Recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, revealed Peruvians’ hidden shark diet, new species in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park, dire predictions from Mexico’s “Batman,” and more. Peruvians are eating…
A new investigation sheds light on an illegal trade that endangers the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean species, the vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus). The report released July 7 by…
An increasingly ice-free Arctic could test the adaptability of marine mammals, a new study has found, as hundreds of ships in recent years have used the newly open polar seas…
Shark-fishing outfits have for decades been catching dolphins, seals and other sea mammals to use as bait, helping drive some of those species closer to extinction, researchers have found. In…
In a span of five days in late April, Mexican police arrested two men attempting to take hundreds of dried swim bladders, harvested from a critically endangered species of fish,…
An Australian mining company aims to begin searching for minerals, as well as oil and gas, next to part of the Mekong River in Cambodia where the endangered Irrawaddy river…
For the first time, a team of scientists has captured and then released a vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a rare porpoise in the Gulf of California, as part of a project…
The slideshow in this story contains an image that some readers may find disturbing. Forbidding black cliffs relentlessly shuddered by massive Southern Ocean waves give way to a mountainous interior,…
Actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio has jumped into the fight to save the critically endangered vaquita together with the president of Mexico and the country’s wealthiest individual. An agreement signed…
For the first time ever, scientists have been able to observe what life is really like for dolphins beneath the ocean’s surface. Using custom-made, noninvasive underwater cameras that they attached…
True's beaked whales are notoriously elusive. Like other beaked whales, they dive deep into oceans for prolonged periods of time, and surface only for short breathing intervals, making them very…
Thanks to a five-year acoustic monitoring program, conservationists have detected the rapid decline of the vaquita before it is too late – giving them one last shot to save the…
On the latest episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we welcome journalist Sue Branford, a regular contributor to Mongabay who has been reporting from Brazil since 1979 when she was with…
The vaquita continues to earn its title as “the world’s most endangered cetacean species.” According to a recent report by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA),…
This past July, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted Mexico’s President Peña Nieto at the White House to discuss bilateral cooperation on a range of issues, including several environmental matters. The…
There were as many as 570 vaquita in the world back in 1997, but now there are fewer than 60 left — and the species is facing extinction in the…
In 2009, two marine biologists -- Robert Pitman and John Durban -- observed a series of strange events enroute to the Antarctic Peninsula: humpback whales would rush in to rescue seals that…
From September, Mexico will permanently ban the use of gillnets throughout the range of vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus) in the upper Gulf of California. With just 60 individuals remaining in…
Between 2010 and 2014, more than a thousand common bottle-nosed dolphins washed ashore on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. These dolphin strandings were the “largest and longest cetacean…
overnments have been establishing enormous marine protected areas (MPAs) spanning hundreds of thousands of square kilometers where fishing is restricted. And the United Nations last June began work developing an…
An illegal trade in the swim bladder of the rare totoabas has placed both these fish and the world’s smallest and rarest marine mammal -- the vaquita -- at risk of extinction,…
Compounds from our makeup and bathrooms are winding up in the bodies of dolphins, sea otters, and polar bears – sometimes thousands of miles away. For the first time, research…
Hundreds of dead bottlenose dolphins continue to wash ashore, five years after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Of the dolphins that have managed to…
A New Zealand dolphin, one of whose two subspecies, the Maui's dolphin, is critically endangered with a quickly diminishing population. Photo credit: Steve Dawson/NABU International Foundation for Nature. Maui's dolphins…
A fisherman hauls up a critically endangered vaquita porpoise accidentally entangled in his net in 2008. Entanglement in fishing gear threatens the species with extinction. Photo credit: Omar Vidal. With…
Vaquitas (Phocoena sinus) are more solitary than other cetacean species, but are sometimes found in small groups. Photo by: Paula Olson, NOAA. There are likely less than 100 vaquita (Phocoena…
Fishing industry propelling tiny cetacean to extinction Since the baiji was declared extinct in the early aughts, the vaquita has taken its unenviable position as the world’s most threatened cetacean.…
Norway has its biggest minke whaling season in over 20 years. As of late August, Norway has killed 729 northern minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) during its annual whaling season, the…
California or North Pacific Blue Whales can exceed 100 feet (30m) long and weigh 190 tons. Photo courtesy of Gilpatrick/Lynn/NOAA The population of blue whales in the Eastern Pacific has…
Southern elephant seals battle for mating rights. Photo by: G. Harris/WCS. Conservationists are celebrating the announcement that UNESCO has dubbed Argentina's Península Valdés a biosphere reserve under the Man and…
