to 20 reports per year of whales trapped in fishing lines or other human-made debris in the ocean, Viezbicke said. Yet such reports are likely only a small percentage of total cases.

“Unfortunately, most whale entanglements go undetected,” said Ashley Blacow-Draeger, Pacific policy and communications manager for Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Oceana. Researchers who have tracked observation of entanglement scars on whales estimate that only 5% to 10% of such incidents are recorded.

Oceana has been working with fisheries to test ropeless fishing gear that vastly reduces the risk of wildlife entanglement, Blacow-Draeger said. California issued experimental permits for the pop-up, ropeless equipment in 2023, and permitted fishermen started selling crabs caught with the new gear that season.

Oceana is pressing for the state to authorize widespread commercial use of the whale-safe equipment by spring 2025, Blacow-Draeger said.

The intrusion happened at a home near Pawleys Island, about a 70-mile drive northeast from Charleston, and homeowner Keith Suttle estimates the squatter was about 4 feet long.

“He would swim around for awhile, get out, lay on the pool deck, jump back in and just float around,” Suttle told McClatchy News. “No stress.”

No stress for the gator, that is.

Suttle said he was on the phone with a client Wednesday, July 10, when a neighbor sent a strange text informing him of an alligator in his pool.

“As soon as I saw the text I walked out on our back deck and saw him/her just chillin’ in the water. Naturally I was shocked and my first thought was how do I get it out,” Suttle said.

“Our yard is completely fenced, surprised he could squeeze through! We live on the marsh between Litchfield Beach and the mainland.”

Tasked with finding a solution, Suttle sought advice from the Pawleys Island Peeps Facebook group and its 57,000 members. Among the nearly 500 responses were suggestions like “pick him up by his tail,” “scoop up and throw in neighbor’s yard” and call a professional snake catcher.

Suttle eventually connected with a wildlife rescuer based out of Myrtle Beach. She showed up with a net several hours later.

“As soon as she put the net in the water he dove to the bottom and appeared to ‘run’ around. In less than 10 minutes they had him out, mouth taped, wrapped in a towel and off to his new habitat,” Suttle said.

The alligator was released into a nearby river and has yet to return, he said.

Joe DiGeronimo sent photos of an egret rookery in the Oceanview neighborhood of Norfolk. “These beautiful great white egrets’ nesting colony is a beautiful sight presenting photo opportunities,” DiGeronimo wrote, “but unfortunately their presence has somewhat taken over a portion of this neighborhood.”

Prue Salasky got a shot of a great egret taking flight at Knitting Mill Creek in Norfolk. “I wasn’t sure if this egret was real or a lawn ornament as it allowed me within feet before taking flight,” Salasky wrote.

Nancy Norman sent photos of a great blue heron stalking along the edge of the marsh at Back Bay in Virginia Beach.

Michael Schimmel came across a pair of yellow-crowned night herons having a crab feast at Pleasure House Point in Virginia Beach.

Neil Rose sent photos of a yellow-crowned night heron nest with young in the nest in the Freemason District in Norfolk.

Kevin Jones sent photos of a yellow-crowned night heron at Chic’s Beach in Virginia Beach. “Several have made this section of the beach home,” Jones wrote.

Bill Caruso photographed a yellow-crowned night heron at the Myrtle Park area in Larchmont on the Elizabeth River in Norfolk.

Jane Hughey photographed a male house sparrow “trying to get kids to fledge from the birdhouse” in her yard in the Saratoga section of Norfolk. “Little piece of dried mealworm as incitement,” Hughey wrote.

Mike McClane sent a photo of a chickadee enjoying a snack on his deck in the Chelsea neighborhood in Virginia Beach.

Linda Glasson sent a photo of a dragonfly hanging out in the grasses at Pleasure House Point in Virginia Beach.

Allen Waters got a shot of an assassin beetle peeking out of a Japanese iris at the Tidewater Arboretum in Virginia Beach.

Reuben Rohn got a photo of a terrapin resting in the sand at Pleasure House Point in Virginia Beach. Terrapins live in brackish rivers and streams along the Chesapeake Bay and the seaside of the Eastern Shore.

Tony Silvia sent a photo of a large snapping turtle on a log with a yellow-bellied slider in the Nottoway River near Franklin. “I can’t recall ever seeing these two species hanging out together, so it was a pretty lucky shot,” Silvia wrote.

