Armadillos are a popular bushmeat in the Brazilian Amazon, but handling and eating these scaly mammals could put humans at risk of leprosy, a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical…
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.
Scientists have long suspected a relationship between deforestation and some infectious diseases. For instance, the 2014 Ebola crisis has been linked to logging that may have put workers and their…
Scientists started to get worried in the 1970s when frogs in Australia and Central and South America began disappearing. The culprit seemed to be a chytrid fungus that colonized frogs’…
Every year since 1993, Fabio de Oliveira Roque, one of the authors of this piece, has returned to his hometown of São Paulo, a big city inside a biodiversity hotspot…
Leopards are among the most widespread of all big cats, with a historical range covering large parts of Africa and Asia. Though humans have whittled away about 80 percent of…
In May 2015, more than 200,000 saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) suddenly died. Entire herds perished, their bodies littering the steppe grasslands of central Kazakhstan as if dropped from the sky.…
One of the Trump administration’s first acts was to reinstate the global gag rule, with repercussions for women’s health and empowerment, population and the environment.
A team of scientists from Seychelles, the United States and the United Kingdom has found a new caecilian, perhaps the smallest species of the legless amphibian on Earth. "As soon…
A new study exposes the role of deforestation in amplifying malaria transmission, finding that forest loss and malaria is linked worldwide and not just a local phenomenon. The research, published…
Bats have not historically been a focus of much conservation effort, but starting around 1985, conservationists in Canada and the United States began working to limit human access to bat…
What lurks in the soil beneath your feet? In the soil beneath us live billions of organisms, ranging in size from one-celled bacteria to gophers. These critters aerate the soil,…
Beneath their prehistoric-looking shells, turtles conceal an extraordinary ability to hold their breath underwater, going without oxygen for hours, even months, at a time. This cellular-level capacity to survive underwater…
Great apes should be humanity’s best bet for conservation — charismatic, intelligent, strikingly familiar, with big emoting eyes. It’s hard to think of creatures with whom the public empathizes more…
The deadly yellow fever -- an infectious disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus -- has spread rapidly throughout Brazil, wiping out populations of the brown howler monkey (Alouatta guariba). Thousands of…
A type of transmissible cancer has decimated Tasmanian devil populations. First detected in 1996, the devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) has spread across most of the Tasmanian devil's range and has…
Koalas, the eucalyptus-loving cuddly marsupials found only in Australia, are declining rapidly. In some areas, their numbers have plummeted by more than 80 percent, with koala populations in the state of…
The beauty of the saiga belies first impressions. It may be hard to look beyond the big nose — a bulbous schnozz that looks like a chunk of an elephant’s…
The legal commercial exotic animal trade is a booming enterprise that ships ornamental fish, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians around the world. These pets, livestock and other animals can carry…
Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared that it was placing the rusty patched bumblebee on the U.S. endangered species list. The listing would have taken effect…
