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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/mass-extinction/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2026 20:57:34 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<title>News on Mass Extinction</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/mass-extinction/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>Facebook is a hub for illegal wildlife trade, and that’s by design, report says</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/facebook-is-a-hub-for-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-thats-by-design-report-says/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/facebook-is-a-hub-for-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-thats-by-design-report-says/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 May 2026 11:04:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Spoorthy Raman]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/01050735/Tiger-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=318531</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Conservation, Crime, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Gibbons, Illegal Trade, Law, Leopards, Mass Extinction, Pangolins, Regulations, Sea Turtles, Social Media, Technology, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[With just the click of a button or a swipe on a phone, it’s possible to buy almost anything online, including rare or endangered animals. From quirky shark trophies to exotic live birds, contraband rhino horns or ivory, buyers can flock to e-commerce platforms and find them all. Traffickers hide behind their screens while profiting [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[With just the click of a button or a swipe on a phone, it’s possible to buy almost anything online, including rare or endangered animals. From quirky shark trophies to exotic live birds, contraband rhino horns or ivory, buyers can flock to e-commerce platforms and find them all. Traffickers hide behind their screens while profiting from online sales of protected species as these animals dwindle in the wild. “It&#8217;s the largest wildlife market,” said wildlife trade researcher Chris Shepherd from the Center for Biological Diversity. “It&#8217;s easy, it&#8217;s convenient; you can operate anonymously from the comfort of your home. You don&#8217;t have the expenses of setting up a shop.” Online commerce in illicit wildlife products continues to grow, involving more species and wider geographies. It’s an illicit industry run by kingpins with well-connected networks, and it’s hard to prosecute. Catching online criminals is extremely challenging. “Wildlife markets have moved from physical locations into online locations, and that&#8217;s mirroring broader trends in the global economy,” said Simone Haysom, director of environmental crime programs at the Swiss-based organization Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. In a recent report, Haysom and her colleague Russell Gray analyzed online wildlife trade data from April 2024 to March 2026. They focused on 10 countries across three continents, places where environmental crime and internet use are high, making them fertile grounds for online wildlife trafficking. They found some 266,535 wildlife products posted on 61 online marketplaces, worth about $66 million. About 75% of the nearly 22,000 ads&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/facebook-is-a-hub-for-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-thats-by-design-report-says/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/facebook-is-a-hub-for-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-thats-by-design-report-says/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-318531</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Peter Raven, botanist and advocate for biodiversity, has died, aged 89</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/peter-raven-botanist-and-advocate-for-biodiversity-has-died-aged-89/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/peter-raven-botanist-and-advocate-for-biodiversity-has-died-aged-89/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Apr 2026 00:18:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/04/27001539/peter_raven_mjacob-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=318166</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biodiversity, Botany, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Mass Extinction, Obituary, and Plants]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Life on Earth is often described as a web, but for much of modern science it was catalogued as a ledger: names, specimens, distributions, relationships drawn in careful lines. Over the course of the 20th century, that ledger gave way to a more connected view. Plants and animals were no longer just entries in a [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Life on Earth is often described as a web, but for much of modern science it was catalogued as a ledger: names, specimens, distributions, relationships drawn in careful lines. Over the course of the 20th century, that ledger gave way to a more connected view. Plants and animals were no longer just entries in a system; they were participants in it, shaping one another across deep time. The implications of that shift were not merely scientific. They pointed, more directly than before, to the role of a single species—our own—in altering the terms of that participation. Few scientists did more to define that transition, or to explain its consequences, than Peter Raven. Peter Hamilton Raven, who died last night, aged 89, was among the most influential botanists of the past century. Over a career that spanned more than six decades, he combined taxonomy, evolutionary biology and conservation into a coherent body of work: to understand the diversity of life, and to argue for its preservation with a clarity that was unusual among scientists of his generation. Peter Raven. Courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden He began with curiosity rather than doctrine. Born in Shanghai in 1936 to American parents, he spent his childhood in California after his family returned in the late 1930s. As a boy in San Francisco, he collected insects and then plants, drawn to the order that botany seemed to offer. The ranges of species were mapped; their forms could be compared. It was, as he later&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/peter-raven-botanist-and-advocate-for-biodiversity-has-died-aged-89/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/peter-raven-botanist-and-advocate-for-biodiversity-has-died-aged-89/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-318166</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A slowdown, not salvation: what new extinction data reveal about the state of life on Earth</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/a-slowdown-not-salvation-what-new-extinction-data-reveal-about-the-state-of-life-on-earth/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/a-slowdown-not-salvation-what-new-extinction-data-reveal-about-the-state-of-life-on-earth/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Nov 2025 21:21:08 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/17205718/dodo-bird-icon-256x90-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=309675</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Analysis, Animals, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Green, Habitat Loss, Impact Of Climate Change, Invasive Species, Islands, Mass Extinction, Overexploitation, Pollution, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[For decades, biologists have warned that humanity is precipitating a sixth mass extinction. By some estimates, species are vanishing at up to a thousand times the natural background rate. Yet a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests the picture is more complicated. Extinctions, it finds, may have peaked a century ago—and declined [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[For decades, biologists have warned that humanity is precipitating a sixth mass extinction. By some estimates, species are vanishing at up to a thousand times the natural background rate. Yet a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests the picture is more complicated. Extinctions, it finds, may have peaked a century ago—and declined since. Kristen Saban and John Wiens of the University of Arizona examined 912 documented extinctions among plants and animals over the past 500 years. Their analysis, covering nearly two million assessed species, shows that losses rose steeply through the 1800s and early 1900s before slowing. Extinction rates for vertebrates, arthropods, and plants have generally decreased over the past century. The trend runs counter to the popular narrative of an accelerating biodiversity collapse. The number of extinctions are shown for each century since 1500. From Saban and Wiens (2025) &nbsp; Extinctions over time. The number of extinctions are shown for each decade since 1800 (b). For each time period, Saban and Wiens give the number of species that were inferred to have gone extinct in that time period, based primarily on the dates when each species was last seen. From Saban and Wiens (2025) That finding, however, offers little comfort. The apparent lull in recorded extinctions may reflect where and how humans look, not a reprieve for nature. Most known extinctions occurred on islands, where invasive rats, pigs, and goats devastated native fauna and flora. Today’s drivers—deforestation, pollution, and climate change—are concentrated on continents, where declines&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/a-slowdown-not-salvation-what-new-extinction-data-reveal-about-the-state-of-life-on-earth/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/a-slowdown-not-salvation-what-new-extinction-data-reveal-about-the-state-of-life-on-earth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-309675</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Climate change now threatens thousands of species on Earth</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/climate-change-now-threatens-thousands-of-species-on-earth/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/climate-change-now-threatens-thousands-of-species-on-earth/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 May 2025 15:48:04 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Spoorthy Raman]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/22062536/Bombus_schrencki_-_Trifolium_pratense_--768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=299483</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Coral Reefs, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forests, Impact Of Climate Change, Marine, Marine Conservation, Mass Extinction, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the last decade, report after report has warned that the Arctic is heating up faster than ever, cities are scorching, the Amazon is blazing, boreal forests are shrinking and the oceans are simmering — all because of human-caused climate change (How do we know? Here’s an evidence-based tool that tells us how much our [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the last decade, report after report has warned that the Arctic is heating up faster than ever, cities are scorching, the Amazon is blazing, boreal forests are shrinking and the oceans are simmering — all because of human-caused climate change (How do we know? Here’s an evidence-based tool that tells us how much our emissions contribute to each of these). As ecosystems morph on a heating planet, the biodiversity they harbor — the fish, the birds, the mammals and billions of invertebrates — also faces the wrath of climate change. But where does climate change rank among the host of threats wildlife face today? A new first-of-its-kind analysis of more than 70,000 wild animal species found that climate change is now a serious threat to Earth’s wildlife, after habitat loss and overexploitation. Climate change threatens nearly 5% of these species, with ocean invertebrates imperiled the most, according to the study, published in the journal BioScience. “Our goal was to shine a spotlight on the growing, often underappreciated role of climate change in the global biodiversity crisis,” study lead author William Ripple from Oregon State University told Mongabay by email. “We’re seeing clear signs that climate change is no longer a distant threat; it&#8217;s already disrupting wild animal populations around the globe.” Ripple is also the director of the Alliance of World Scientists. The researchers looked at more than 70,000 species of wild animals assessed by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — a catalog of conservation status