As murky water snakes through a man-made wetland between Dallas and Houston, its shallow ponds of lush vegetation slowly filter out phosphorous and nitrates until, a week later, the water runs clear as a creek into the area drinking supply.

The 2,000-acre wetland system in Fairfield converts what is mainly treated wastewater that would otherwise flow into the Gulf of Mexico into an additional 65,000 gallons per day feeding the Richland-Chambers Reservoir — a significant contribution in a state enduring prolonged drought.

Nigeria and Shell have done almost nothing to ease oil pollution in the Ogoniland area of the Niger Delta, three years after a landmark U.N. report called for a $1 billion dollar clean-up, Amnesty International said Monday.

Environmental devastation in Ogoniland has for many come to symbolise the tragedy of Nigeria's vast oil wealth.

When a private sports club in an upmarket Dhaka neighborhood "grabbed" a children's park for development this year, it sparked a wave of enraged protests rarely seen in impoverished Bangladesh.

Hundreds of parents, former national sports stars and environmental activists staged sit-ins for days, demanding the club hand back the park -- a green oasis for residents in one of the world's most densely populated and polluted cities.

Japan is planning to launch a military space force by 2019 that would initially be tasked with protecting satellites from dangerous debris orbiting the Earth, a report said.

The move is aimed at strengthening Japan-U.S. cooperation in space, and comes after the countries pledged to boost joint work on monitoring space debris, Kyodo news agency said Sunday.

A rare whale fossil has been pulled from a Southern California backyard.

Paleontologist Howell Thomas of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County says the 16- to 17-million-year-old baleen whale fossil is one of about 20 baleen whale fossils known to exist.

Australia on Saturday launched its 'Green Army' which plans to recruit up to 15,000 young people for projects to conserve and rehabilitate the environment -- the biggest land care mobilisation in the nation's history. 

A European probe approaching a comet in deep space has found the body's surface to be relatively warm, suggesting it has a mostly "dark, dusty crust," mission controllers said Friday.

Scientists have mapped how a group of fearsome, massive dinosaurs evolved and shrank to the likes of robins and hummingbirds.

Comparing fossils of 120 different species and 1,500 skeletal features, especially thigh bones, researchers constructed a detailed family tree for the class of two-legged meat-eaters called theropods. That suborder of dinos survives to this day as birds, however unrecognizable and improbable it sounds.

The game ranger with a rifle slung across his shoulders follows a bush trail through South Africa's famed Kruger national park, alert to the slightest sound or movement.

He faces threats not only from lions and elephants but from humans as well -- heavily-armed poachers who stalk the park's wilderness day and night.

Researchers have found a way to make see-through mice, but you won't find these critters scampering in your kitchen.

The transparent rodents aren't alive and they're for research only, to help scientists study fine details of anatomy.