The plant Roussea simplex, usually referred to by its scientific name, is one of a kind. It grows only in the mountains of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius; it’s…
In May this year, following multiple joint operations by the Malawi Police Service and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, three Malawian and nine Chinese nationals were arrested in…
One of the world’s rarest bats, the Cuban greater funnel-eared bat, is known from just a single remote cave in the island’s west. The bat was in fact thought to…
From an area of southern Amazonia, where forests are rapidly being cut for gold mining, agriculture, cattle pastures, and construction of dams, researchers have described a species of marmoset that’s…
In June this year, researchers surveying a remote part of the Russian Far East finally managed to find what they had been looking for: a Nordmann’s greenshank sitting on a…
Look around, and you’ll see examples of how we’ve modified our planet’s land surface: roads, buildings, farms, plantations. But is the widespread human impact on Earth a modern occurrence? No,…
Last month, an image of a tiger fleeing from the floods that inundated much of Kaziranga National Park in the northeastern state of Assam in India went viral on social…
In what conservation groups are calling a major win, governments from around the world have voted to regulate the international trade in two species of mako sharks, six giant guitarfish…
Trade in Africa's iconic giraffes and their parts will now be regulated, countries voted last week at the ongoing meeting of the global wildlife trade body. In 2016, researchers sounded…
A proposal by Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia that would allow them to sell their ivory stockpiles has been rejected at the ongoing summit of the global wildlife trade body. Countries…
Australia will soon ban the domestic trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn. The country’s delegates announced the decision at the ongoing 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties…
If you’re looking to buy orchids from plant markets in southern China, chances are you’ll find plenty of orchids that have been collected from the wild, sometimes illegally. And these…
When Kenji Suetsugu is out looking for plants in Japan’s forests, he's not looking for the usual green ones. Instead, on dark forest floors, where little light penetrates, Suetsugu painstakingly…
Millions of years ago, giant birds roamed ancient New Zealand. There was the moa, an extinct flightless bird, thought to weigh up to 230 kilogram (510 pounds). Then there was…
The world’s largest known living frog species doesn’t build ordinary nests. It does a lot of heavy lifting, sometimes moving large stones and rocks weighing more than half its weight…
When Chong Chen was in high school, he came across a paper published in 2003 that described a peculiar species of snail from the Indian Ocean, thousands of feet below…
From Japan’s Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima islands, researchers have described a new-to-science species of orchid that produces dark brown flowers that likely never bloom. Kenji Suetsugu of the Kobe University Graduate…
The sex of some turtle species is influenced not by genes but by the temperatures they experience in the nest. Eggs incubated at cooler temperatures develop into males, while those…
In 2016, researchers digging along the Río Alto Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon uncovered hundreds of fossils of rodents, bats and other animals. Among the fossils was an…
Hydropower projects are back in focus in India, with the government declaring in the past sixth months that large hydropower projects would have renewable energy status. The government has also…
