Around 40,000 African elephants are illegally killed for their tusks every year. But catching ivory poachers, and successfully convicting them, has remained incredibly hard. In 2016, for instance, Kenyan businessman…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — For those worried about the plight of the Sumatran tiger, of which only a few hundred remain, concern typically flows from a sense that all life is…
Turtles were once a tough group of animals. Sea turtles survived the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. But the modern descendants of this…
In a video that went viral in 2015, researchers spent nearly 10 minutes pulling out a 10-centimeter (4-inch) plastic straw from the nostril of a male olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea)…
It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack — except the needle is invisible and the hay stretches for thousands of miles. Oh, and there may not actually be…
Facebook is once again in the spotlight, this time for the rampant illegal wildlife trade being facilitated through its groups in Thailand. In a rapid assessment in 2016, carried out…
Tigers and other wildlife in Peninsular Malaysia now have a new refuge, as the state government of Terengganu recently axed plans to log more than 100 square kilometers (39 square…
Not all monkeys have a sweet tooth. Some, like the Asian colobine monkeys, whose members live on a diet comprised mainly of leaves, cannot taste natural sugars and show no…
Oil palm plantations are the biggest source of agriculture-related deforestation in Southeast Asia. Researchers estimate that at least 95,000 square kilometers of land have been converted to oil palm plantations…
Eight species of birds may have completely disappeared over the past couple of decades, a new study has found. Among these is the Spix’s macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii), a bird that inspired…
MALANG, Indonesia — Wildfires are sweeping across a savanna and protected rainforest in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in Java, home to one of the world’s rarest leopard subspecies and…
Some corals stand a chance of surviving the current rise in global sea temperatures, a team of scientists recently reported, thanks to the diversity of their algal counterparts. They found…
Poachers have killed at least 87 elephants in recent months in Botswana, according to the conservation nonprofit Elephants Without Borders, which has been conducting an aerial survey of the animals.…
A little-known penguin in New Zealand makes an epic journey for food, a new study has found. The Fiordland penguin (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus), or tawaki as it’s locally known, lives in…
Picture a game of whack-a-mole: a noisy arcade, frustration and elation building as toy moles appear and disappear at random. Now imagine the game is in Brazil, covering 140 square…
Exotic pets that grow to be big adults and are inexpensive to buy are more likely to end up in the wild, according to a recent study. “It is difficult…
How much of the Earth should we protect to save species from going extinct? Some conservationists have suggested an ambitious number: half of the planet. Prominent biologist Edward O. Wilson,…
More isolated oceanic islands harbor fewer native species due to the fact that plants and animals are less capable of naturally dispersing to and colonizing those islands. This is known…
For 19th-century adventurers like Sir John Franklin, navigating a path through the ice-choked Northwest Passage — the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration — was a treacherous and often deadly undertaking.…
For the residents of Ladakh, the cold desert region in India’s northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, the black-necked crane is held in high regard. Its mating dance is an…
