Critically endangered species News

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A forest elephant near Ngounié, Gabon. Image by marcusgmeiner via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Poaching down but threats remain for forest elephants, recent population assessment finds

Spoorthy Raman 5 Jan 2026
A baird's tapir goes for dip. Image by Bernard Dupont via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Deforestation climbs in Central America’s largest biosphere reserve

Morgan Erickson-Davis 31 Dec 2025
The orchids at Levy Preserve are naturally occurring and indicate that this land hadn’t been disturbed for many years.

A small preserve leads a big effort to save native plants in the Bahamas

Marlowe Starling 30 Dec 2025
A Campbell's keeled glass-snail with a number tag. Image courtesy of Junn Kitt Foon.

From ‘extinct’ to growing, a rare snail returns to the wild in Australia

Shreya Dasgupta 29 Dec 2025
Shark meat is prepared for distribution at CEAGESP in São Paulo city. Image by Philip Jacobson/Mongabay.

Mongabay shark meat investigation wins national journalism award in Brazil

Mongabay.com 23 Dec 2025

The first amphibian to halt a hydroelectric dam now takes on the climate crisis

Thamys Trindade 22 Dec 2025
The presence of Sumatran elephants is intended to help transport wood left over from the flood.

Tsunami veteran rescue elephants mobilized for Indonesia cyclone disaster relief

Junaidi Hanafiah 19 Dec 2025

Tapanuli orangutan, devastated by cyclone, now faces habitat loss under zoning plans

Hans Nicholas Jong, Achmad Rizki Muazam 18 Dec 2025
A critically endangered lesser Antillean iguana in Dominica. Image courtesy of Andrew Snyder/Re:wild.

Tiny Caribbean island brings hope for critically endangered iguana

Shreya Dasgupta 18 Dec 2025
A mother and infant Tapanuli orangutan were directly sighted in the Lumut Maju peat swamp forest in North Sumatra. Image by Junaidi Hanafiah/Mongabay-Indonesia.

Sumatran flood disaster may have wiped out a key Tapanuli orangutan population, scientists fear

Hans Nicholas Jong 12 Dec 2025

The last of the Vaquita Porpoise (cartoon)

Rohan Chakravarty 9 Dec 2025
Thismia selangorensis, courtesy of Gim Siew Tan.

A new ‘fairy lantern’ species is found at a Malaysian picnic site

Shreya Dasgupta 9 Dec 2025
A Bornean orangutan.

Indigenous Dayak sound alarm as palm oil firm razes orangutan habitat in Borneo

Hans Nicholas Jong 2 Dec 2025
Fruit from the 70 last known adults of the endangered tree Magnolia polyhypsophylla.

Botanists decode secret life of rare plants to ensure reintroduction success

Katarina Zimmer 25 Nov 2025

Protecting pangolins IRL, not just on paper: Interview with conservationist Kumar Paudel

Abhaya Raj Joshi 24 Nov 2025

Scientists & nuns unite to save Mexico’s rare achoque salamanders

Mongabay.com 18 Nov 2025
turtle

In Mexico, world’s smallest turtle faces big threats from trafficking, habitat loss

Sandra Weiss 18 Nov 2025

New population of the world’s rarest great ape discovered

Juan Maza 15 Nov 2025
Female Megachile lucifer. Image by Prendergast et al., 2025 (CC0).

Newly described ‘lucifer’ bee found visiting critically endangered plant in Australia

Shreya Dasgupta 14 Nov 2025

Rare parrots return to Atlantic Forest fragment after decades of silence

Liz Kimbrough 13 Nov 2025
Mount Mulanje in southeastern Malawi. Known as the “Island in the Sky,” Mount Mulanje, with 13 peaks and high-altitude basins, is rich in biodiversity with over 70 endemic species and provides surrounding communities with freshwater, natural forest products and essential protection from storms. Image by David Davies, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr

‘A big no’: Opposition grows to proposed mine in Malawi’s newest UNESCO site

Ruth Kamnitzer 4 Nov 2025
Rüppell's vultures pictured in Kenya’s Masai Mara — these endangered birds raise only one chick per year. Image by Thomas Fuhrmann via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Colony of world’s highest-flying bird under threat in Uganda

Ryan Truscott, Musinguzi Blanshe 29 Oct 2025
A oceanic whitetip shark with pilot fish. Image by Johanlantz via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Mexico adopts protections for Atlantic sharks

Shreya Dasgupta 28 Oct 2025
White handed gibbon

International Gibbon Day: Spotlighting the overlooked, underprotected ‘lesser apes’

Shreya Dasgupta 24 Oct 2025
A slender-billed curlew illustration by Elizabeth Gould & Edward Lear via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The slender-billed curlew, a migratory waterbird, is officially extinct: IUCN

Shreya Dasgupta 20 Oct 2025
A teenage mahout and his elephant in Bogura, Bangladesh.

Bangladesh plans to rehabilitate captive elephants in the wild

Abu Siddique 16 Oct 2025
Contraband goods seized by the border guard in Vinh Long province, southern Vietnam. Image courtesy of Xuan Loc/Tuổi Trẻ.

Authorities in Vietnam bust wildlife smugglers with tons of rare animal parts

Shanna Hanbury 9 Oct 2025
An Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri)

Indochinese leopards face ‘bleak’ future, but hope persists

Ana Norman Bermúdez 7 Oct 2025
The Philippine eagle is being pushed to the brink of extinction due to deforestation and unsustainable hunting.

Study warns up to a quarter of Philippine vertebrates risk extinction

Keith Anthony Fabro 2 Oct 2025
Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli) in a tree.

Urban appetite for lemur meat piles pressure on iconic primates

Mino Rakotovao 1 Oct 2025

Indonesia aims to redraw UNESCO site boundaries to allow geothermal projects

Hans Nicholas Jong 30 Sep 2025
Tracking dog

To track a unicorn: Laos team goes all out to find the last saolas

Carolyn Cowan 30 Sep 2025

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