Jaime Luis Arias grew up on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. An isolated coastal pyramid-shaped massif in northern Colombia, the Sierra Nevada is one of…
The discovery of a new-to-science species is always an awe-inspiring bit of news, filling us with hope. This year, researchers introduced us to several such species. Some were the result…
Rain drenched a team of ecologists in the Kaieteur National Park in Guyana as they scrambled to keep their sound equipment dry. They were recording a male golden rocket frog…
Not all species "lost to science" are truly lost. For nearly 30 years, the starry night harlequin toad (Atelopus arsyecue), a tiny amphibian, named for its glossy black skin with…
Protecting frogs against the invisible killer called chytrid was never going to be easy. The fungus has already wiped out more species than any other known disease. But a recent…
In 2017, a group of researchers working in Indonesia announced they had identified a new genus of tree-dwelling toads living in forests and caves on the mountaintops of Indonesia's Sumatra…
Scientists say they’ve discovered the first-known instance of an amphibian mimicking a venomous snake to deter would-be predators. There are a number of examples of harmless animals impersonating harmful or…
Watching a helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil) swoop through the canopy of a tropical forest sits atop the bucket list of many bird lovers. The prodigious bird cuts a striking silhouette…
The Chinese giant salamander, which reaches lengths of more than 5 feet (1.6 meters), enjoys the title of being the world’s largest living species of amphibian. However, the critically endangered…
While wandering through northwestern Myanmar in 2016, a group of scientists stumbled on hundreds of huge tracks in the ground. According to a new paper in the journal Mammalia, these…
New research bolsters the case for indigenous-led land management as a crucial conservation solution. The study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Policy last month, focused on land and…
A unique island ecosystem and culture lying 270 kilometers (170 miles) off Papua New Guinea is once more in the crosshairs. Over the past decade, Woodlark Islanders have defended their…
A four-year study of streams in the cloud forests of Sri Lanka’s picturesque Knuckles Mountain Range has turned up an unexpected discovery: a new frog species found nowhere else on…
In November 2017, Joice Ruggeri and her colleagues came upon a pond with several dead tadpoles and a few dead fish in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in…
The global trade of products that come at the expense of tropical forest is driving many primate species closer to extinction, a new study suggests. The research, published June 17…
It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found…
Just before Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, an encyclical, or formal letter from the pope, on the environment, on May 24, 2015, global concern for the environment seemed to be…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Julian Bayliss, a conservation scientist and explorer who recently discovered a hidden rainforest on top of an isolated mountain in…
Warmer temperatures are fanning the spread of a deadly disease in frogs, a new study has found. Teasing apart the complex dynamics of the effects of climate change on how…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
