Habitat News

In the Guaraní language spoken in some parts of South America, the words “Ñembi Guasu” mean “the great hideout” or “the great refuge.” Ñembi Guasu is also the name of…

Many hundreds of years ago, the first Polynesian boats arrived on the shores of what is now known as New Zealand.  In the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean, the…

Ritidian, a cliff-top refuge on the island of Guam, is one of the last places in the Pacific where you can find the mossy pillars and plunging crevices of a…

The ‘landscape of fear’ is not a new term among biologists. From the now-iconic study of how elk and bison gradually adjusted their vigilance levels after wolves were reintroduced into…

AMBON, Indonesia — Last February, a crocodile in eastern Indonesia crawled right into a trap. The animal, a 2-meter-long (6.6-foot) saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), was suspected to have preyed on…

Forests store vast quantities of carbon and play a huge role in the world’s carbon cycle – as well as in human hopes of mitigating global warming. Tropical rainforests, the…

The big cats of Java haven’t had it easy. First to vanish was the Sunda clouded leopard, a small species that today survives only on Borneo and Sumatra. Next to…

Illegal gold mining is on the verge of wiping out an iconic wetland forest in the heart of Madagascar’s flagship national park, according to a new paper. Forest loss due…

Whether Asia’s tiger populations bounce back, or they evaporate into the pages of history depends on the decisions humans make about how we live on this planet, new research suggests.…

JAKARTA — Road projects throughout Indonesian Borneo threaten to fragment a third of the forest habitat currently accessible to the island’s wildlife, according to a new study. Completion of ongoing…

Forty thousand years ago — 28,000 years before the Neolithic Revolution saw hunter-gatherers settle down and farm, 36,000 before the first pyramids took shape, and 39,000 before the Norman conquest…

A 40-year conservation effort on the remote Juruá River in Brazil’s Amazonas state cut turtle poaching to 2 percent, while also conserving bird, river dolphin and other species too: study.

The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), a hairy, pig-like mammal that once lived throughout the forests of Central and South America, now only skitters around in 13 percent of its former…

KATHMANDU, Nepal — As dawn peeks through the morning mist on an early spring day in Nepal's Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, a duck-sized bird flaps its wings and throws itself…

Franciso Sornoza, an ornithologist at the National Institute of Biodiversity in Quito, Ecuador, was hiking in the country’s southwestern highlands when a small bird caught his eye. It was perched…

A new map plots out the last known refuges of hundreds of highly threatened species around the world. The assessment updates work done by the Alliance for Zero Extinction, or…

“To leave my dream was difficult, but I had to do it for my son,” says Ileana Herrera, a former ecologist from Venezuela, now living in Ecuador. Herrera, like many…

Little by little, the ocean floor of Chapaco Bay is being blanketed in sludge. Héctor Zuleta is no longer able to harvest shellfish from among the caves, ridges and woodlands…

Scientists have mapped out instances of human-black bear conflict in a part of the U.S. state of Nevada where bears are returning decades after they vanished. The results of their…

Authorities in Madagascar confiscated 7,347 radiated tortoises (Astrochelys radiata) from wildlife traffickers on Oct. 24, just months after a similar bust led to the seizure of nearly 10,000 tortoises of…