and&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/climate-change-now-threatens-thousands-of-species-on-earth/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/climate-change-now-threatens-thousands-of-species-on-earth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-299483</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘LIFE’ scores map out where habitat loss for crops drives extinction</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/life-scores-map-out-where-habitat-loss-for-crops-drives-extinction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/life-scores-map-out-where-habitat-loss-for-crops-drives-extinction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Jan 2025 16:18:25 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/01/15054513/giant-anteater-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=292959</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forests, Habitat Loss, Land Use Change, Mapping, Mass Extinction, Research, Seagrass, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Across the globe, no other human activity currently affects the survival of wildlife species more than where we choose to grow our food. Alongside other impacts like hunting and climate change, agricultural production is helping to drive what scientists call Earth’s sixth mass extinction, with roughly three times more extinctions happening now than expected to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Across the globe, no other human activity currently affects the survival of wildlife species more than where we choose to grow our food. Alongside other impacts like hunting and climate change, agricultural production is helping to drive what scientists call Earth’s sixth mass extinction, with roughly three times more extinctions happening now than expected to occur naturally. The most recent Living Planet report led by WWF documented a 73% average slide in wildlife populations since 1970. Amid the gravity of the situation, researchers have been searching for ways to halt or even reverse the decline. With that goal in mind, an international team of scientists has developed a tool to help understand the implications of converting forests and other ecosystems to farmland — and what’s to be gained from protecting and restoring areas as well. The team calls the metric “Land-cover change Impacts of Future Extinctions,” or LIFE. They published their work Jan. 9 in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Each LIFE score represents how a species would be impacted in a specified area of habitat if that ecosystem were converted to agriculture or restored. The underlying analysis harnesses high-performance computing to combine habitat information from the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, with global land-cover data for more than 30,000 species of vertebrates. The idea is to provide “off-the-shelf” map layers to guide decision-making about land-use change, lead author Alison Eyres, a postdoctoral research associate in zoology at the University of Cambridge in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/life-scores-map-out-where-habitat-loss-for-crops-drives-extinction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/life-scores-map-out-where-habitat-loss-for-crops-drives-extinction/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-292959</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Haunting song pays tribute to Toughie, the frog whose extinction went unnoticed</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/haunting-song-pays-tribute-to-toughie-the-frog-whose-extinction-went-unnoticed/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/haunting-song-pays-tribute-to-toughie-the-frog-whose-extinction-went-unnoticed/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Apr 2024 18:37:45 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/04/10175222/The-EndLing-video-still_-Yuan-Liu-768x429.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=280830</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America and Panama]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibians, Animals, Arts, Biodiversity, Chytridiomycosis, Climate Change, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forest Destruction, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Herps, Mass Extinction, Tropical Forests, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[When the last Rabbs&#8217; fringe-limbed treefrog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) died in 2016 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, its extinction garnered little media attention. Environmental journalist Jeremy Hance, a longtime Mongabay reporter and editor, expressed his outrage in a story for The Guardian, titled “Frog goes extinct, media yawns.” &#8220;It&#8217;s so rare to be able to know [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[When the last Rabbs&#8217; fringe-limbed treefrog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) died in 2016 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, its extinction garnered little media attention. Environmental journalist Jeremy Hance, a longtime Mongabay reporter and editor, expressed his outrage in a story for The Guardian, titled “Frog goes extinct, media yawns.” &#8220;It&#8217;s so rare to be able to know when the last one goes,&#8221; Hance said. &#8220;When people didn&#8217;t cover that, it was so weird. This animal is not getting any coverage beyond the normal like, five paragraphs … I&#8217;m pissed off about this.&#8221; One person who did take note was musician Talia Schlanger. Late one night in 2019, Schlanger read Hance’s article in her Paris sublet and was moved to tears. She dove into researching the frog species. &#8220;I remember sitting at the little kitchen table and just sobbing. Absolutely sobbing,&#8221; Schlanger told Mongabay. &#8220;The song poured out of me.&#8221; That song, titled &#8220;The Endling,&#8221; appears on Schlanger&#8217;s debut studio album, Grace for the Going, and pays tribute to Toughie, the last known Rabbs&#8217; fringe-limbed treefrog. The term &#8220;endling&#8221; refers to the last known individual of a species or subspecies. When an endling dies, the species becomes extinct. The song&#8217;s haunting refrain, &#8220;You are the endling, the ending of a sound,&#8221; captures the finality of extinction. The first time she performed the song live, Schlanger said, she felt a bit nervous about how it would be received. &#8220;I was a bit shaky because I was like, ‘What are people going to think about&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/haunting-song-pays-tribute-to-toughie-the-frog-whose-extinction-went-unnoticed/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-280830</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ harming wildlife the world over: Study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/pfas-forever-chemicals-harming-wildlife-the-world-over-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/pfas-forever-chemicals-harming-wildlife-the-world-over-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Sep 2023 13:50:04 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[global forests]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/09/25164451/1.-Banner-image-Credit-Steve-Winter-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=273622</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Arctic, Global, and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibians, Animals, Biodiversity, Birds, Chemicals, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Diseases, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Mammals, Mass Extinction, Novel Entities, Planetary Boundaries, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Sea Turtles, Solutions, Tropical Forests, Turtles, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[While PFAS impacts on human health are well known, scientists are also finding severe impacts on wildlife, including hawksbill turtles, American alligators, Arctic kittiwakes, hooded seals, striped bass, bottlenose dolphins and other species.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In Hawaii and elsewhere in the North Pacific, few hatchlings are emerging from the nests of endangered hawksbill and green sea turtles. In Wisconsin, some tree swallows have failed to produce offspring. In California, infectious diseases are now more common in southern sea otters. In Michigan, bluegills are swimming slower. In the Arctic, some hooded seals and their pups have thyroid problems. And in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, American alligators have been found with lesions and unhealed, infected wounds. What each of these disparate places, animals and maladies have in common is high exposure to long-lived, human-made chemicals: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS. While it’s now well known that human exposure to PFAS can cause cancer, reduce immunity, impair fertility, cause liver damage and trigger myriad other health problems, scientists are becoming increasingly aware that wildlife is also at risk. A new study published September 26th in The Science of the Total Environment documents how exposure affects animals in the wild and includes an updated map pinpointing wildlife exposure to PFAS on every continent, with hotspots in the U.S., Europe, China and Australia. But the study’s lead author, David Andrews, notes that pretty much anywhere you look for these long-lived “forever chemicals,” you’ll find them. Andrews, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) and his team scoured scientific journals to compile this planetwide overview, a first-time analysis of existing data. They found that more than 600 species risk harm from PFAS. It’s an&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/pfas-forever-chemicals-harming-wildlife-the-world-over-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/pfas-forever-chemicals-harming-wildlife-the-world-over-study/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-273622</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Global study of 71,000 animal species finds 48% are declining</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/global-study-of-71000-animal-species-finds-48-are-declining/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/global-study-of-71000-animal-species-finds-48-are-declining/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Jun 2023 15:14:42 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Nandithachandraprakash]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/06/05140214/2-ELEPHANT-ZakoumaAP_180511_005766-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=269388</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Mass Extinction, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Tropical Deforestation, Tropical Forests, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A survey of all five vertebrate groups — mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish — plus insects, found nearly half of populations are shrinking, while just 3% are increasing, overwhelmingly due to human pressures.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Two centuries ago, extinctions were rare. Islands were hotspots, losing flightless bird species like the dodo and other animals that were hunted out of existence by European traders and colonists or killed off by introduced rats and cats. The Industrial Revolution changed that: Extinction rates soared across continents, roughly paralleling the exponential growth in human population, and more recently, a rapidly heating planet. The modern era leveled forests, raised sprawling cities, converted huge amounts of wild land for agriculture, and pierced remote areas with roads. Massive growth kicked in post-World War II as 2.5 billion people in 1950 grew to 8 billion in 2022. These trends are expected to continue this century, with wildlife increasingly pushed to the margins. “The major cause behind this current crisis is habitat destruction,” says Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, senior lecturer of evolutionary biology and macroecology at Queen&#8217;s University, Belfast. He’s a co-author of a new study published in May in Biological Reviews. Pincheira-Donoso and his colleagues examined the state of more than 71,000 animal species, looking for both winners and losers and those with stable populations. They found erosion of species across the tree of life, which they called “one of the most alarming consequences of human impacts on the planet.” Most previous studies estimated extinction risk based on snapshot-in-time assessment, using categories ranging from non-threatened to critically endangered. The new study instead focused on trajectories: whether species are doing well, with numbers increasing or holding steady — or falling. It evaluated species from all five&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/global-study-of-71000-animal-species-finds-48-are-declining/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/global-study-of-71000-animal-species-finds-48-are-declining/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-269388</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Kew Gardens joins local partners to save tropical plants from extinction</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/kew-gardens-joins-local-partners-to-save-tropical-plants-from-extinction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/kew-gardens-joins-local-partners-to-save-tropical-plants-from-extinction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Feb 2023 14:53:23 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sue Branford]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[global forests]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/02/13120131/kew-garden-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=265518</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Cameroon, England, Ethiopia, Global, Guinea, Mozambique, Tropics, and United Kingdom]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Botany, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forestry, Forests, Fungi, Global Environmental Crisis, Mass Extinction, Plants, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Species Discovery, Trees, Tropical Deforestation, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A worldwide international collaboration is locating tropical areas with high concentrations of plants not yet identified by science, then working with local communities to conserve those plants and their habitats.