Articles by Elizabeth Claire Alberts

The disposable face mask has become the poster child for COVID-19-related waste since the start of the pandemic, showing up on beaches and in waterways all over the world. Hong…

MARSEILLE, France — Pascal Hagmann lowered a manta trawl — a ray-shaped, metal device with a wide mouth and a fine-meshed net — off the side of his sailboat and…

A new study has found that China’s coastal wetlands have undergone significant recovery within the last 10 years after several decades of loss and destruction. An international team of researchers…

Ecuador will expand the marine reserve encircling the Galápagos Islands, President Guillermo Lasso announced on Nov. 1 at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The current Galápagos Marine Reserve…

Plastics will outpace coal plants in the U.S. by 2030 in terms of their contributions to climate change, according to a new report released Oct. 21 by Beyond Plastics, a…

On the title page of Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene is a black-and-white portrait of a lamb. The little animal, probably only a few weeks old, stands alone on the…

In April 2021, authorities in the Philippines made a notable discovery. On a beachfront property on Sitio Green Island in Palawan province, they found shell after shell of giant clams,…

Ostrich-shaped but elephant-sized, a species known as the elephant bird once roamed Madagascar’s tropical forests. But close to a thousand years ago, these giant birds slipped into extinction. Now all…

Conservationists have expressed hope that a New Zealand company whose bid to mine the seabed was blocked by the country’s highest court last month has little chance of winning approval.…

As the world grapples with unparalleled rates of deforestation and extinction, an increasing number of governments and other entities are recognizing the importance of protecting 30% of the land and…

There was a time when tiger expert Dale Miquelle wasn’t sure if there’d ever be a substantial population of Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) in China again. In the 1990s,…

The recent killing of 1,428 white dolphins in the Faroe Islands has brought renewed scrutiny to the island nation’s long-held tradition of driving cetaceans into shore and butchering them for…

The fires that tore through South America’s Pantanal region in 2020, destroying 30% of its area, are still scorched in memory. And now, the world’s largest wetland that fans out…

MARSEILLE, France — Delegates at this year’s global conservation summit have voted overwhelmingly in support of a motion that calls for a moratorium on deep-sea mining and the reform of…

UPDATE 09/10/2021: Today, members of the IUCN World Conservation Congress approved the motion that calls to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025, a move that is being celebrated by…

Emmanuel Essien was sure he had evidence of illegal fishing on board an industrial trawler operating in the waters off the coast of Ghana. The 28-year-old fisheries observer had video…

“Let me turn on my video,” says David Obura halfway through our Zoom call. He holds up his phone so I can see the landscape behind him: rows of green…

Beams of light cut through darkness as people stand by a row of transport crates, preparing to open them. When they pull up the side panels, three dogs with mottled…

The California condor has been teetering on the brink of extinction for decades. When the species was first assessed in 1994 for the IUCN Red List, the global authority on…

In late June, Portland, Oregon, experienced its hottest day on record, reaching 42° Celsius (108° Fahrenheit). The last time it had been this hot was in 1981, when temperatures soared…

Many of us love animals. At least, we think we do. We may serve our cats gourmet food and let them sleep in our beds. We may buy our dogs…

The Mexican government will no longer protect the habitat of the critically endangered vaquita in the Upper Gulf of California, but has opened the area up to fishing, according to…

Jeffrey Marlow says we should be thinking more about microbes — those teensy, tiny organisms that inhabit just about every part of the biosphere, but are only visible under the…

A new report shows that the world’s top fishing nations are using subsidies worth billions of dollars to exploit the high seas and the waters of other nations, including some…

The Pacific island nation of Nauru has stated its intention to start deep-sea mining in two years’ time, despite the fact that the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-mandated body…

Sit on a beach and watch the waves. If powered by a storm, the waves may chew away at the beach, depositing sediment in an underwater sand bar that actually…

How does one solve the issue of unsustainable fishing? Conservation zoologist Tim McClanahan was pondering that question when he started a research project looking at overexploited coral reef fisheries in…

When the first tile in a line of dominoes tips forward, it affects everything in front of it. One after another, lined-up dominoes knock into each other and topple. This…

It started in October 2017. A swarm of microscopic algae called Karenia brevis amassed in the waters off Florida’s southwest coast, turning the ocean a rust-red hue. The algae, which…

Gibbons, hornbills, komodo dragons and even Sumatran orangutans — these are just a few of the animals once kept illegally behind bars at a small zoo in North Sumatra, Indonesia.…