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…
As more people are born onto this great green planet, the demand for food grows. Feeding the nearly 8 billion of us here today is a challenge, not only because…
The fire season in Chiang Rai, Thailand’s northernmost province, lasts from February to April every year. During these months, dry weather causes ordinarily green vegetation to turn dry and flammable.…
Today we look at two new studies of African wildlife using bioacoustics and take a listen to some of the recordings informing that research. Listen here: Bioacoustics combines biology and…
Environmental DNA has changed the way conservationists monitor biodiversity. By sequencing the genetic material found in water and soil samples, scientists can study entire ecosystems or detect rare animals too…
At the start of each year, southern elephant seals living on Kerguelen Island above Antarctica shed the thick mat of their winter fur, while growing in a fresh layer of…
As a biology undergraduate, Talia Speaker spent a grueling summer hiking around the mountains near Santa Cruz, California, interning with a team that monitored puma behavior. In one hand she…
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…
Update 2/2022: In late January, correspondence found among the late E.O. Wilson’s papers connected him with J. Phillipe Rushton, whose research in the 1980s and 1990s has been linked with white…
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…
SANTA HELENA DO INGLÊS, Brazil — In a small clearing at the edge of the rainforest, two rows of solar panels gleam in the scorching late-morning sun. In a shed…
In many ways, 2021 proved just as difficult a year as the previous one: a world still grappling with a pandemic claiming countless lives and upending the economies and livelihoods…
As deforestation and subsequent human expansion into natural areas continue, separating people from wildlife is unrealistic. Even in “pristine” landscapes, like national parks, humans and wildlife are always sharing the…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This month we’re meeting the cat with the most extensive range…
Confining conservation efforts to only 30% of Earth's land may render a fifth of mammals and a third of birds at high risk of extinction by 2030, according to a…
Some people know that they want to be scientists from an early age. Not so with Sara Beery. The computer vision expert got started on her path to science in…
Today, being an environmental defender in the Peruvian rainforest means challenging death. It means facing narcotrafficking, land encroachment, deforestation, and illegal logging and mining. It implies traveling hundreds of kilometers,…
Threats to wildlife and wild places abound. Waters warming due to climate change threaten coral reefs more frequently and with greater intensity than ever before; the expansion of agriculture, infrastructure,…
Bioacoustics researcher Zuzana Burivalova is the 2021 recipient of the Driving Global Impact award, recognizing her work on conservation of tropical forests. The award, given annually by the publishers of…
The rhinos are long gone, as are other large mammals like the now-extinct quagga and bluebuck. Conservationists are now fighting to preserve what remains of the renosterveld, South Africa's most…
POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — As night falls, the only lights visible on uninhabited Poilão Island are the nearly full moon and the eerie red glow beaming from a few headlamps.…
When Elisa Panjang was 10 years old, playing outside her home in Sandakan, a small town in Malaysian Borneo, she heard a snuffling sound near the forest’s edge. As she…
Siã Shanenawa strikes a markedly different image from the stereotypical view of Brazil’s Indigenous people using bows and arrows as their main tools. Siã Shanenawa’s weapons of choice are drones…
Nestled on the ocean floor in Southeast Asia are five sensor-filled boxes that will reveal the future of coral reefs. For the past year, from their secret location, the Bluboxx…
Scientists striving to save the northern white rhino from extinction have announced their decision to retire one of the world's last two individuals from their assisted breeding program. The BioRescue…
The last 80 Irrawaddy dolphins that inhabit the Mahakam River in Indonesian Borneo lead precarious lives. Their forays to find fish are frequently thwarted, sometimes fatally so, by a series…
Today we listen to some bioacoustic recordings informing Indigenous-led conservation initiatives. Listen here: The world is increasingly coming to recognize just how important Indigenous-led conservation and Indigenous land rights are…
Cooking with firewood, diesel and gas all add to climate change and is harmful to health. So innovators have launched solar cookery enterprises that could transform Mexico’s fossil fuel-dependent businesses.
A camera trap in Argentina’s Iberá National Park has revealed rare images of one of the world’s most elusive species: the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus). A series of clips shows…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This month we’re meeting the world’s most trafficked mammal: the Sunda…