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KEW GARDENS, U.K. — There have been five known mass extinctions in Earth’s history. Today, most scientists agree we are in the midst of the sixth. “Species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate,” attests Meryl Westlake, senior digital content manager at Britain’s Kew Gardens, “with some estimates that we are [now] losing 135 plants, animals and insects every day, compared with the baseline extinction rate — the rate … before humans had a big impact on the planet — of 1-5 species every year.” Humankind, being the driving force behind this rapidly escalating extinction crisis, may have a chance of halting it, or at least slowing it down, at least in theory and hopefully in practice. Which is where the U.K.’s Royal Botanic Gardens, popularly known as Kew Gardens, enters the picture. While the London-based internationally renowned botanical research institute is best known for its vast collection of tropical plants kept under glass against the U.K’s harsh climate since 1840, today its researchers are working with partners around the globe in a race to slow the pace of extinction. Mongabay went to London at the start of 2023 to see how the effort is progressing. Saxicolella deniseae is a member of the Saxicolella genus, a group of plants highly adapted to survive in very specific whitewater environment, with some species only encountered at a single waterfall. In 2022, scientists identified several new species within this genus, including S. deniseae on the Konkouré River in Guinea. Dams need to have solid&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/kew-gardens-joins-local-partners-to-save-tropical-plants-from-extinction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/kew-gardens-joins-local-partners-to-save-tropical-plants-from-extinction/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-265518</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Will the world join Indigenous peoples in relationship with nature at COP-15? (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/will-the-world-join-indigenous-peoples-in-relationship-with-nature-at-biodiversity-cop-15-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/will-the-world-join-indigenous-peoples-in-relationship-with-nature-at-biodiversity-cop-15-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Dec 2022 16:28:32 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jennifer Tauli CorpuzValérie Courtois]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/06/02155851/Screen-Shot-2022-06-02-at-11.58.39-AM-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=263414</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Commentary, Conservation, Environment, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Mass Extinction, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[We are peoples of place — our relationship with our lands and waters have sustained us for millennia. What happens to one species or ecosystem has immeasurable impacts on our way of life. For example, the Innu peoples of Nitassinan, also known as the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, have lived and depended on our sacred relationship with [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[We are peoples of place — our relationship with our lands and waters have sustained us for millennia. What happens to one species or ecosystem has immeasurable impacts on our way of life. For example, the Innu peoples of Nitassinan, also known as the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, have lived and depended on our sacred relationship with caribou for nearly 10,000 years. The caribou’s future is in doubt, however, along with that of wild species on almost every continent. Only a few decades ago, the George River Caribou herd in Northern Quebec, Canada, numbered nearly 1 million; today, the herd is down to about 8,000. Several hundred kilometers to the south, negotiators from around the globe have gathered in Montreal for the UN conference known as COP-15 to seek answers to the extinction crisis that challenges all of humanity. Even as wild species dwindle, one out of every five people on our planet depend on them for food—including 70% of the world’s poor. More than 41,000 species —28% of all assessed species—are threatened with extinction, species ranging from several species of caribou in the boreal forests in Canada to the Philippine eagle, the national bird, which is native to the territories of several Indigenous peoples in the Philippines. The Philippine eagle is listed as critically endangered, due mostly to habitat loss. Photo by Sinisa Djordje Majetic via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). The lands and waters managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities are home to an estimated 80% of our planet’s&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/will-the-world-join-indigenous-peoples-in-relationship-with-nature-at-biodiversity-cop-15-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/will-the-world-join-indigenous-peoples-in-relationship-with-nature-at-biodiversity-cop-15-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-263414</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In search of Taiwan&#8217;s lost clouded leopards, anthropology uncovers more than camera traps (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/in-search-of-taiwans-lost-clouded-leopards-anthropology-uncovers-more-than-camera-traps-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/in-search-of-taiwans-lost-clouded-leopards-anthropology-uncovers-more-than-camera-traps-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Nov 2021 01:02:14 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Yu Shih-Hsuan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/11/23002741/Screen-Shot-2021-11-16-at-9.06.25-PM-768x457.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=249764</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, East Asia, and Taiwan]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Cats, Commentary, Endangered Species, Extinction, Indigenous Peoples, and Mass Extinction]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Have you heard the Taiwanese Indigenous folklore about the island’s clouded leopard species — Lrikulaw — who led two human brothers to a heavenly place 600 years ago? While biologists have searched extensively for the animal in recent years using camera traps and other modern technology, better clues to this elusive and enigmatic creature can [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Have you heard the Taiwanese Indigenous folklore about the island’s clouded leopard species — Lrikulaw — who led two human brothers to a heavenly place 600 years ago? While biologists have searched extensively for the animal in recent years using camera traps and other modern technology, better clues to this elusive and enigmatic creature can be found by searching for information among Taiwan’s Indigenous people. I had a chance to talk to Pastor Kainungan Madalralepe, a respected linguist from Kucapugane Village in Vedai, Pingtung County in southern Taiwan. He explained the term ‘lrikulaw’ to me, emphasizing that the term has two parts: lri- and -kulaw. While the first part lri- indicates a future action, “(someone) is going to (do) something,” -kulaw means the action of “drawing with black-color coal.” Semantically, the pastor said, it means “something gets painted (with coal), which indirectly refers to the coat of the beautiful cat, the Formosan clouded leopard.” The pastor also pointed out that the actual animal in the Lrikulaw legend could be a dog (which are roughly the same size as a clouded leopard), and the name is to glorify its important role as a human companion. For Kucapugane and its satellite villages, it is common knowledge that Lrikulaw means “guardianship, honor, and glory,” as quoted by the chairman of Ngudradrekai Council, Lavuras Abaliwsu. I also read about it before, in many published materials, that Lrikulaw is a cultural symbol for the Ngudradrekai people. Surely, the animal not only represents an endangered (or&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/in-search-of-taiwans-lost-clouded-leopards-anthropology-uncovers-more-than-camera-traps-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/in-search-of-taiwans-lost-clouded-leopards-anthropology-uncovers-more-than-camera-traps-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-249764</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Cats, charisma and climate change (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/cats-charisma-and-climate-change-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/cats-charisma-and-climate-change-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Oct 2021 03:54:29 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jonathan Ayers]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/10/26023857/fishing_cat_NMG3065-header-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=248533</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Cats, Climate Change, Commentary, Conservation, Extinction, Green, Mass Extinction, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Hurricane Ida’s warpath is the latest in a litany of natural disasters, estimated to have cost the world $210 billion in damage in 2020, that is shining a spotlight on climate change. Given extensive air time and word counts by global news outlets, a perpetual stream of climate reports described as “a code red for humanity” makes [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Hurricane Ida’s warpath is the latest in a litany of natural disasters, estimated to have cost the world $210 billion in damage in 2020, that is shining a spotlight on climate change. Given extensive air time and word counts by global news outlets, a perpetual stream of climate reports described as “a code red for humanity” makes it virtually impossible to avoid the subject of climate change dollars and damage. Without question, climate change is a threat necessary to address with vigor for the future of all living creatures, as many plan to do in just a week’s time at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Yet, the world’s focus on this issue is cannibalizing much of the attention and dollars required to preserve the planet’s biodiversity, which loses precious ground every day to population growth and the resulting overexploitation of species and habitats. And believe me, you don&#8217;t need a trip to space to understand the beauty, importance and fragility of our planet&#8217;s most critical ecosystems. California&#8217;s 2021 drought pushed the levels of some reservoirs to record lows. Climate change is expected to worsen droughts across the American West. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler We must move beyond a narrative that focuses solely on climate change. For far too long, the crisis of biodiversity loss has been largely overlooked and deprioritized. This occurs even as conservationists have desperately rung alarm bells about the one million species at risk of extinction due to human activities, part of what many predict is the sixth mass extinction in our planet’s history.