Critically Endangered Species News

EAST LAMPUNG, Indonesia — It’s early December and Sujiono is busy trimming the branches of a ficus tree in his village in Sumatra’s Lampung province. It’s not your typical pruning…

JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had…

JAKARTA — The survival of critically endangered wildlife like Sumatran orangutans and tigers and the livelihoods of Indigenous communities might be in jeopardy as the Indonesian government plans to establish…

“Unless urgent and effective conservation action is taken, these magnificent animals are likely to go extinct within our lifetime.”- Dr. Carlos Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species Program In 2011,…

Humans are driving species to extinction 1,000 times faster than what is considered natural. Now, new research underscores the extent of the planet's impoverishment. Extinctions don't just rob the planet of species…

There’s nowhere on Earth quite like Madagascar when it comes to the sheer wealth and wonder of biodiversity. But along with its natural richness, the island nation is beset by…

1. The ocean in a worldwide pandemic As the year that challenged the world with a widespread pandemic draws to a close, COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of life…

Editor's note: Widodo died of COVID-19 on December 24, 2020. BOGOR, Indonesia — Indonesian biologist Widodo Sukohadi Ramono is one of the longest-standing and most influential figures in the country’s…

The Trans-Sumatran Highway is a $1.1 billion dollar project spanning 2,700 kilometers – from Banda Aceh in the north to Bandar Lampung in the south – and is designed to…

For years, Anthony Caere, an anti-poaching pilot at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), peered through the windows of his helicopter to see a landscape mostly…

A few months after the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 began to pop up in the U.S., a piece of news came out of the Bronx Zoo in New York…

North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA…

Rising across remote stretches of southeast Cambodia, the Cardamom Mountains harbor dense tropical rainforest, much of it native growth carpeting the range’s wet slopes. Due to its remoteness, the vast…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — For the rhinos of Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, snare traps set by poachers are a key factor that threatens to drive them closer to extinction. The Leuser…

There’s a new kid in town: a gray-furred langur with white-rimmed eyes and a fluffy head has just been announced as a new primate species. The Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa),…

Although the exact source of the coronavirus outbreak is unknown, it has been widely reported to have originated with wildlife. Since then, animals infected with COVID-19 include a small number…

Madagascar is known for its lemurs, and we’ve got some recordings of Madagascar’s most famous fauna to listen to on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast. But today we’re looking…

The Sumatran rhino, like the land that it inhabits, is unlike anything else in this world: small in stature and docile by nature, the animal sports a coat of black…

In 2019, the last known 14 Loa water frogs (Telmatobius dankoi) were evacuated from a swiftly vanishing stream in northern Chile. Now, after more than a year of meticulous care, they…

The DreamWorks version of Madagascar is exactly that, a fantasy. The island nation is no unpeopled paradise teeming with dancing lemurs, as depicted in the animated Madagascar film. On the contrary,…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Conservationists are calling for a Sumatran rhino habitat at the northern tip of the Indonesian island to be fully protected from planned road-construction projects. Officials in…

Lured with watermelon, Harapan, a 13-year-old captive Sumatran rhino moseyed into a metal-framed enclosure rigged with 24 cameras. When he stepped in front of the lenses, all of the cameras…

JAKARTA — An evolutionary crucible in Indonesia that’s given rise to a unique array of primates found nowhere else on Earth is at risk of disappearing due to rapid deforestation,…

Skinned, stuffed and tanned, wild giraffes are up for sale at dozens of stores across the United States. While importing and selling wild giraffes and giraffe products, such as giraffe…

Today we take a look at efforts to protect the Cross River gorilla, one of the world’s rarest great ape subspecies, which include a radio program broadcast to nearly 4…

JAKARTA — In 2018, five Indonesian forest rangers had an experience that would make them the envy of conservationists everywhere: they met a newborn Sumatran rhino in the wild. “They…

Outer space, the ocean depths and quantum physics are areas ripe for discovery, the underexplored frontiers of science. But another frontier may be hidden in plain sight, right under your…

The world’s protected areas are largely a jumble of disjointed refuges, separated from each other by the encroachment of human impacts, a recent study has found. Fewer than 10% of…

JAKARTA — Conservationists in Indonesia have reported the presence of two newborn Javan rhinoceros calves in the only place on Earth where the critically endangered species is still found, bringing…

Biodiversity scientists are being urged to “fight the creeping rise of extinction denial” that has spread from fringe blogs to influential media outlets and even into a U.S. Congressional hearing.…