Elizabeth Weller sent photos and a video of a box turtle laying eggs in her yard at the North End in Virginia Beach. “It took her two hours to dig the nest, and 20 minutes to lay three eggs,” Weller wrote, “and after a short rest about an hour to cover them up.”

Norm Grefe sent a photo of a skink with a caterpillar in its mouth at the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Suffolk.

Connie Owen sent photos of a pair of northern water snakes enjoying the sun at Stumpy Lake in Virginia Beach. “I value the good things snakes do for us,” Owen wrote.

Gary Williamson got a shot of a cottonmouth gaping with its mouth open while resting in poison ivy at Northwest River Park in Chesapeake.

Dan Short came upon an alligator swimming through the dark waters at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. Alligators can be found throughout the coastal regions of the southeast with North Carolina being their northernmost range.

Vickie Shufer, wildfood@cox.net

Dave Jackson and Jesse Rochette of Colorado-based educational cave simulator company CaveSim on Sunday headed to Narrows in Giles County to explore Giant Caverns with a local couple, Jackson said by telephone on Wednesday. The first member of their party started down into the funnel-shaped cave and spotted something unusual — a dog.

“He said, ‘Whoa! There’s a dog down here!’” Rochette said. “And I asked if it was alive and he said ‘Yes!’”

A self-described “dog-guy,” Rochette repelled down next with a piece of salami.

“She instantly came over and sucked up the salami and she loved that,” Rochette said. The dog was shivering, so they wrapped her up in space blankets, foam pads and whatever else they could find, including the hood from an old jacket they found in the cave, he said. Next they got her to drink water by first getting her to lick water off his fingers, then lowering his hand until she was drinking from the bowl.

Jackson said he had taken rescue training classes and participated in rescues before, but never a rescue involving an animal.

“We all carry a little rescue gear with us,” Jackson said, and they pooled what they had. The cavers improvised a dog harness from a tarp and webbing and rigged up a system to haul out the dog strapped to Rochette, he said.

The whole rescue took about three hours, Rochette said.

“As the two of us cleared the edge of the pit and made it to fresh air, she instantly perked up,” he said. “She lifted her head up and started sniffing the air.”

The property owner said he didn’t recognize the dog, so Rochette said they took her to a nearby veterinary hospital and she was then taken to the Giles County Animal Shelter, where she was recuperating well and getting lots of treats when he visited her on Monday.

While he had never rescued an animal from a cave, Rochette said other cavers he has spoken to have told him of other rescues. The cave they were in Sunday was littered with animal skulls and bones, Rochette said.

“It felt nice that the cave didn’t get to keep another one,” he said.

Initially, they dubbed her “Cave Dog” but then settled on SPAR-C, an acronym for small party assisted rescue with a C added for canine, Rochette said.

In a Facebook post on Monday, the shelter called the dog “a living miracle,” saying they didn’t know what to expect when they first heard of her plight.

“Yesterday, we received a call about a dog who had fallen into a cave in Narrows,” the shelter said. “To be honest, we didn’t know what the next hours or even minutes would look like.”

But the dog the shelter is calling Sparsy had no broken bones. She couldn’t use her back legs well without assistance, but they expected her to be up and moving within days with medication, rest and good nutrition.

On Wednesday, the shelter posted an update saying she was up and moving and her medical expenses have been covered. The shelter was still seeking her owner, but said that if she continued healing at this pace, she would be ready for a new home soon.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The world’s most endangered wolf species got a big boost at a Missouri wildlife reserve — four little puppies born this spring.

The April 26 birth of a female American red wolf pup named Otter was followed by a litter of three other pups — Molly and her brothers Finn and Obi — on May 4, the St. Louis Zoo announced Monday. All four were born at the zoo’s Sears Lehmann Jr. Wildlife Reserve, which sits about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of St. Louis. Zoo officials said all four are healthy and thriving.

The cuteness overload, however, won’t be open to the public. Visitors aren’t allowed so that the wolves learn natural behaviors and survival skills without much human interaction in case they can eventually be released into the wild, zoo officials said.

Otter was born to 8-year-old Lava and 9-year-old Tyke. The triplets were born to first-time parents Ladybird, age 3, and 8-year-old Wilber.

“When you consider how few red wolves remain, each birth is an achievement,” Sabarras George, director of the St. Louis Zoo WildCare Park, said in a news release.

The red wolf is the only large carnivore solely native to the United States. It’s smaller than a gray wolf, but larger than a coyote, according to the National Wildlife Federation. It differs in appearance from the gray wolf with reddish fur often found around its head, ears and legs.