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/cats-charisma-and-climate-change-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-248533</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Seed dispersal is just as important as pollination (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/08/seed-dispersal-is-just-as-important-as-pollination-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/08/seed-dispersal-is-just-as-important-as-pollination-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Aug 2021 15:54:38 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ariek Norford]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/08/10153844/Chimps-eating-figs-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=245759</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Commentary, Conservation, Ecosystems, Extinction, Forests, Mass Extinction, Plants, Pollinators, Seed Dispersal, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Society has recently become enthralled with bees and the amazing service they provide spreading pollen around and helping to sustain plant populations. From crops to gardens to forests, bees keep the world green, and us fed. But what happens after pollination? Just like for us and most animals, plant offspring do not tolerate staying with [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Society has recently become enthralled with bees and the amazing service they provide spreading pollen around and helping to sustain plant populations. From crops to gardens to forests, bees keep the world green, and us fed. But what happens after pollination? Just like for us and most animals, plant offspring do not tolerate staying with their parents forever. But the problem is that they can’t just walk off. So instead, they hitch a ride (either inside or outside) animals (or sometimes by wind and water). Animals are doing most of the work though, dispersing the seeds of about half of temperate plants and three quarters of tropical plants. So, who are these animals? Almost everyone’s favorites play some type of role from bats to monkeys, and even wolves and turtles, because everyone loves fruit. And by eating fruit, animals are eating seeds, and moving them elsewhere when they poop. Here are some of the star seed dispersers: The airline pilots. There are many birds and bats out there that only eat fruit. And because they can fly, they can travel long distances in very short periods of time, taking seeds far away from their parents. One of the best examples are the macaws in Central and South America. These are big birds so they can eat all different sizes of seeds. And they disperse them up to 1.2 km (three quarters of a mile)! Another one of my favorite airline pilots are flying foxes, which are found in East and&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/08/seed-dispersal-is-just-as-important-as-pollination-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-245759</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Study shows it took the Amazon as we know it over 6 million years to form</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/study-shows-it-took-the-amazon-as-we-know-it-over-6-million-years-to-form/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/study-shows-it-took-the-amazon-as-we-know-it-over-6-million-years-to-form/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Jun 2021 10:01:24 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claire Asher]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Nandithachandraprakash]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/06/07095109/amazon-header-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=243245</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Central America, South America, and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Disasters, Ecosystems, Environment, Extinction, Forest Destruction, Forests, Fossils, History, Mass Extinction, Plants, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Science, Trees, Tropical Conservation Science, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed more than 75% of all species on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs, triggered an ecological catastrophe that took the neotropical rainforests around 6 million years to recover from, according to a recent study published in Science. The mass extinction that followed claimed nearly half of all [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed more than 75% of all species on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs, triggered an ecological catastrophe that took the neotropical rainforests around 6 million years to recover from, according to a recent study published in Science. The mass extinction that followed claimed nearly half of all tropical plant species and shifted Amazonian ecosystems from open-canopy forests dominated by ferns to the dense closed canopy rainforests we know today, the researchers report. The geological period known as the Cretaceous came to an abrupt end with that asteroid strike on Chicxulub in what is today the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, triggering tsunamis and wildfires, throwing up a blanket of debris into the atmosphere that spread around the world, and hailing the start of the Paleogene period. To understand how this catastrophic event influenced the forests of Central and South America, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama collected fossilized pollen spores and leaves from the pre-impact (late Cretaceous) Guaduas formation, and post-impact (Paleogene) formations in Bogotá and Cerrejónin in Colombia. They found that plant diversity declined by 45% at the end of the Cretaceous and did not recover for more than 6 million years. When diversity finally returned to pre-impact levels, the Neotropical forests looked very different. Open forests with a diverse mixture of ferns and conifers had been replaced by dense, closed-canopy forests dominated by flowering plants. “During the last days of the age of dinosaurs, the tropics were not dominated&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/study-shows-it-took-the-amazon-as-we-know-it-over-6-million-years-to-form/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/study-shows-it-took-the-amazon-as-we-know-it-over-6-million-years-to-form/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-243245</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Reptile traffickers trawl scientific literature, target newly described species</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/reptile-traffickers-trawl-scientific-literature-target-newly-described-species/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/reptile-traffickers-trawl-scientific-literature-target-newly-described-species/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 May 2021 20:09:03 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Pavel Toropov]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/26192205/1-banner-image-768x447.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=243039</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Almost Famous Animals]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[China, European Union, Germany, Global, Iran, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Vietnam]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Conservation, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat Loss, Herps, Hunting, Illegal Trade, Lizards, Mass Extinction, Over-hunting, Overconsumption, Reptiles, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Snakes, Solutions, Species Discovery, Turtles, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Within months of newly discovered species of snakes, geckos and turtles being described (along with their locations) by scientists, traders find and harvest the animals for sale on the Internet.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[“What happens when a new species of gecko is discovered? Two Germans grab their suitcases and get on a plane,” says Sandra Altherr, telling an in-house joke. Altherr is a co-founder of Pro Wildlife, a conservation NGO in Germany. In the joke, the anonymous men with suitcases are reptile traders. Their objective is to get hold of the new species as quickly as possible and sell it to collectors. A single lizard, turtle or snake can fetch hundreds, even thousands of dollars. How do the traders know where to go? And why are Germans the butt of the joke? “Traders follow scientific literature, scanning it systematically, looking for new species,” says Altherr. A long-standing scientific convention helps their search: journals not only require a description of each new species found, but typically include the location where it was discovered. In addition, few know that Germany is a superpower in the reptile trade. “We have had the tradition of reptile keeping since the start of the nineteenth century,” explains Altherr. “The problem became huge over the last 2 or 3 decades. With technology and globalization, nature became available and accessible, and the Internet helps traders to get organized, to get in touch.” Mitchell&#8217;s rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchelii) from the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico on sale at Terraristika, the world’s largest reptile fair held in Hamm, Germany. An incredible variety of reptile species is on sale at Terraristika where reptile collectors often come to pick up orders they made online. Image courtesy&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/reptile-traffickers-trawl-scientific-literature-target-newly-described-species/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/reptile-traffickers-trawl-scientific-literature-target-newly-described-species/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-243039</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The Pope, a prince and a judge walk into a bar&#8230;to argue for nature&#8217;s rights (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/the-pope-a-prince-and-a-judge-walk-into-a-bar-to-argue-for-natures-rights-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/the-pope-a-prince-and-a-judge-walk-into-a-bar-to-argue-for-natures-rights-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 May 2021 19:06:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mari Margil]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/07/25173901/sabah_aerial_1802_1210PX-768x451.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=242837</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Commentary, Conservation, Environment, Environmental Law, Ethics, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Law, and Mass Extinction]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Pope, a prince, and a judge walk into a bar&#8230; Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. What it represents instead is not a meeting in a bar, but a meeting of the minds around an idea that represents a profound change in humankind’s relationship with nature. That change now being discussed by [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Pope, a prince, and a judge walk into a bar&#8230; Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. What it represents instead is not a meeting in a bar, but a meeting of the minds around an idea that represents a profound change in humankind’s relationship with nature. That change now being discussed by key religious, political, and judicial leaders comes with the recognition that we are facing overlapping, global environmental crises which require a fundamental shift in humankind’s relationship with the natural world. A central tenet of this is recognizing that the natural environment itself must be afforded the highest form of legal protection – the recognition of legal rights – in order for both humanity and nature to survive. This represents a major shift away from current societal and legal norms – norms which have been codified into Western systems of law, in which nature is treated as a thing that we manage and control, toward a “new normal” in which nature is regarded as a living entity with its own legal rights to exist, regenerate, evolve, and be restored. As we face rising temperatures, accelerating species extinctions, and a host of other ecological threats that affect our very existence, that’s no joke. Drone view of river and flooded forest in the Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay. Nature as a thing Today, legal systems around the world treat nature as a thing, an object, an item of commerce or property. Environmental laws then authorize&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/the-pope-a-prince-and-a-judge-walk-into-a-bar-to-argue-for-natures-rights-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/the-pope-a-prince-and-a-judge-walk-into-a-bar-to-argue-for-natures-rights-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-242837</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New paper urges shift to ‘nature positivity’ to restore Earth</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/new-paper-urges-shift-to-nature-positivity-to-restore-earth/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/new-paper-urges-shift-to-nature-positivity-to-restore-earth/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 May 2021 14:23:15 