Ecology News

MANNAR, Sri Lanka — The Vidattaltivu coastal belt in Sri Lanka’s north was once home to the marine unit of the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group, known as the “Sea Tigers.”…

A lapsed moratorium protecting the Amazon river dolphin is up for renewal, but the Bolsonaro administration has delayed acting, even as scientists warn it could mean the freshwater mammal’s extinction.

Madagascar is often called the “red island” because of its iron-rich soils. In school, Malagasy children are taught that their island was green until human beings destroyed most of the…

With its groves of pockmarked white bark and trembling green medallion leaves, Pando looks like any other aspen forest. But the approximately 47,000 stems that form its giant body share…

Scraping sounds fill the nights at Mapungubwe, a national park at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where the borders of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet. Families…

Life can’t function without insects. At least, not for long. Dutifully, they pollinate, break down waste, cycle nutrients, move seeds, and touch every web of life, filling endless functional niches…

Research measured the impacts of human disruption: bird flocks declined and vanished, seed dispersion changed, while the Rupununi region showed just how bountiful an undisturbed ecosystem can be.

COLOMBO — A rare new orchid described from a tropical lowland rainforest in Sri Lanka now bears the name of two of the island’s pioneering forest ecologists. A new paper…

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A hidden invasion is taking place beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent years, scientists have recorded more than 700 alien species in Mediterranean waters,…

Law enforcement officials around the world have seized more than 200 tonnes of pangolin scales since 2016, more than half of it linked to Nigeria, a new report has found.…

Fish populations in coral reefs off Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique are being harvested at unsustainable rates, new research has found. In the study published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress…

It’s a beguiling proposition: pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by supercharging populations of microscopic, carbon-munching marine phytoplankton through the relatively simple and inexpensive process of adding iron to…

Patagonia’s huemul is an agile herbivore of which only about 1,500 may remain at 100 or so scattered sites between sea level and the Andes; it is being buffeted by complex interrelated stressors.

Remote islands are often held up as vestiges of pristine wilderness. In stark contrast, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Henderson Island are drowning in piles of plastic. A recent study…

Purse seine fishing nets may be set for tuna, but they trap whatever fish swim into them, including manta and devil rays. As the net tightens, rays will panic and…

A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…

Fish stocks around the world are doing better, in general, where science guides their management, according to a recent study. Publishing their findings Jan. 13 online in the journal Proceedings…

There are plenty of ways to hide in the open ocean if you want to fish unnoticed. Many fishing boats do just that. They turn off their public tracking systems…

The effects of commercial logging, mining and farming can ripple beyond the boundaries of the operations, leading to the substantial loss and degradation of nearby forest for subsistence agriculture, a…

The Isha Foundation, a spiritual organization headquartered in south India, is taking on the cause of revitalizing India’s imperiled rivers. With government and public support, it says it has successfully…

Howler monkeys change their calls when they’re close to deforested areas, a new study has found. A team of researchers, led by anthropologist Laura Bolt of the University of Waterloo…

Governments could vastly improve the efficiency of money spent on conservation if they took a hard look at the species they prioritize, according to a recent study. The research probed…

Scientists believe they’ve uncovered a tipping point in the deforestation of landscapes across Earth: Once an area loses half its forest, the rest of the forest is often swift to…

The camera traps that ecologist Annette Fayet had set up didn’t provide the clues she had hoped to find about puffin diets and nesting behavior. What they did provide, though,…

Scientific monitoring and protection measures aimed at helping a critically endangered species of fish in the Caribbean appear to be working, according to a recent study. The research, published Jan.…

Meat and dairy consumption in Europe are contributing disproportionately to habitat destruction of charismatic species like the giant anteater in Brazil's Cerrado savanna.

Forty percent of samples collected from 116 tapirs in a Cerrado study were poisoned with 13 toxic residues including 9 insecticides and herbicides, plus 4 heavy metals: report.

A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.

For seabirds, an Arctic Ocean with less sea ice could provide some tantalizing alternatives to the long-haul flights that some undertake each year. In a recent study, ecologist Manon Clairbaux…

A major six nation study finds that the arrau is thriving mostly in river systems where conservationists are active, but not elsewhere; climate change looms as a major threat.