HOBART, Australia — A dividing line of marking tape separates a clearcut area from intact native forest in the Denison Range of Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost state. An hour’s drive from…
The superb lyrebird has garnered worldwide recognition as nature's greatest voice impersonator. Researchers have found that besides imitating other species’ songs and artificial sounds from the environment, it is capable…
In July 2019, Australian authorities on the island of Tasmania received a report of a footprint spotted by an unnamed individual on a walk up to Sleeping Beauty Mountain in…
Parrots, with their bright colors, charisma and intelligence, are an iconic bird group. They are also at risk, globally. Nearly one-third of parrot species are threatened with extinction. In a…
Today we have two stories about the impacts of mining and some of the new and innovative ways conservationists are attempting to deal with those impacts. Listen here: Our first…
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.
A sighting of one of the deep ocean's most mysterious beings, the bigfin squid, in Australian waters for the first time is creating waves among the scientific community's squid squad.…
People seldom think of wet soil until they step in it, but the Earth’s soggy places quietly do the work of legions: holding together coasts, giving shelter to young fish,…
A hunger for shark fin soup — a brothy, gelatinous dish that’s considered a delicacy in East Asia — is responsible for the deaths of about 73 million sharks each year.…
Researchers have just made a remarkable discovery in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia. While mapping the seafloor off the coast of far north Queensland state, scientists onboard…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the second-largest marsupial in Australia: the wombat.…
About 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Darwin and 14 km (9 mi) northeast of the town of Batchelor lies Woodcutters, an open-cut lead and zinc mine that shut in…
Between 2019 and 2020, turbulent bushfires ripped through Australia, turning green forests into ash, and producing plumes of smoke that hovered over the country like a shroud. While the flames…
In an episode of the Netflix dystopian sci-fi show “Black Mirror,” artificial bees have been deployed to pollinate the world’s plants after a massive pollinator extinction. A great idea, until…
CAPE FERGUSON, Australia — In a lab on Australia’s east coast, scientists are concocting what they hope will be the solution to the steadily worsening problem of coral bleaching. Few…
Habitat loss and climate change are often blamed for the decreasing numbers of migratory shorebirds in a major flyway in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. But it might be…
There is only one photo of the smooth handfish: an image of a withered, yellowing specimen with pectoral fins that extend like arms, and a triangular crest attached to the…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world:…
Tropical rainforests have an outsized role in the world. Of the Earth’s ecosystems, rainforests support the largest variety of plants and animal species, house the majority of indigenous groups still…
When sea temperatures rise, coral reefs get “stressed out.” They expel a microscopic algae called zooxanthellae from their tissues, and this process causes colorful coral polyps to “bleach” a stark…
From high above, the blue sea looks like it’s speckled with tiny white dots. But a closer look reveals more: each dot is actually a sea turtle swimming toward the…
Koalas in the hundreds were literally ‘left up a tree’ after the catastrophic Australian bushfires. Dedicated teams made up of people and dogs came to their rescue.
In a 21-second newsreel clip, Benjamin, a thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) who lived at Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania, paces the length of his concrete enclosure as two men rattle the chain-link…
In mid-October, 1991, a wildfire swept across the hillsides of northern Oakland, California, killing 25 people and injuring 150 more. By the time it was under control, around 1,500 acres…
A thick, acrid scent of smoke marks the last summer season in Australia, which has become known as the “black summer.” Between June 2019 and March 2020, a series of…
Climate change is doing something unusual to the fish in our oceans: As water temperatures rise, this causes fish to morph in size. Some shrink, but others grow. In a…
In March, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered its most widespread bleaching event to date. Sixty percent of the reef underwent moderate to severe bleaching, and some corals may never recover.…
When Terry Hughes peered through the window of a small plane gliding over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, what he saw troubled him greatly. Instead of healthy reef systems,…
As part of World Wildlife Day celebrations, experts from around the world gathered in New York to participate in the Wild Ideas panel (powered by the UN and Jackson Wild…
Last year, Jessie Panazzolo, like many young conservationists (and some middle-aged ones too), didn’t so much feel her career had stalled as that it had been cut out by the…