After reaching a historic low, the population of monarch butterflies overwintering in California has increased a hundredfold, according to the annual Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count. More than 247,000 butterflies were…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This month we’re meeting an African viverrid: the African civet. The African…
On Oct. 23, 2021, the bulk carrier NS Qingdao, carrying 1,500 metric tons of fertilizers and industrial reagents, docked in South Africa’s Indian Ocean port of Durban. During offloading, rainwater…
On July 19th, 1989, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi lit the match on twelve tons of elephant tusks soaked in gasoline. The elephants had been the victims of a relentless…
PALAWAN, Philippines — When park ranger Allan Daganta travels to work from his home in a village just outside Palawan's Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (PPSRNP), he’s usually welcomed…
Animals that eat fruit and spread the seeds in their droppings offer an all-inclusive transportation service for half the world’s flora. But as more seed-dispersing birds and mammals die off…
According to communications consultant Meindert Brouwer, author of Central African Forests Forever, there are still opportunities to save the Central African — or Congo Basin — rainforest. Brouwer's 216-page, 17-chapter…
Tiger conservationists in Thailand are reeling following the recent killing of two tigers in Thong Pha Phum National Park. Authorities confiscated the two carcasses and are investigating the incident and…
Biologist Sofía Zalazar wasn’t born yet the last time a bare-faced curassow was seen in the Iberá forests in Argentina. The bird began disappearing from the wild in the 1970s,…
When scientists described the Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa) as a species new to science in 2020, it was already staring extinction in the face. Fewer than 260 of the fluffy…
PUTUMAYO, Colombia — When Jonh Jairo Mueses-Cisneros was approached by leadership at Corpoamazonia about turning Colombia’s southwestern department of Putumayo into a bird-watching hotspot more than 10 years ago, he…
HUMBANG HASUNDUTAN, Indonesia — Indonesia has an enormous variety of plants with medicinal properties, and traditional herbal medicines such as jamu are still widely used by both urban and rural…
COLOMBO — With two large eyes on a flat rectangular face, and six more eyes around the head, jumping spiders from the Salticidae family can look a bit alien, even…
POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — On a moonlit night in September, hundreds of sea turtles have crawled out of the sea to nest on Poilão Island. A team of turtle monitors…
Under threat since 2020, the 20-year satellite monitoring program for deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot, may end in April due to lack of funding. "Part of…
Up in the trees of a misty sky island, folded into the foliage, a tiny rainfrog bears the name of a climate giant. The new-to-science species, found on a mountain…
POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — Castro Barbosa's eyes still light up when he recalls the first time he saw a sea turtle, in 1993. He was on a visit to Guinea-Bissau's…
The Bolivian government has revived a long-held plan to build a hydroelectric plant in a corner of the country’s western La Paz department, sparking concerns about the potential displacement of…
KWALE COUNTY, Kenya — More than 20 years ago, along the lush southeastern coast of Kenya, the area known as Vanga Bay was home to a mangrove forest spanning 4,428…
Bangladesh’s population of one of the world’s largest tortoise species received a boost last month when researchers and villagers released 10 captive-bred juveniles into the evergreen forests of the Chattogram…
When researchers found a begonia plant twice as tall as a person, they knew they had something extraordinary. Of the more than 2,000 known begonia species, most are the size…
“All of a sudden, in one little lump, this project leaked into my mind,” Thomas Lovejoy recalled to writer David Quammen for the book The Song of the Dodo, about…
Humanity has developed incredible technologies and processes to produce enough food on the planet to feed the entire population. From the Green Revolution to the digitalization of agriculture, the technologies…
TANAKEKE ISLANDS, Indonesia — Wading through a mangrove swamp in the coastal waters of Indonesia’s Tanakeke Islands, Hayati wiped the sweat from her brow and tried her best to keep…
Ten countries in the western Indian Ocean are banding together to create a network of marine conservation areas under the banner of the Great Blue Wall. The idea is to…
It's difficult to overstate the enormity of biodiversity on the island of New Guinea. It contains over 13,000 endemic plant species (meaning these plants grow nowhere else in the world).…
ANJOZOROBE ANGAVO, Madagascar — Requiring a turbulent two-hour car ride followed by a two-hour walk across paddy fields and mountains, access to the small group of beekeepers in the village…
For many people, extinction is a term that refers to the past. It’s meant for dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and so many other species only found in textbooks or on display…
Conservationists using camera traps have obtained evidence that shows mona monkeys on the island of Príncipe off Central Africa are pinching the eggs of the Príncipe thrush, a critically endangered…
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 46 cotton-farming families in Brazil’s Minas Gerais began practicing agroecology, a sustainable farming approach that works with nature.