The red wolf once ranged from central Pennsylvania to southeastern Texas. Populations were decimated by the early 20th century due to predator control programs and loss of habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980, but the Fish and Wildlife Service captured the remaining 14 and started a captive breeding program. The National Wildlife Federation said it became the first animal to be successfully reintroduced after being declared extinct in the wild. Today, the wild red wolves live in North Carolina’s Albemarle Peninsula.

Still, the numbers are small. About 20 live in the wild. Another 290 red wolves live in human care, including 17 at the St. Louis Zoo reserve.

In September, the Fish and Wildlife Service released an updated recovery plan that calls for spending nearly $328 million over the next half-century to get the red wolf off the endangered species list. The agency said at the time that the American red wolf can only survive with “significant additional management intervention.”

“Hunting, habitat loss and human misconceptions about wolves have all played a role in the plight of the red wolf today,” said Regina Mossotti, the zoo’s vice president of animal care. “But every new birth offers hope for future reintroduction efforts for this vital national treasure.”

Zoo officials said the pups will stay with their parents at least two years. After that, they may be sent to other institutions that are part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ American Red Wolf Saving Animals From Extinction Program to start their own packs. They could also be released into the wild through the Fish and Wildlife Service, the zoo said.

Whether called a firefly, glowworm, or — in Latin — lampyridae, lightning bugs are part of American life, particularly in Southern culture. They’ve been sung about by Taylor Swift and flown into the prose of William Faulkner.

And while 40% of the world’s insect species are facing extinction, no one knows how healthy the firefly species are, said Virginia Tech entomologist Eric Day. There just isn’t enough data. Without more well-funded, long-term studies, Day said, it is impossible to determine the species’ health or to categorize them as threatened, endangered or robust.

Out of the roughly 130 species of fireflies in North America, Virginia has close to 30.

“There’s none that I know of that are endangered in Virginia,” Day said. “There are a lot of them that the numbers are low.”

For many Virginia species, there’s little to no preexisting data.

“So, that’s really the missing factor, that if we find low numbers, we don’t really know what that means because there are no previous studies of it.”

Most scientific literature lists lightning bugs as DD: data deficient.

“I don’t have the funding to do firefly research. I would love to have that kind of a grant,” Day said. “But that’s not where the money is.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that firefly numbers have fallen in developed areas and remain in better shape in more rural environments. Fireflies always will be more attracted to open fields, especially near rivers or streams. The flies are carnivorous and depend on healthy ecosystems for good hunting. They spend the early part of their lives with their legs on the ground, eating other insects and sometimes, even, slugs.

The males take to the air in mass after evening temperatures rise above 70 degrees.

“When they’re flashing, they kind of only have one thing on their mind: Boy meets girl.”

Every lightning bug species has a unique flash pattern. The males will flash while in flight and the females will respond with the same pattern from the ground.

Faulkner mentioned the bugs in his 1957 novel “The Town:”

“Then, as though at signal, the fireflies — lightning-bugs of the Mississippi child’s vernacular — myriad and frenetic, random and frantic, pulsing; not questing, not quiring, but choiring as if they were tiny incessant appeaseless voices, cries, words.”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com

NORFOLK — The Virginia Zoo welcomed a new member to its primate residence: a baby Bornean orangutan.

Dara, the 24-year-old mother, gave birth to her baby about 5:45 a.m. June 29, and the zoo said in a statement she already is “displaying strong maternal instincts and nursing the baby.” It is the second orangutan to be born at the zoo.

“Our care team is over the moon with excitement about the new addition to our orangutan family,” Jill Strother, assistant curator of the Virginia Zoo’s Asia section, said in the release. “All our hard work in preparing Dara for the birth with ultrasound and maternal behavior training has been so rewarding. We can’t wait to see this little one flourish.”

Bornean orangutans are the largest arboreal mammals, meaning they live in trees, and are considered critically endangered. Dara and the baby’s father, Solaris, 21, were matched specifically by population managers in accordance with the Orangutan Species Survival Plan. The pair’s first baby died in 2018 to sudden illness, the zoo said, and it is common for orangutans to have four to five babies in their lifetimes.

Dara has been participating in routine maternity training sessions before birth, according to the zoo. She has been trained to present the baby upright to keepers through mesh for visual inspections and supplement feedings, if necessary. Before the baby’s birth, Dara’s care team also conducted ultrasound training sessions with her to monitor the baby’s development.

The zoo reported that Dara and her baby are doing very well.

Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com