Climate Change And Extinction News

Biologist Joel Berger endures extreme conditions to study muskoxen and learn about the opportunities — and limits — of behavioral flexibility in a fast changing climate.

KUCHING, Malaysia — Conservationists have called on governments and the private sector to do more to mitigate the impact of global shipping activities on marine ecosystems and communities in the…

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…

Climate change is reshaping relations between parks, people and the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. But more and deeper research is needed to determine likely long-term impacts.

Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed and its poisonous compounds that are deadly to most other insects. But a new study finds global warming may be making the very plant monarch…

East Africa’s Albertine Rift extends nearly a thousand miles from the border between northwestern Uganda and northeastern DRC down through Rwanda and Burundi to Malawi. Dotted with mountains and pockmarked…

With the Arctic winter of 2017-18 the warmest on record, researchers are finding a troubling range of climate change impacts on wildlife, including wolverines, reindeer, snowy owls, and more.

The equatorial ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are packed with plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Formed as tectonic plates in eastern Africa have slowly pulled away from…

The specter of an environmental problem once thought to have been solved has risen again. A new study published Feb. 6 in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics reports that…

A new study finds that more frequent Arctic extreme weather, such as rain-on-snow events, result in smaller head size and possibly lower survival rates in muskox young.

The critically endangered Sumatran rhino has been on an arc toward extinction for nearly 12,000 years now, according to a new study based on genome sequencing that also found the…

This Atlantic hurricane season saw six Category 3-5 storms batter the Caribbean. Some already threatened species, especially birds, took a major hit. Others endured.

Grassland researchers attending the COP23 climate summit opening in Bonn next week could urge creation of REDD-style initiatives to encourage savanna conservation.

Bamboo-eating lemurs in Madagascar could be slowly starving as a changing climate slashes the availability of their favorite part of the plant, a new study shows. “For extreme feeding specialists…

The changes wrought by climate change on the conditions that support life on Earth force some plants and animals into different ranges. To address this issue, certain conservation strategies aim…

Study: rapidly warming Arctic reduces food supply and stored energy for shorebird, weakening juveniles on long migratory trips, reducing size, survival chances.

New research suggests that African wild dogs’ chances of survival might be dealt a serious setback as global temperatures continue to rise. The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), a native…

Habitat loss, over-hunting and climate change are just a few of the human-induced changes to the Earth that biologists say are driving the planet’s “sixth mass extinction.” Research has shown…

Over at the California Water Blog, UC Davis fish biologists Peter Moyle and Jason Baumsteiger observe that two species of California fish — one small and the other big —…

A 2015 study found that humans activities are driving species loss at a rate 100 times faster than historical baseline levels — which the researchers behind the study characterized as…

SUKAU, Malaysia – At first blush, the muddy waters of the Kinabatangan River in northern Borneo seem to laze through a hodge-podge of sleepy fishing and farming villages. The river…

Large mammals living between about 7,000 and 25,000 years ago faced a massive upheaval in their environments on multiple fronts. As the Late Pleistocene was ending, humans were having a big…

A species has just three options in the face of environmental change: move, adapt or die. As global temperatures rise many species are shifting their ranges, particularly towards the cooler…

Evolution can be an exquisite hammer, tapping out finely honed strategies for the survival of life on Earth against the blunt force of the environment. But mess with those surroundings too…

Sometimes for a scientist, the disconnected pieces of years of research come together in a single, “really awesome” point in time. For ecologist Greg Asner, where it happened was about…

Gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans -- our great ape cousins teeter on the precipice of extinction. And it’s not much of a secret that we humans have had a lot to do…

MARRAKESH, Morocco — The 22nd United Nations climate summit began as a wonky, low-profile affair. Nearly 200 nations, finally agreeing to keep the world from burning up, began writing the…

ver the past million years of Earth’s history, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been generally low, fluctuating within a range of 200 to 300 parts-per-million (ppm). But this…

he Paris Agreement marked the biggest political milestone to combat climate change since scientists first introduced us in the late 1980s to perhaps humanity’s greatest existential crisis. Last December, 178…

Rising sea temperatures are destroying corals in Australia’s famous Great Barrier Reef. But warmer-than-normal waters are also damaging the Barrier Reef’s lesser known cousin, the Great Southern Reef, a new study…