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…
Throughout the waters surrounding Indonesia, a porous tubular creature sits fixed onto coral reefs, its plain appearance hiding a potentially lifesaving secret. Researchers recently found that this sponge produces a…
For 20 years, the Colima fir tree (Abies colimensis) has been at the heart of many disputes to conserve the temperate forests of southern Jalisco, a state in central Mexico.…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting an endangered Asian wild dog that is…
For conscious consumers, palm oil tends to be the pariah of tropically grown crops. This is due to the well-publicized fact that oil palm plantations are highly destructive to biodiversity,…
Fatu doesn’t seem to care about the carrot she’s been offered by her caretaker. She raises her enormous head and gives it a sniff before returning to what she was…
Captured in the wild in 1973, in the country then known as Burma, Thaung Sein Win has been ridden by various mahouts over the years, dragging thousands of freshly felled…
MEDAN, Indonesia — Smugglers managed to ship more than 7,000 birds, including wild-caught songbirds, by air from Sumatra to Java in Indonesia, highlighting the country’s weak enforcement against the deeply…
The state of Pará’s Calha Norte region, one of the Amazon’s least studied areas, is the planet’s largest mosaic of protected forests. It is a rich reserve of biodiversity facing threats from illegal land occupation and deforestation. Species could disappear even before they are discovered.
On May 15, authorities in the northeastern province of Si Sa Ket in Thailand arrested two Cambodians and six Thai workers for illegally removing a large Siamese rosewood tree from…
When conservationists set up treetop cameras in Côte d’Ivoire’s Tanoé-Ehy forest, they hoped to get video of the elusive Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus waldroni), a critically endangered species…
Nearly 400 elephants have died in Botswana's Okavango Delta since March, in what wildlife experts say is one of the largest elephant mortality events ever recorded. Conservationists have criticized the…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Four kilometers (2.5 miles) from downtown Antananarivo, Tsarasaotra Park has long been an oasis of calm in Madagascar’s capital city. It is the first private site to…
North America and the U.S. in particular is the world’s hotspot of salamander diversity, hosting about a third of all species, so researchers are concerned about the potential landfall of…
The St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida prides itself on having every species of alligator and crocodile in the world. By 2019, scientists had recognized 26 crocodilian species…
SAMARINDA, Indonesia — The search for a potential mate for a captive female Sumatran rhinoceros in Indonesian Borneo has been put on hold for the year, one of many activities…
COLOMBO — Getting out of their vehicle in the middle of the night, armed with small digging tools, UV lights and headlamps, the members of the research team looked like…
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 species of hyena in the…
Conservationists set up two camera traps near a watering hole in a Thai forest — and then they waited. The first animal to step in front of the lens was…
In his 2006 book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, science writer David Quammen says, “Some people admire soldiers, or surgeons, or firemen, or astrophysicists, or medical missionaries, or cowboys. I admire…
An Asiatic wild ass made history when it became the first of its species to cross into the eastern steppe in Mongolia in nearly seven decades. The Gobi-Steppe is among…
In her first study in the region, Brazilian conservationist and Whitley Gold Award winner Patrícia Medici wants to understand how South America’s largest land mammal responds to changes in the forest caused by human economic activity.
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:…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has lifted a moratorium on the release of captive wild animals, imposed earlier this year as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of the…
Camera traps monitor a handful of the world’s remaining Sumatran rhinos in Sumatra’s Way Kambas National Park. Wildlife managers tend to a female rhino at a breeding center in Kalimantan,…
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- On June 15, 2020, Sri Lanka’s wildlife and nature lovers were finally able to gain access to several national parks, which had been closed for three…
JAKARTA — Palm oil from a company that burned a pristine orangutan habitat in Sumatra has entered the global market due to an oversight, possibly ending up in products made…
Eating crops is a risky business for chimpanzees, who run the risk of injury or death if they are caught by farmers protecting their livelihoods. But new research shows that…
COLOMBO — For nearly a decade, siblings and scientists Dineth Danushka and Suneth Kanishka have been making field visits to study Dendrelaphis bifrenalis, a snake known as the Boulenger’s bronzeback,…
Scientists have discovered a new insect-eating pitcher plant, Nepenthes cabanae, in the Philippines’ southern Mindanao region. Thriving in a small area within a known conflict zone, the pitcher plant has…
