The face of Carlos Torres Valdovinos reflects a combination of happiness and fear when he hears the news: the camera traps captured the presence of a jaguar. “It appeared three…
You’ve heard of smartphones, smart cars, smart cities, even smart refrigerators, but have you heard of Smart Parks? Smart Parks is a Netherlands-based team of technologists dreaming up inventive ways…
Great Britain has lost its entire suite of top land predators over the past few thousand years: wolves (Canis lupus), brown bears (Ursus arctos) and lynx (Lynx lynx) have all…
Google and the World Resources Institute (WRI) this week announced the launch of a new mapping tool touted as providing an unprecedented level of detail about how land is being…
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…
The cheetah is the world’s fastest land animal, but it’s running out of space. Its range has been reduced dramatically over the past decades, and populations continue to decline. Identifying…
Small, lively and threatened, the golden lion tamarin is a species found only in the Atlantic Rainforest and who today fights for space and connection inside the nation’s most deforested and fragmented biome. There are four species in Brazil, but the golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia) was the first to be described and has enjoyed the most fame.
AMMAN, Jordan — It’s a quiet day in Omar al-Faisal Park, in the impoverished industrial outskirts of Jordan’s capital, Amman. Sandwiched between the runway of a military airport and residential…
Conservationists have long recognized the significance of engaging locals in safeguarding the ecosystems they live off, but assessing those relationships can be hard because of time and resource constraints. Now,…
Vultures were a common sight across the Indian subcontinent until the late 1980s. But the excessive use of some veterinary drugs for cattle, which are toxic to the scavengers, and…
For the ancient Mayans, the king vulture was an intermediary that crossed the skies, communicating with humans and the gods. Seeing it soar through the air today, with its wingspan…
Gomon. In Seychellois Creole, this has generally been the word to refer to anything “green and slimy,” says biologist and marine turtle expert Jeanne Mortimer. “You have gomon in the…
In 1993, the democratically elected president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated in a coup. At the time, the country’s democratic institutions were still only three months old. The incident…
The Atlantic Rainforest of the Northeast Project plans to reforest 70 hectares (173 acres) in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas by 2023. Monitoring in Pernambuco’s Serra do Urubu region has shown an increase in bird diversity, from 105 species recorded in 2005, to 287 in 2021. Despite the progress being made, the situation remains fragile, with seven bird species having gone extinct in the Atlantic Forest in recent decades, and a strong tradition of keeping birds in cages still persisting.
CANELOS, Ecuador — An almost invisible trail snakes through thick buzzing forest leading to a chakra, an ancestral food garden in the Kichwa Cuya community located in Ecuador’s largest province,…
It's that time of year when many researchers are heading out into the field again, and for some it’s the first field season after a long hiatus due to the…
Traditional and Indigenous peoples in the Arctic are joining with scientists to successfully rewild mining-degraded peatlands and other sites.
Each morning as the sun rises into the sky, ranger Donovan Wright stands on the outskirts of Blean Woods in the United Kingdom. The ancient woodland in southern England covers…
Two decades ago, the inhabitants of four communities in the northern Mexican state of Durango put together a proposal: to make sustainable forest management a means of living. Over the…
With negotiations underway in Geneva for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Indigenous land rights have finally taken center stage. The human rights group Avaaz released a 30-page document calling for…
SHOUF BIOSPHERE RESERVE, Lebanon — Late afternoon light falls across Talal Riman’s weathered face as he stands under the ancient cedars he’s tended for almost three decades in Lebanon’s Shouf…
KATHMANDU — Hundreds of bird lovers in Nepal, who would otherwise have been enjoying the spring weather visiting the various bird-watching sites around the country, stayed home in the second…
In Tepejillo, on one of the many hills in the southern Mexican municipality of San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca, extreme erosion has transformed the earth into bare rock, making it difficult…
Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca National Park has become a laboratory for the reintroduction of locally extinct species. A study shows that, of the 33 species of large and medium-sized mammals that used to occur in the park area, only 11 remain today.
Tropical forests across the world are hurting. Climate change is intensifying drought and wildfires worldwide, and deforestation continues to challenge conservation efforts to save intact forests. This means scientists need…
At low tide, on many a craggy corner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastline, you can find clusters of large, oval, emerald-and-gold bivalves, encrusted with barnacles and sucked tightly onto the…
Three people known for their work with sloths, fishing cats and giant armadillos were announced this week as winners of the 2022 Future for Nature (FFN) Award, given annually to…
In 2017, Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm, struck Puerto Rico. The hurricane dried up four basin mangrove forests in the island’s northeast, leaving behind an urgent need for restoration,…
BIKITA, Zimbabwe — Nothing seems to happen at the right time for Maria Mazambara, a communal subsistence farmer in Bikita, one of Zimbabwe's southernmost rural districts. “The seed we get…
High above sea level on the central Greek mountain of Oiti, the mythological place of Hercules’ funeral, snow melts in the springtime. As the soil becomes wet, grasses start growing…