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/07100801/hawaii_190209-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=242418</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering the Commons and Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Ecosystems, Environment, Environmental Policy, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Land Use Change, Landscape Restoration, Mass Extinction, Politics, Restoration, Science, and Solutions]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The world is brimming with bad news about people failing to take care of the Earth. But there is a way to change the narrative, says Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke. The key, according to him, is to strive for a “nature positive” world that is less about destruction and more about restoration. “We know we&#8217;re [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The world is brimming with bad news about people failing to take care of the Earth. But there is a way to change the narrative, says Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke. The key, according to him, is to strive for a “nature positive” world that is less about destruction and more about restoration. “We know we&#8217;re on a rocket sled into the abyss, and we need to turn that around 100%, going the other direction on a rocket sled towards a positive solution,” Locke told Mongabay in an interview. “Tinkering is not possible. We can&#8217;t just [take] an old crystal radio set where you just kind of turn the dial a little bit [to] move from one station to another. It won&#8217;t work. We need to be on the internet, instead of listening to the radio — that kind of level of change.” Locke is the lead author of a new paper published April 30, a few days before the start of a six-week virtual meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), an intergovernmental scientific advisory body to the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). At this meeting, the SBSTTA will provide advice on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, Guido Broekhoven, head of policy research and development at WWF, told Mongabay in an interview. Zebras. Image by Rhett A. Butler. “What&#8217;s being discussed and recommended in the meetings over the coming six weeks will be incredibly important as a signal of the level of ambition&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/new-paper-urges-shift-to-nature-positivity-to-restore-earth/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/new-paper-urges-shift-to-nature-positivity-to-restore-earth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-242418</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Race against time’: Saving the snakes and lizards of Brazil’s Cerrado</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/race-against-time-saving-the-snakes-and-lizards-of-brazils-cerrado/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/race-against-time-saving-the-snakes-and-lizards-of-brazils-cerrado/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Feb 2021 18:12:51 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/02/02172229/4-BANNER-IMAGE-UNDESCRIBED-Apostolepis-768x456.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=239185</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Brazil, Cerrado, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[agribusiness, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Cattle, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Farming, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Loss, Herps, Lizards, Mass Extinction, Plantations, Ranching, Reptiles, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Science, Snakes, Solutions, Soy, Species Discovery, Tropical Deforestation, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The native vegetation of Brazil’s vast savanna is rapidly being replaced by plantations and pastures. At risk along with the biome’s grasslands are hundreds of endemic, uniquely adapted reptile species. ]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Stenocercus canastra, a newly discovered lizard species found in Serra da Canastra National Park by Cristiano Nogueira. Image by Cristiano Nogueira. When Cristiano Nogueira first spied the creature hiding in an underground burrow, he thought he had found a “lost species.” Stenocercus tricristatus, a diminutive, distinctively-spotted, prehistoric-looking lizard, hadn’t been seen for 175 years, and was known to science by just a single specimen kept in a drawer at the Paris Museum of Natural History. An infamous Danish expat collector, M. Claussen, had collected it somewhere in central Brazil back then, but no one knew exactly where. Nogueira, a herpetologist and biogeographer, had traveled to Serra da Canastra National Park in Brazil’s southeastern Cerrado savanna just after a fire burned through: it’s the best time to find animals that are normally concealed by grasses in this rocky, highlands landscape. Upon closer study back in the lab, he and his colleagues determined the animal’s true identity. “It wasn’t the lost species,” Nogueira said. “This beautiful spiny lizard, with two horns on top of its head, was a new species.” That was in 2019. Remarkably, two decades into the 21st century, scientists are still discovering previously unknown species across central Brazil’s Cerrado biome. In 2000, when Nogueira first proposed field research there as a graduate student, his professors told him he wouldn’t find much. “That was a vision based on poor data and poor sampling,” he said. “It was considered a wasteland.” Ancient plateau and savanna in the western portion of Bahia state. The&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/race-against-time-saving-the-snakes-and-lizards-of-brazils-cerrado/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/race-against-time-saving-the-snakes-and-lizards-of-brazils-cerrado/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-239185</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Study warns of &#8216;biotic annihilation&#8217; driven by hunting, habitat destruction</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/01/study-warns-of-biotic-annihilation-driven-by-hunting-habitat-destruction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/01/study-warns-of-biotic-annihilation-driven-by-hunting-habitat-destruction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Jan 2021 12:11:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Malavika Vyawahare]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Malavikavyawahare]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/01/05112434/indonesia_160460-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=238463</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Indonesia and Malaysia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Critically Endangered Species, Extinction, Hunting, Mass Extinction, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Humans are driving species to extinction 1,000 times faster than what is considered natural. Now, new research underscores the extent of the planet&#8217;s impoverishment. Extinctions don&#8217;t just rob the planet of species but also of functional and phylogenetic diversity, the authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argue. &#8220;They are much newer ideas [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Humans are driving species to extinction 1,000 times faster than what is considered natural. Now, new research underscores the extent of the planet&#8217;s impoverishment. Extinctions don&#8217;t just rob the planet of species but also of functional and phylogenetic diversity, the authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argue. &#8220;They are much newer ideas than species richness, so not as much exploration has been done about patterns of decline in these two metrics, particularly globally,&#8221; said Jedediah Brodie, first author of the study and conservation biologist at the University of Montana. For example, rhinos loom large in public imagination but are, in fact, marching into oblivion. The Bornean rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis harrissoni), a subspecies of the Sumatran rhinoceros, has gone extinct in Malaysia. &#8220;It is such a tragedy because it&#8217;s an iconic and culturally important species,&#8221; Brodie said, &#8220;but also because they are super important both functionally and phylogenetically.&#8221; A baby African elephant at Kruger National Park. Image by Rhett A. Butler. Harvesting animals for subsistence or sale is the greatest threat to land-dwelling mammals, the new study found. About 15% of people in the world depend on wild animals, particularly vertebrates, for food. But hunting, illegal and legal, also feeds the global supply chain for wildlife and wildlife parts. Rhino populations plummeted in the second half of the 20th century; they are heavily poached for their horns, and their ranges have shrunk dramatically over the decades. Of the five existing rhino species, three are critically endangered. The study&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/01/study-warns-of-biotic-annihilation-driven-by-hunting-habitat-destruction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/01/study-warns-of-biotic-annihilation-driven-by-hunting-habitat-destruction/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-238463</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Crimefighting NGO tracks Brazil wildlife trade on WhatsApp and Facebook</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/crimefighting-ngo-tracks-brazil-wildlife-trade-on-whatsapp-and-facebook/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/crimefighting-ngo-tracks-brazil-wildlife-trade-on-whatsapp-and-facebook/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Nov 2020 12:38:05 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Peter Yeung]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/23121023/BANNER-IMAGE-6-768x446.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=237089</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Cerrado, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Birds, Carnivores, Cats, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Loss, Illegal Trade, Mammals, Mass Extinction, Monkeys, NGOs, Overconsumption, Pet Trade, Primates, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, trafficking, Tropical Deforestation, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The illegal wildlife trade is out of control in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, says the award-winning NGO known as RENCTAS, which tracked 3.5 million wildlife trafficking ads on social networks last year.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Golden conure (Guaruba guarouba), a species threatened by trafficking. Image courtesy of RENCTAS. In the tropical forest surrounding Alter do Chão, a Brazilian town located on a languid stretch of the Amazon River and home to what is considered one of the most beautiful freshwater beaches in the world, monkeys, macaws, agoutis and armadillos co-habit in relative harmony. About 33 kilometers west of the city of Santarém in Pará state, life’s slow pace in the village has long been a draw for weekend trippers and foreign tourists alike. But Alter do Chão and its surroundings, increasingly threatened by illegal loggers and poachers, is also a base for what may be one of the most innovative nonprofit organizations fighting animal trafficking in Brazil. “Wildlife trafficking is a real tragedy for Brazil&#8217;s biodiversity,” says Dener Giovanini, the Alter do Chão-based co-founder of the National Network Combating Wild Animal Trafficking (RENCTAS). “The number of endangered species in Brazil has grown exponentially in just over 20 years. I am not afraid to claim that today any wild species can be a victim of trafficking.” According to Giovanini, RENCTAS was the first environmental organization in Brazil to use the internet in a major way as a tool to combat the illegal wildlife trade. Founded in 1999, after Giovanini was awarded a three-year fellowship from the US-based foundation Ashoka, RENCTAS made a name for itself by logging its first legal complaint regarding the use of the internet by animal traffickers in Brazil. In its first&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/crimefighting-ngo-tracks-brazil-wildlife-trade-on-whatsapp-and-facebook/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/crimefighting-ngo-tracks-brazil-wildlife-trade-on-whatsapp-and-facebook/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-237089</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The riddle of Madagascar’s megafauna extinction just got trickier</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/the-riddle-of-madagascars-megafauna-extinction-just-got-trickier/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/the-riddle-of-madagascars-megafauna-extinction-just-got-trickier/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Nov 