The government of Belize has approved a plan to nearly triple the area under its strictly protected waters, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced in a press release. According to the…
Researchers have finally described a new species of skink from Angola, specimens of which have lurked on museum shelves for more than 70 years. Belgian herpetologist Raymond Laurent first suspected that…
Overfishing is rapidly pushing many of the world’s sharks and tunas toward extinction. The world’s fastest known shark, the shortfin mako, for example, was recently uplisted to endangered on the…
The ensatina is a fairly common salamander. From southern British Columbia in Canada to northern Baja California in Mexico, it can be found lurking under logs in forests along the…
What kinds of animals and plants are people interested in? When does their interest spike? Wikipedia may hold some answers, a new study has found. As a free and open-access…
The tiny nation of Belize on the eastern coast of Central America is famed for its sparkling blue waters and rich marine life. But it has much more to offer:…
Seahorses continue to be traded in large volumes, despite many source countries imposing bans on exports of the animals, a new study has found. While some of these peculiarly shaped…
All the amphibian and reptile species that have ever been recorded in Angola have now been included in a comprehensive atlas. Covering published records from 1840 to 2017, the atlas…
In 1991, all of the African wild dogs that previously lived in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania completely disappeared. In the debates that followed, one hypothesis became particularly controversial: in…
Eucalyptus plantations in southern India that were abandoned and left to recover for nearly 40 years are still far from resembling the primary forest surrounding them, a new study has…
Wildlife traffickers rely heavily on airlines to smuggle endangered species. Now, in a recent report, the U.K.-based charity World Animal Protection (WAP) has named Turkish Airlines as one of the…
For a large, charismatic and endangered species such as the Asian elephant, you might think scientists would have figured out where they hang out and when. But it turns out,…
China’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative could introduce alien invasive species into several countries, threatening their native biodiversity, warns a new study. Announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in…
On an isolated mountain in southwestern Haiti, researchers and conservation groups have purchased land and carved out the island nation’s first ever private nature reserve. The new reserve, created on…
A leaf-tailed gecko can be incredibly tricky to find. These lizards in the genus Uroplatus, found only in the forests of Madagascar, can masterfully camouflage themselves among dried leaves, sometimes…
Tanzania has officially created a new protected area, the Magombera Nature Reserve, extending protection to numerous species of rare plants and animals, including the endangered Udzungwa red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus…
If you're a coffee lover, you're probably familiar with the two most widely grown coffee species: Arabica (Coffea arabica) and robusta (Coffea canephora). But there are more than 100 species…
The Apostle Islands, dotting Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin, U.S., are home to at least 12 species of carnivores, a new study has found. These include the American marten (Martes…
Chinese authorities have nabbed all three identified members of a major ivory trafficking syndicate first exposed by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in 2017. In its 2017 report, EIA had…
Droughts can transform tropical forests. They kill trees and slow their growth. They also affect microbes that are critical to keeping the forest soil healthy. But termites, better known for…
There’s a lot to listen for in a tropical forest. There’s the sound of life: the howls, the hoots, the croaks. There’s the sound of loss: the buzz of chainsaws,…
Read the other stories in this four-part series on the indigenous groups living around Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, India: From a new bird to a new community reserve:…
Once again this year, researchers described several new species of animals and plants after months, or even several years, of trials and tribulations. Some were tiny, like the Japan pig,…
Read the other stories in this four-part series on the indigenous groups living around Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, India: From a new bird to a new community reserve:…
Read the other stories in this four-part series on the indigenous groups living around Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, India: From a new bird to a new community reserve:…
Read the other stories in this four-part series on the indigenous groups living around Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, India: Bird business: The man who taught his tribe to…
In the beginning, Shahriar Caesar Rahman’s trips to the remote forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh would invariably end in frustration. Rahman was searching for reptiles, and based…
A new map plots out the last known refuges of hundreds of highly threatened species around the world. The assessment updates work done by the Alliance for Zero Extinction, or…
The pink pigeon, found only on the island of Mauritius, was once nearly declared extinct. Another bird, the northern bald ibis, underwent catastrophic declines across much of its habitat in…
OK, Google: Has the general public lost interest in biodiversity conservation? Has people’s interest in environmental issues been overshadowed by climate change alone? The answer to both questions, according to…
