Wildlife Rescues News

On the second day of 2021, a whale shark drifted into Kendari Bay, in eastern Indonesia, and became trapped when the tide quickly turned. After a 10-hour struggle in murky,…

MINDANAO, Philippines — Efforts to conserve the critically endangered Philippine eagle, one of the rarest raptors in the world, soared high even amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the global havoc…

The CMA CGM Brazil, a huge cargo freighter carrying more than 15,000 containers, powered through the Atlantic Ocean, headed for New York City. North of Nantucket, it entered what’s known…

Ousado the jaguar could hardly walk. Fires had blown through his territory in the Pantanal region of Brazil, scorching the very ground the animal was running upon as he tried…

A ghastly orange grin extends across the treetops in Guarayos, Bolivia, marking a cruel turn of fate for rescued wildlife. On the ground, the air is too smoky to breathe,…

The 8-week-old cheetah cubs should have been with their mother. Instead, they were penned up in a small village near Erigavo, Somaliland, after a group of nomadic livestock farmers chased…

Fernando Tortato usually spends his time scanning camera trap footage to monitor jaguars in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, a region that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.…

Ally arrived at the veterinary hospital the way most rescued pangolins do: underweight, dehydrated and suffering from pneumonia. But a routine ultrasound revealed that Ally wasn’t a typical patient —…

BRIDGEPORT, Washington — There are fewer than 1,000 sage grouse left in Washington state, and Michael Schroeder has been studying them for more than 30 years. Schroeder is a biologist…

MANILA — In the Philippines, it’s normal for neighbors to share their food, and — since most areas are still under a form of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic…

SAMARINDA, Indonesia — A wild Sumatran rhino that conservation officials in Indonesia plan to catch next year for a captive-breeding program in Borneo has been identified as a female. The…

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…

MANILA — “How can we rehabilitate a Philippine eagle during a lockdown?” That was the first thought Jayson Ibañez says crossed his mind after he answered a phone call bearing…

Pangolins have been locally extinct in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province for the last 30 or 40 years, experts say. But now, local conservationists are working to slowly reintroduce these shy,…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has lifted a moratorium on the release of captive wild animals, imposed earlier this year as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of the…

HIYARE, Sri Lanka — Bouts of panic buying quickly cleared supermarket and store shelves with each lifting of Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 curfew to allow residents to stock up on essentials.…

Koalas in the hundreds were literally ‘left up a tree’ after the catastrophic Australian bushfires. Dedicated teams made up of people and dogs came to their rescue.

JAKARTA — Measures aimed at halting the spread of the novel coronavirus in Indonesia have meant tough times for Indonesia’s captive animals, both at wildlife rehabilitation facilities and in the…

Dramatic images of orangutans being rescued from clear-cut forests are ubiquitous on the web and in nature magazines, but new research suggests that rather than being a crucial tool for…

LUANG PRABANG, Laos — The door rattles and I can sense that my diners are getting impatient. Clutching a silver tray that’s overflowing with pumpkin, turnip and sweet potatoes, I…

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…

PONTIANAK, Indonesia — As the forests of Indonesian Borneo burned during fires last year, a female orangutan was forced to leave her burning home. When she was rescued from a…

JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction,…

ILOILO, Philippines — A pig growled in pain. I walked up to the enclosure of sharp, rusty metal grill to see a Visayan warty pig (Sus cebifrons), known locally as…

The last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia may be on the verge of dying, leaving a lone female as the last of the species there, authorities reported. The rhino known…

DENPASAR/JAKARTA — In November 2017, when locals spotted 10 sperm whales stranded on a beach on the island of Sumatra, they had no idea what to do. Stuck in shallow…

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…

JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have arrested seven suspected members of a trafficking ring believed to have used Facebook and other social media to sell at least 40 Komodo dragons and…

Two Asiatic black bear cubs have been rescued from the illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam. Vietnamese authorities confiscated the two female bear cubs from wildlife smugglers in Hai Phong province…

JAKARTA — In May 2015, a wildlife smuggler was arrested at an Indonesian port. He had attempted to transport nearly two dozen yellow-crested cockatoos, stuffed in plastic water bottles, aboard…