2020 06:10:20 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Malavika Vyawahare]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Malavikavyawahare]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[africa]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/17044835/ostrich-and-elephant-bird-eggs-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=236925</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Conservation in Madagascar]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa and Madagascar]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Caves, Climate Change, Extinction, Impact Of Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Research, Saving Species From Extinction, and Solutions]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The growing consensus that the earth is in the throes of a sixth mass extinction has focused attention on a centuries-old ecological puzzle: why do species suddenly disappear by the droves? Madagascar could hold some lessons, but scientists are still debating what happened there. The vast tropical island in the southwest Indian Ocean experienced a [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The growing consensus that the earth is in the throes of a sixth mass extinction has focused attention on a centuries-old ecological puzzle: why do species suddenly disappear by the droves? Madagascar could hold some lessons, but scientists are still debating what happened there. The vast tropical island in the southwest Indian Ocean experienced a megafauna crash relatively recently, about 1,000 years ago. Yet we still do not know for sure what doomed the gorilla-sized lemurs, towering elephant birds, and grand tortoises that once roamed the island. Humans and climatic changes are scientists’ favored culprits when explaining megafaunal collapses worldwide, especially since human arrival on islands has almost always ushered in dramatic biodiversity losses. But disentangling the importance of each is still a ripe area for research. A recently published paper in the journal Science Advances complicates the widely held understanding that humans in Madagascar were solely to blame, by drawing attention to climatic disruptions. The authors constructed a climatic record spanning 8,000 years. During this period, the island&#8217;s inhabitants experienced several stretches of arid conditions. Madagascar was in the grips of one such megadrought when megafaunal extinctions swept the island, their analysis shows. A map showing Madagascar on the left and Rodrigues on the extreme right. &#8220;Whether you look in Mauritius, Rodrigues, or Madagascar, we have records of megafauna surviving right through all those climate changes,” said study co-author Ashish Sinha, a climate scientist at California State University, Dominguez Hills. “So, the question is, why do they not survive&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/the-riddle-of-madagascars-megafauna-extinction-just-got-trickier/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/the-riddle-of-madagascars-megafauna-extinction-just-got-trickier/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-236925</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>One year on: Insects still in peril as world struggles with global pandemic</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/one-year-on-insects-still-in-peril-as-world-struggles-with-global-pandemic/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/one-year-on-insects-still-in-peril-as-world-struggles-with-global-pandemic/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Nov 2020 16:05:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/10132417/7-BANNER-IMAGE-7-768x446.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=236705</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Almost Famous Animals and Saving Life on Earth: Words on the Wild]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Asia, Australia, Central America, Costa Rica, Europe, European Union, Germany, Global, Latin America, North America, South America, Tropics, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Agrochemicals, Animals, Bees, Beetles, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Butterflies, Climate Change, Conservation, Controversial, Deforestation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Extreme Weather, Farming, Food, Food Industry, food security, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Herbicides, Industrial Agriculture, Insects, Land Use Change, Logging, Mass Extinction, Moths, Natural Capital, Pesticides, Pollinators, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Temperate Forests, Tropical Deforestation, Weather, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[This article is a one year follow up to the award-winning series, The Great Insect Dying published in June, 2019 on Mongabay. The original series documents insect losses in Europe, the U.S. and the tropics — here’s what we know today.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A green hoverfly in Malinidi, Kenya. Image by Dino J. Martins. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the heart of a what was increasingly a global lockdown, the rains finally came to East Africa. They came after several years of drought and less-than-stellar rainy seasons. And with these rains, came the insects, says Dino Joseph Martins, the executive director of the Mpala Research Center. “There&#8217;s been this beautiful flash of butterflies and everybody&#8217;s with their families or at home, or trying to entertain their kids that are not in school, and looking at things in the garden or going on walks,” Martins said in August. Martins, an entomologist and butterfly aficionado, has become so “inundated” by questions from curious insect onlookers in lockdown that he’s considering “quitting social media” just to have some time to breathe again. “I think there has been a much broader appreciation of nature [during the pandemic] and it&#8217;s because of the loneliness of lockdown, the isolation,” says Martins. “This has been such a blow for so many people.” But, according to the scientist, the pandemic has also unexpectedly awakened many people to the marvels of the natural world and our interconnectedness with it. It’s a happy anecdote in a year that has seen not only wrenching global change due to the pandemic, but also reams of new research on the potential decline of insects around the world, often dubbed more dramatically as the “insect apocalypse” by the media. Parataxonomists building a DNA barcode&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/one-year-on-insects-still-in-peril-as-world-struggles-with-global-pandemic/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/one-year-on-insects-still-in-peril-as-world-struggles-with-global-pandemic/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-236705</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>World&#8217;s plants and fungi a frontier of discovery, if we can protect them: Report</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/worlds-plants-and-fungi-a-frontier-of-discovery-if-we-can-protect-them-report/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/worlds-plants-and-fungi-a-frontier-of-discovery-if-we-can-protect-them-report/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>01 Oct 2020 15:10:12 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/10/01145259/Mycena-haematopus-Burgundydrop-Bonnet-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=235375</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Biofuels, Climate Change, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Extinction, Food, food security, Forests, Fungi, Green, Mass Extinction, Medicinal Plants, New Discovery, Plants, Research, and Species Discovery]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Outer space, the ocean depths and quantum physics are areas ripe for discovery, the underexplored frontiers of science. But another frontier may be hidden in plain sight, right under your feet or out your window, in the kingdoms of plants and fungi. In 2019 alone, 1,942 plants and 1,886 fungi were newly described by scientists. Some [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Outer space, the ocean depths and quantum physics are areas ripe for discovery, the underexplored frontiers of science. But another frontier may be hidden in plain sight, right under your feet or out your window, in the kingdoms of plants and fungi. In 2019 alone, 1,942 plants and 1,886 fungi were newly described by scientists. Some of these plants are in the family of garlic and onions, some new wild types of cassava, and some closely related to known medicinal species and potentially new sources of medicine. However, nearly 40% of global plant species are estimated to be threatened with extinction. The last known remaining Abutilon pitcairnense was destroyed by a landslide on Pitcairn Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is now considered extinct. Photo by Marcella Corcoran. The “State of the World&#8217;s Plants and Fungi 2020” report, released this week by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew), delves into a global assessment of plants and fungi as food, fuel, medicine, tools for urban resilience and stores of genetic diversity; the commercialization of plants; and whether conservation policies help or hinder scientific research. Also covered are states of both extinction and discovery. The report was born of the collaborative effort of 200 scientists from 42 different countries. Each chapter is based on new studies published in the journal New Phytologist and aims to present these findings in a reader-friendly manner. “It&#8217;s an unprecedented collection of knowledge,” Phil Stevenson, RBG Kew scientist and lead author of the ecosystem services chapter&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/worlds-plants-and-fungi-a-frontier-of-discovery-if-we-can-protect-them-report/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/worlds-plants-and-fungi-a-frontier-of-discovery-if-we-can-protect-them-report/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-235375</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Biologists warn ‘extinction denial’ is the latest anti-science conspiracy theory</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/biologists-warn-of-extinction-denial-as-latest-anti-science-conspiracy/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/biologists-warn-of-extinction-denial-as-latest-anti-science-conspiracy/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 Sep 2020 10:08:24 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mike Shanahan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/09/14095105/tamarin-768x507.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=234811</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Mass Extinction, and Research]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[If you prefer to listen to this report, you can click &#8216;play&#8217; here to listen to it via Mongabay&#8217;s podcast: Biodiversity scientists are being urged to “fight the creeping rise of extinction denial” that has spread from fringe blogs to influential media outlets and even into a U.S. Congressional hearing. The call to arms came [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[If you prefer to listen to this report, you can click &#8216;play&#8217; here to listen to it via Mongabay&#8217;s podcast: Biodiversity scientists are being urged to “fight the creeping rise of extinction denial” that has spread from fringe blogs to influential media outlets and even into a U.S. Congressional hearing. The call to arms came in a paper published in Nature Ecology &amp; Evolution last month by Alexander Lees, senior lecturer in conservation biology at Manchester Metropolitan University, and colleagues. “Many of the same individuals that routinely seek to downplay the impacts of climate change have written articles understating the biodiversity loss crisis,” Lees says. “Denialists have sought to obfuscate the magnitude of both extinctions and loss of bio-abundance.” The paper describes and debunks three types of extinction denial. The first, “literal denial,” argues that extinction is largely a historical problem. Arguments like this, such as contained in this article claiming that “the onset of further wildlife extinctions seems far-fetched,” ignore the conservatism of biologists in declaring extinctions, as well as actual evidence of recent extinctions and of the widespread population declines that suggest many more future losses are on the way, the authors write. They point out, for example, that denialists have long stated that the Atlantic Forest in Brazil has suffered no extinctions despite having shrunk in area by 90%. Yet two bird species were declared extinct there in 2019, and seven more are down to their last few individuals or have not been seen for a