Biodiversity News

This is the first article in our four-part series “The Rhino Debacle." It’s hardly the most likely place to meet a Sumatran rhino. But as you enter Zimmer Hall at…

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…

On this episode, we take a look at how the social sciences can boost conservation efforts. Listen here:   Our guest is Diogo Verissimo, a Postdoctoral Fellow with the University…

Mongabay editor Erik Hoffner wrote about the mismatch in funding priorities for climate mitigation solutions for the Washington Post’s global edition, the World Post, on September 11. Too often, he wrote,…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed new deforestation from gold mining in Peru, new fish species deep in Chile’s sea, mining on Ecuador’s beaches, and hundreds…

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)…

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…

The most popular stories last week from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed farmed salmon escapes in Chile, a new biosphere reserve in Ecuador, and high-tech forest monitoring in Peru. Patagonia’s…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has dropped three popular songbirds from a new list of protected species, amid pressure from owners and breeders. The white-rumped shama (Kittacincla malabarica), the Javan…

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…

The greatest natural history repository in South America, Brazil’s National Museum was consumed by fire last Sunday — much was destroyed, but not all.

Life is not easy for seeds. Avoiding ending up as food for animals and finding the right time and spot to germinate are two common problems. Until recently, scientists studying…

On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next…

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.…