Iucn News

Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…

When fisherfolk in India’s westernmost state of Gujarat find a whale shark tangled in their fishing nets, it’s an unwelcome sight. They can’t legally harvest the protected species, yet the…

For more than three months, penguins living off the coast of Namibia have been battling an outbreak of bird flu. The worst of the disease seems to have passed, but…

Countries should concentrate on outcomes instead of actions when they set aside areas for parks and reserves to shore up the loss of biodiversity, according to a group of scientists.…

Island-dwelling animals around the globe often face a common threat: alien species that compete with them for food, kill them and their young, and otherwise hamper their ability to survive.…

Whales can behave quite differently in response to sonar depending on where they live and what they’re doing, new research has found. The pair of studies, on different species and…

The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…

Tapirs may help rainforests recover after destructive human use and increase the amount of carbon they hold, new research has found. The study, based in the Brazilian Amazon, found that…

On March 13, scientists announced that around 10 vaquitas (Phocoena sinus) are left on Earth, just as the environmental group Sea Shepherd said it had found one of the porpoises…

Animals around the globe are losing ground to farming and ranching, and their numbers are dwindling at the hands of human hunters. But the question of where to direct precious…

Giraffes have to search a wider area for food and water when people live nearby, according to a recent study. “Giraffes are huge browsing animals that live in African savanna…

Hyperbolic headlines can be like catnip for newspaper editors. So when a local fisher hauls in what looks like a record-breaking catch, it often makes news. But a recent study…

Corruption fuels the illegal harvest and sale of caviar, potentially hastening the slide of many fish species toward extinction. That’s the conclusion of a report published Feb. 13 by the…

Police and wildlife officials confiscated nearly 30 metric tons (33 tons) of pangolin carcasses, meat and scales, as well as dozens of the live animals, in Malaysian Borneo on Feb.…

A male Sumatran tiger named Asim attacked and killed Melati, a female of the same subspecies, shortly after he was allowed to enter her enclosure Feb. 8 at ZSL London…

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.…

A recent survey of wildlife rangers at a national park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) found that most aren’t happy with their jobs. Faced with low pay, little…

The trade of live birds in South America is down to its lowest levels in years, according to a report released Jan. 16 by conservation NGOs TRAFFIC and WWF. But…

The construction of a hydroelectric dam in Thailand in the 1980s devastated the area’s wild birds, leaving behind just a few of the many species that once inhabited the region,…

The culling of fruit bats in recent years to protect crops in Mauritius has pushed the species closer to extinction, and now the government is planning to do it again.…

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…

Decades of “extreme” conservation have lifted the mountain gorilla from the edge of extinction, leading the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to change the animal’s status from the…

A herd of zebra now roams the southern highlands of Tanzania for the first time since the 1960s. Staff from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its partners released 24…

Tigers and other wildlife in Peninsular Malaysia now have a new refuge, as the state government of Terengganu recently axed plans to log more than 100 square kilometers (39 square…

Whale sharks are capable long-distance swimmers, but it turns out that a lot of them are also homebodies. A new study published Aug. 9 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress…

Pesky itchiness caused by parasitic worms may have driven one of Madagascar’s lemur species to come up with a natural remedy. New research, published July 30 in the journal Primates,…

An international team of scientists has used camera traps in China and Russia to come up with a more accurate estimate of Amur leopards in the wild. The research, published in…

Wildlife crime investigators now have a new method that builds on the forensic techniques used to collect fingerprints and other identifying marks in helping them track down traffickers of pangolins…

An international effort is underway in Madagascar to save thousands of threatened tortoises that were discovered in an abandoned house in the city of Toliara in April. The first descriptions…

Hunting for meat consumption and the bushmeat trade is threatening several species of hornbills in Ghana, in some cases leading to their complete disappearance, according to a recent study. Ecologist…