Biodiversity News

Frogs usually land on their feet, but one group of tiny toadlets from Brazil are so small they can’t stick a landing. Pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus spp.) are teensy, about the…

CHELEM, Mexico — In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, a few words describe the most common occupations: fisher, merchant, mother. Over the past decade, the port town of Chelem has seen the…

With its bright green plumage and range of vocalizations, the rose-ringed parakeet is one of the most sought-after birds in the pet trade. To supply ongoing demand for these birds,…

Fifty-two-year-old Dhonjoy Mondol grows rice on his plot in the district of Sunamganj in northeastern Bangladesh. This year, he harvested 12 metric tons of rice from the 4-hectare (10-acre) plot;…

In northern Indonesia dwells a shy and overlooked species: the Talaud bear cuscus. Critically endangered and found on only a few small islands, the marsupial faces a decline due to…

PUNTA UVA, Costa Rica — Every morning, just after dawn, small-scale fishers Ettel Lattouche and Rafael Hernández head to the beach with their fishing gear to eke out a living.…

GORO, New Caledonia – Known widely as the “Madagascar of the Pacific,” New Caledonia is coated in remnant Gondwana rainforest and surrounded by reefs rich in marine life that constitute one…

GORO, New Caledonia — On the south side of Grand Terre, the largest and principal island of New Caledonia in the south Pacific, mountains rise like a spine out of a…

KATHMANDU — Ornithologist Hem Bahadur Katwal, who studies farmland birds, says he’s excited about an upcoming trip to visit Nepal’s plains when the monsoon rains end in September. This is…

The largest freshwater fish ever recorded was captured in the Mekong River last week by a fisher collaborating with researchers to document the river’s biodiversity in northern Cambodia. The 4-meter…

Salatou Sambou, a fisherman and father of five, has been involved in the Kawawana ICCA (Indigenous and Community Conserved Area) in Senegal since 2008. One of the first members of…

KATHMANDU — Villagers living near Nepal's Bardiya National Park have discovered the first successful nesting and breeding site of gharial crocodiles in the park in more than 16 years. They…

News articles and opinion pieces have popped up in the pages of different Costa Rican newspapers over the past several years, warning of the imminent collapse of Corcovado National Park,…

Over a decade ago I traveled around Sweden to view its forestry practices – the country has a gigantic forest products industry that largely transforms trees into paper products and…

Tropical deforestation is a cost our planet pays every day for the food we eat. The palm oil in our ice cream, the steak on our tables, and the soy…

When Kristin Laidre began working on a long-term project to study polar bears in eastern Greenland, she didn’t expect to find a new subpopulation of the species — and she certainly…

SANTIAGO ATITLÁN, Mexico – Lucio Jimenez Ocampo is always surrounded by coffee. In the yard of his house in Santiago Atitlán nestled in the Oaxaca state’s Sierra Norte highlands, there…

After years of scallop dredging and fish farming, Loch Craignish, a coastal inlet near Argyll, Scotland, was in disrepair. The dredging had destroyed parts of the seafloor, effluent had polluted…

JAKARTA — For decades, oil palm farmers in Indonesia have drained — and destroyed — tropical peatlands on the basis that the crop doesn’t grow well in the boggy soil.…

How much of Earth’s terrestrial area needs protection to secure the planet’s biodiversity? A new estimate says 44%, or 64 million square kilometers (25 million square miles), an area that…

Sitting high in the hills of southwestern Ethiopia, the thick green forest of Yayu is a haven of biodiversity where Nuradin Aliyi, a third-generation wild-coffee farmer, has lived his whole…

Gcina Dlamini blows through a whistle fashioned from a piece of dried fruit in the forest near his home in the town of Lavumisa in Eswatini, the Southern African kingdom…

ISANGI, Congo — In a secluded corner of the Congo, machetes in hand, scientists make their way through the Yangambi Man and Biosphere Reserve, using shallow streams as natural paths…

Eliupendo Laltaika spent much of his childhood in the village of Nainokanoka, in the northern part of Tanzania's Ngorongoro Conservation Area, herding cattle with his older brother. Sometimes they would…

Rosewood trees are a mainstay of tropical forests across parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But their future looks bleak. Their fragrant, red-hued heartwood is prized by makers of…

COLOMBO — As a school student in Sri Lanka in 1986, Deepthi Yakandawala sent a greeting card to the country’s president, J.R. Jayewardene, for Vesak, the holiest day in the…

JAKARTA — Researchers have confirmed that a lagoon in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, a popular dive site, is a nursery for newborn and juvenile manta rays, cementing the area’s status…

KATHMANDU — Think of big cats in Nepal, and you’ll probably picture a Bengal tiger. And while the country is famous for the Panthera tigris that prowl its southern plains…

During what scientists have named the “Sixth Mass Extinction” (the fifth one wiped out the dinosaurs), conservationists are racing against the clock to carry out critical monitoring as quickly as…

KATHMANDU — The list of bird species found in Nepal has now grown to 891, after a bird never before seen in the country was spotted at a national park…