decade&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/biologists-warn-of-extinction-denial-as-latest-anti-science-conspiracy/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/biologists-warn-of-extinction-denial-as-latest-anti-science-conspiracy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-234811</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Rescuing Achilles: Southern pig-tailed macaques listed as endangered but still persecuted (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/rescuing-achilles-southern-pig-tailed-macaques-listed-as-endangered-but-still-persecuted-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/rescuing-achilles-southern-pig-tailed-macaques-listed-as-endangered-but-still-persecuted-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Aug 2020 16:59:47 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sinan Serhadli]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/08/24164449/macaque-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=234105</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, North Sumatra, Southeast Asia, and Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Commentary, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Illegal Trade, Mass Extinction, Monkeys, Primates, Wildlife, and Wildlife Trade]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The southern pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina) has recently been re-classified as endangered by the IUCN (and even the long-tailed macaque is now considered Vulnerable). This news came as a surprise to my colleagues and me. Yet, it is alarming if a highly adaptive generalist species such as the pig-tailed macaque – which can thrive even [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The southern pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina) has recently been re-classified as endangered by the IUCN (and even the long-tailed macaque is now considered Vulnerable). This news came as a surprise to my colleagues and me. Yet, it is alarming if a highly adaptive generalist species such as the pig-tailed macaque – which can thrive even in oil palm landscapes – is now threatened with extinction. I write this not only because of the endangerment of once (and still now) ignored species such the pig-tailed macaque, but also because of my personal connection to a particular individual, and his story. In May 2019, at the beginning of a biodiversity survey in a remote area in North Sumatra known as “Hadabuan Hills,” I encountered a chained-up baby pig-tailed macaque in the village where we started our expedition. I couldn’t ignore the little guy and the villagers agreed to hand him over to me, to the dismay of my team, as it meant that an annoying little macaque would be joining our 10-day survey. Achilles after his rescue. Image courtesy of Scott Nishiki. His mother was killed during a conflict with local farmers and put on a short chain. I named him Achilles, and the term &#8216;cheeky monkey&#8217; was a perfect fit for him. He kept the entire team on their heels, and he kept me awake at night. After the 10-day forest adventure, where he showed remarkable skills in catching crickets and moths as well as stealing our food, I needed to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/rescuing-achilles-southern-pig-tailed-macaques-listed-as-endangered-but-still-persecuted-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/rescuing-achilles-southern-pig-tailed-macaques-listed-as-endangered-but-still-persecuted-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-234105</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Is Chinese investment driving a sharp increase in jaguar poaching?</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/something-is-targeting-jaguars-200-fold-rise-in-seizures-china-link/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/something-is-targeting-jaguars-200-fold-rise-in-seizures-china-link/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Aug 2020 15:31:38 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rebecca Branford]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/08/11143919/BANNER-IMAGE-5-768x449.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=233712</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Latin American Wildlife Trade]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Bolivia, Brazil, Central America, China, Colombia, Latin America, Peru, South America, and Suriname]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Big Cats, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Carnivores, Cats, Conservation, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Illegal Trade, Jaguars, Mammals, Mass Extinction, Over-hunting, Overconsumption, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Saving Rainforests, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A dramatic surge in jaguar poaching and confiscations could be linked to Chinese-led investment in Latin America, poverty and corruption, according to a new study.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Conservationists say that as apex predator, the jaguar has a special role in regulating many populations of species down the food chain. Image by Carlos Durigan / WCS. A decapitated jaguar found floating in a river by a scientist doing fieldwork in the Brazilian Amazon; a dead jaguar spotted on the highway between Boa Vista and Manaus, its carcass first observed whole by the side of the road, later seen without its head or paws; dozens of media reports documenting the seizure of jaguar teeth mailed from Bolivia and Peru to China — all evidence of a booming trade in the charismatic Latin American cat. Using data from seizures by law enforcement reported online, a new study published in Conservation Biology has found that body parts (mostly teeth) from more than 850 jaguars were seized in Central and South American countries between 2012 and 2018, and that the number confiscated over that time period increased 200-fold. Interestingly, the study did not find a corresponding rise in the trade of smaller Latin American wildcats, such as puma and ocelot, with an average of only seven to ten individuals seized annually over the period of the study. “Something specific is targeting the jaguars,” said Thais Morcatty, a doctoral student in anthropology and geography at the UK’s Oxford Brookes University, and the study’s lead author. “Someone is targeting them.” The largest proportion of seizures took place in Brazil, followed by Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Suriname. Of those shipments seized where a destination country&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/something-is-targeting-jaguars-200-fold-rise-in-seizures-china-link/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/something-is-targeting-jaguars-200-fold-rise-in-seizures-china-link/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-233712</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Traversing Russia’s remote taiga in pursuit of the Blakiston’s fish owl</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/traversing-russias-remote-taiga-in-pursuit-of-the-blakistons-fish-owl/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/traversing-russias-remote-taiga-in-pursuit-of-the-blakistons-fish-owl/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 Aug 2020 10:43:48 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Gloria Dickie]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/08/05170322/BANNER-IMAGE-FO-768x447.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=233462</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia and Russia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Birds, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Extreme Weather, Fish, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Hunting, Logging, Mass Extinction, Mining, Over-hunting, Owls, Poaching, Research, Weather, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Meet biologist Jonathan Slaght as he spends years tracking a giant bird “the size of a fire hydrant with a six-foot wingspan.” Slaght’s new book, Owls of the Eastern Ice, offers engaging tales from the field.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[When one imagines Russia’s snow-covered taiga, a Siberian tiger is the creature that may most often pad silently through the conifer forests of the mind. But Jonathan Slaght wants us to envision a different creature, a giant bird sweeping through the night skies of this remote wilderness in his new book Owls of the Eastern Ice (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, 2020). Blakiston’s Fish Owl, named after the English naturalist Thomas Blakiston, is the world’s largest owl, weighing up to a hefty 10 pounds. It ranges from the eastern woodlands of Hokkaido, Japan, to the Primorye territory in the south of Russia’s Far East where between 200 and 400 fish owls are thought to dwell. It was here that Slaght first encountered the species as a young wildlife biologist. Twenty years ago, while on a hike in the Primorye forest, Slaght and a friend unexpectedly flushed an enormous bird from its hiding place. The creature took to the air, hooting its displeasure. At first, Slaght was unsure what kind of bird was flapping away from him. “It was clearly an owl, but bigger than any I’d seen,” he writes. The beguiling bird was the size of an eagle, a little fluffier and portlier, with huge ear tufts. It seemed “almost too comical to a real bird.” The creature crashed through the trees and disappeared out of sight. When he returned home, Slaght scanned an old field guide but didn’t think “the floppy goblin” matched any animal contained within. Fortunately, he had&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/traversing-russias-remote-taiga-in-pursuit-of-the-blakistons-fish-owl/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/traversing-russias-remote-taiga-in-pursuit-of-the-blakistons-fish-owl/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-233462</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New land snail species discovered in Hawaii offers ‘gem of hope’</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/new-land-snail-species-discovered-in-hawaii-offers-gem-of-hope/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/new-land-snail-species-discovered-in-hawaii-offers-gem-of-hope/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Aug 2020 08:32:19 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/08/05074410/gagneorum_shells-768x450.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=233411</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Hawaii and Pacific Islands]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Extinction, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Invasive Species, Invertebrates, Mass Extinction, New Discovery, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Species, and Species Discovery]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the Wai‘anae Mountains, a range on the western side of O‘ahu, Hawaii, a group of scientists were surveying the land for tiny, terrestrial snails when they came across something unexpected. “There was a tiny snail that we knew its distribution [to be in] the eastern mountains, so having it on the western mountain was [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the Wai‘anae Mountains, a range on the western side of O‘ahu, Hawaii, a group of scientists were surveying the land for tiny, terrestrial snails when they came across something unexpected. “There was a tiny snail that we knew its distribution [to be in] the eastern mountains, so having it on the western mountain was like, &#8216;Okay. Either it&#8217;s a new species, or it got transported somehow from its original range,’” Norine Yeung, one of the scientists conducting the surveys and a researcher at the University of Hawaii and the Bishop Museum, told Mongabay. Auriculella gagneorum. Image by Norine Yeung. The snail was candy-striped and about half a centimeter (a fifth of an inch) long, and it looked almost identical to another species: Auriculella perpusilla. But when the scientists took the snail back to the lab to conduct a thorough examination of it, they realized it was a different species altogether. But this wasn’t the first time scientists had stumbled upon this particular snail. When Yeung and her colleagues scoured records in the Bishop Museum, dating back to the 1940s, they found that the snail had already been documented. “The researchers at Bishop Museum already noted it as a possible new species,” Yeung said. “So they knew about it, but didn&#8217;t get a chance to be able to publish it and to report it to the world. It’s been a secret that’s been locked up in the collection.” Auriculella gagneorum. The light brown snail is a juvenile. Image by Norine&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/new-land-snail-species-discovered-in-hawaii-offers-gem-of-hope/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/new-land-snail-species-discovered-in-hawaii-offers-gem-of-hope/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-233411</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The Large-antlered muntjac — Southeast Asia’s mystery deer (Commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/the-large-antlered-muntjac-southeast-asias-mystery-deer-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/the-large-antlered-muntjac-southeast-asias-mystery-deer-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Aug 2020 17:26:53 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Joel BergerMinh Nguyen]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/08/03164410/Banner-image-768x452.