North Atlantic right whales face an increasingly uncertain future. Despite two decades of intensive monitoring and protection, their numbers have hit a seven-year skid, with an estimated 451 right whales…
Australia is known for protecting its sea life in a 3.3 million square kilometer (1.3 million square mile) system of marine parks that covers 36 percent of the country’s oceans.…
Conservation-minded planners often pick places with the fewest signs of human impact for protection, and, across the tropics, pristine rainforests with the tallest trees often rise to the top of…
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the world’s most widely used information source on a species’ conservation status, may soon get a makeover. The Red List measures the decline in populations…
The great mass of castaway plastic collecting in the northern Pacific Ocean is much larger than past estimates, and it’s growing, according to a new study. As a species, we…
In Antarctica, it’s usually the whales, seals and penguins that take the spotlight, but a new report focuses on an animal further down the food chain: the Antarctic krill (Euphausia…
Madagascar is known as an ark for biodiversity that's found nowhere else on the planet. Unfortunately, it's also known for the bevy of threats that those distinctive species that live…
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…
Scientists have long believed the lack of nutrients in tropical forests soils meant that they weren’t very productive when it came to plant growth. But at the same time, trees…
A new study in Environmental Research Letters shows that applying a theoretic carbon tax — one aimed at stimulating changes to farming and land-use practices that minimize emissions —could have…
Better planning could save a lot of wildlife, according to results from a study published recently in Global Change Biology. It found that nearly 90 percent of the biodiversity that…
BENI DEPARTMENT, Bolivia — The sound of hundreds of excited children drowns out the gentle hum of nature. Those closest to the shoreline hold in their hands, some for the…
Hornbills, vultures and eagles are being hunted for bushmeat in Cameroon in much greater numbers than previously thought, a new study has found. Previous research has shown that relatively few…
Type “climate change” into any search engine and the results aren’t difficult to predict: you’ll probably see a woeful polar bear on a shrinking patch of ice. Either that or…
If you’re curious about the natural world, chances are you’ve seen Emily Graslie’s YouTube channel, The Brain Scoop. From wondering about peregrine falcon promiscuity and how owl vomit helps us…
Photographs of crop-raiding animals taken with camera traps and conversations with farmers in the Amazon suggest it’s possible to protect the diversity of life in the world’s largest rainforest while…
Nearly 100,000 small hydropower dams exist or are planned worldwide, and science has done little to study or inform policymakers about cumulative environmental impacts.
The arduous task of assessing animal populations in the wild takes plenty of sweat and tears. Now a group of scientists is adding blood to that mix, in an innovative…
Conservationists recently awoke to the extraordinary value of the Cerrado - a biodiverse biome long outshone by the Amazon and a key carbon sink; but agribusiness is fast destroying it.
With the Arctic winter of 2017-18 the warmest on record, researchers are finding a troubling range of climate change impacts on wildlife, including wolverines, reindeer, snowy owls, and more.
