Countless of them were massacred over centuries, and their eggs pilfered by the hundreds of millions. Today, the Arrau turtle is a rare species conservation success story in the Brazilian…
Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018, an olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) hauled herself out of the ocean along a beach on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Moving…
Once considered extinct, the Burmese roofed turtle (Batagur trivittata) was brought back from the brink by an ambitious conservation program. Now, almost 30 years after its rediscovery in the wild,…
When baby sea turtles hatch from their eggs, they skitter across the sand to the shoreline before disappearing into the open ocean. Many years later, by some remarkable feat, female…
Authorities in Madagascar have arrested three poachers carrying 144 radiated tortoises, the largest known seizure of its kind in almost two years in the country. They recovered the tortoises, which…
Turtles and tortoises in trouble On the island of Madagascar, locked gates, razor-wire fences, and 24-hour armed guards protect one of the world’s rarest treasures. That treasure, worth roughly $50,000…
In 2018, something extraordinary happened in Phuket, Thailand. For the first time in five years, a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) crept onto a local beach, dug a nest in the…
BUTUAN CITY, Philippines — Villagers in the southern Philippines taking part in an initiative to protect turtle nesting sites have recorded their most successful season in recent years, with nearly…
LA RÉUNION —Giant tortoises and flying foxes once roamed La Réunion, a volcanic island off the eastern coast of Africa. Then humans arrived and decided to stay. Within 150 years…
If someone in Madagascar spots illegal logging, mining or slash-and-burn farming, they often have difficulty reporting the crime to authorities. Wrongdoers can pressure or threaten them to stay silent, and…
MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines — For hundreds of years, the lives of fisherfolk along the sleepy coastal villages in the town of Candiis in the Philippines’ Misamis Oriental province have been…
Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean famous for its turquoise waters, giant tortoises and wondrous birds, has extended protection to 400,000 square kilometers (154,000 square miles) of its seas,…
In late 2018, researchers announced that they had found synthetic particles like microplastics in the intestinal tracts of every single sea turtle they’d studied in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans…
Tyrone Ping had ample opportunity to admire reptiles and amphibians as a child, and this initial herpetological hobby has led to a life-long fascination. At some point when he was…
MANILA — Governments across Southeast Asia have vowed to strengthen cooperation in curbing the illegal wildlife trade, suspected to have sparked the novel coronavirus epidemic. The issue will be at…
Eighty-eight-year-old Le Huy Hoanh stands up from his bench and carefully poured tea in rural Vietnam, and mimes for us how he used to kill gods. With his long spear…
This is the second article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One. TELOK SERABANG, Malaysia — At the westernmost tip of Borneo sits a dense…
The sex of some turtle species is influenced not by genes but by the temperatures they experience in the nest. Eggs incubated at cooler temperatures develop into males, while those…
The Con X Tech Prize just announced its second round will be funding 20 finalists each with $3,500 to create their first prototypes. Some 150 teams submitted ideas that use…
It was a chance encounter. But it turned Bunty Tao's life around. In mid-June, a group of boys were heading back from a fishing trip to a forest near the…
In a boost to jaguars and other iconic wildlife of Central America, the government of Belize has approved a proposal to protect the Maya Forest Corridor, a key stretch of…
Chimpanzees in Gabon's Loango National Park have tortoises on their menu. For the first time, researchers have observed the great apes vigorously smashing forest hinge-back tortoises (Kinixys erosa) against tree…
Until recently, there were just four known Yangtze giant softshell turtles in the world. On April 13, the only known female among them died in China’s Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Zoo…
Customs officials in the Philippines have seized 1,529 live turtles that they found wrapped in duct tape inside four suitcases abandoned at Manila’s international airport. The confiscated turtles include threatened…
July 12 saw highs in the mid-80s in New York City this year — a typically hot, muggy NYC summer day. Perfect beach weather, in other words. It was a…
In the beginning, Shahriar Caesar Rahman’s trips to the remote forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh would invariably end in frustration. Rahman was searching for reptiles, and based…
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…
Turtles were once a tough group of animals. Sea turtles survived the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. But the modern descendants of this…
In a video that went viral in 2015, researchers spent nearly 10 minutes pulling out a 10-centimeter (4-inch) plastic straw from the nostril of a male olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea)…
In Morocco’s live animal markets, a wide variety of wildlife is available for sale. There’s the threatened spur-thighed tortoise (Testudo graeca), going for around $1, and the endangered Barbary macaque (Macaca…