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=233337</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Cambodia, Laos, Southeast Asia, and Vietnam]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Bushmeat, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Hunting, Mammals, Mass Extinction, Over-hunting, Overconsumption, Research, Tropical Deforestation, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Referred to as barking deer, 12 species of muntjacs inhabit Asia. The rarely seen, critically endangered Large-antlered muntjac inhabits the evergreen forests of Southeast Asia’s Annamites Range.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A male Large-antlered muntjac checks the status of a female.* Image © SWG/WCA/ICBF/Khammouane PAFO and DAFO. A blue whale has a big heart the size of an adult wild yak. Everyone knows the plight of blue whales — as everyone likewise knows the plight of tigers, elephants and pandas. But few know the threats to wild yaks. And even fewer know the risks faced by Southeast Asia’s Large Antlered Muntjac, or Bhutan’s national mammal, the takin. These big mammals too have heart, yet like so many species, they slip toward extinction in obscurity. This is the second story in a series, as told by scientist Joel Berger and colleagues, profiling threatened unsung large mammals, giving voice to their secrets and need. In the unlikely event someone walks up to you later today and asks: “When you think about deer, what do you imagine?”, how would you answer? Depending on your home territory and lifestyle, you might visualize a 12-point trophy buck mounted on a hunting lodge wall, a venison dinner, a voracious gobbler of your garden, Disney’s Bambi, or ground up velvet antlers sold in a vial as an aphrodisiac. Or maybe you flashed on the wild beauty of tear-drop eyes, upraised ears, and unabated curiosity. Some 50 species comprise the broader family of deer (Cervidae), a number representing more than 20% of the world’s ungulates (mammals with hooves), and they occupy ecological niches in many biomes. Cervids range from the humid tropical forests of Southeast Asia, to the cool&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/the-large-antlered-muntjac-southeast-asias-mystery-deer-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-233337</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Brazilian Amazon drained of millions of wild animals by criminal networks: Report</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/brazilian-amazon-drained-of-millions-of-wild-animals-by-criminal-networks-report/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/brazilian-amazon-drained-of-millions-of-wild-animals-by-criminal-networks-report/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Jul 2020 10:56:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/07/28095141/1210-cat-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=233103</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibians, Animals, Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, Birds, Bushmeat, Captive Breeding, Carnivores, Cats, Conservation, Diseases, Ecology, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Fish, Frogs, Global Environmental Crisis, Green, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Herps, Illegal Trade, Mammals, Mass Extinction, Natural Capital, Over-hunting, Overconsumption, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Reptiles, Research, Saving Rainforests, Turtles, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Well organized global crime networks are pulling millions of tropical birds, fish, turtles and mammals out of the Amazon — a lucrative trade that is destroying ecosystems and putting public health at risk.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A squirrel monkey in the Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve in Acre state, Brazil. © Rubens Matsushita / ICMBio. The Brazilian Amazon is hemorrhaging illegally traded wildlife according to a new report released Monday. Each year, thousands of silver-voiced saffron finches and other songbirds, along with rare macaws and parrots, are captured, trafficked and sold as pets. Some are auctioned as future contestants in songbird contests. Others are exported around the globe. Fish bound for ornamental home aquariums also pour out of the Amazon, including the tiny, iridescent blue and red cardinal tetra. Arapaima fish — also known as pirarucù, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish — are caught illegally, “laundered” amidst captive-bred specimens and shipped to the U.S. in large numbers. Other fish are headed for the dinner table, as are freshwater turtles and their eggs, while tapir, peccary and other mammals are sold in Brazil as bushmeat. Jaguar teeth, heads and skins are shipped to China. Millions of animals are being illegally captured and traded live and in parts in a thriving Brazilian black market, according to the report, produced by TRAFFIC, a UK-based nonprofit that studies the trade. “The pervasive and uncontrolled capture of wild animals and plants for the illegal trade is having grave consequences for Brazilian biodiversity, the national economy, the rule of law and good governance,” it says. Pirarucù or Arapaima (Arapaima gigas), one of the largest freshwater fish. Rio Tabajòs, Para, Brazil. © Michel Roggo / WWF. Lack of data hides trafficking Deep-dive research&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/brazilian-amazon-drained-of-millions-of-wild-animals-by-criminal-networks-report/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-233103</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Turtles and tortoises in trouble: More than half of all species face extinction</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/turtles-and-tortoises-in-trouble-more-than-half-of-all-species-face-extinction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/turtles-and-tortoises-in-trouble-more-than-half-of-all-species-face-extinction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Jul 2020 14:54:26 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/07/08130539/TT_SimonBardet_Pixabay-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=232202</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Fisheries, Forest Destruction, Forest Fragmentation, Fragmentation, Freshwater, Green, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Herps, Mass Extinction, Pet Trade, Poaching, Pollution, Roads, Sea Turtles, Turtles, Turtles And Tortoises, Water Pollution, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Turtles and tortoises in trouble  On the island of Madagascar, locked gates, razor-wire fences, and 24-hour armed guards protect one of the world’s rarest treasures. That treasure, worth roughly $50,000 each on the black market, is the last wild population of the critically endangered ploughshare tortoise, the rarest tortoise on the planet. The ploughshare tortoise [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Turtles and tortoises in trouble  On the island of Madagascar, locked gates, razor-wire fences, and 24-hour armed guards protect one of the world’s rarest treasures. That treasure, worth roughly $50,000 each on the black market, is the last wild population of the critically endangered ploughshare tortoise, the rarest tortoise on the planet. The ploughshare tortoise (Astrochelys yniphora) is emblematic of a growing crisis: more than half of the world’s turtle and tortoise species are now threatened with extinction. A critically endangered ploughshare tortoise (Astrochelys yniphora). Photo by NTF30 (CC BY-SA). A group of 51 global turtle and tortoise experts has published a new paper in Current Biology on the extinction risks for these iconic animals. Threats include the pet trade, overconsumption for food and medicine, loss of habitat, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. The group also offers recommendations to reverse the decline. Of the 360 known turtle and tortoise species, 187 are threatened, according to the IUCN Red List criteria. Of these, 127 are endangered or critically endangered. Many could go extinct this century. “It is overwhelming when it&#8217;s all put together,” said Kristin Berry, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) wildlife biologist and co-author of the paper who has studied tortoises for more than 40 years. The Madagascar big-headed turtle (Erymnochelys madagascariensis) is one of the most endangered species of turtles in the world. Photo by Turtle Conservancy/Eric Goode. Why are turtles and tortoises declining? Turtles and tortoises grow slowly, mature late, and live a long time. This slow&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/turtles-and-tortoises-in-trouble-more-than-half-of-all-species-face-extinction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-232202</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Less than a thousand remain: New list of animals on the brink of extinction</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/less-than-a-thousand-remain-new-list-of-animals-on-the-brink-of-extinction/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/less-than-a-thousand-remain-new-list-of-animals-on-the-brink-of-extinction/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Jun 2020 14:43:49 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/06/09130346/E1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=231218</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibians, Animals, Biodiversity, Birds, Climate Change, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Deforestation, Diseases, Endangered Species, Endangered Species Act, Environment, Extinction, Forest Destruction, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Governance, Green, Herps, Impact Of Climate Change, Insects, Mammals, Mass Extinction, Pangolins, Pet Trade, Poaching, Pollution, Rainforests, Reptiles, Tropical Forests, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The giant panda, tiny tamaraw buffalo, riverine rabbit and Iberian lynx all have something in common: they join a growing list of animals on the brink of extinction. A newly published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lists 515 animal species with fewer than a thousand individuals remaining. Overall, the report [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The giant panda, tiny tamaraw buffalo, riverine rabbit and Iberian lynx all have something in common: they join a growing list of animals on the brink of extinction. A newly published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lists 515 animal species with fewer than a thousand individuals remaining. Overall, the report is grim: Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction; extinction rates are accelerating; and humans are to blame. Researchers evaluated 29,374 land-based vertebrates using IUCN Red List and Birdlife International data. They identified 75 mammal, 335 bird, 41 reptile and 65 amphibian species “on the brink of extinction.” The majority of these critically endangered animals are concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions, where biodiversity is highest. More than half of the species on the list have fewer than 250 individuals remaining. A Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus), one of the rarest mammals in the world, in Ujung Kulon National Park. Fewer than 100 individuals remain in the wild. Image by Stephen Belcher/Dok. Balai Taman Nasional Ujung Kulon via International Rhino Foundation. Fewer than 250 northern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus krefftii) remain in the wild. Image by Fleshpiston via Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Fewer than 200 mountain chicken frogs (Leptodactylus falla) remain in the Caribbean due to hunting and fungal pathogens.  Photo by Tim Vickers via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain. New Zealand&#8217;s flightless, nocturnal, kakapo (Strigops habroptilus) population has dwindled to around 200 individuals. Image by New Zealand Department of Conservation (CC BY 2.0). “The ongoing sixth&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/less-than-a-thousand-remain-new-list-of-animals-on-the-brink-of-extinction/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-231218</doi>				</item>
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