The ecological costs of war in Africa
When Joshua Daskin traveled to Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park in 2012, the park and the iconic large animals that roamed it were returning from the brink of extinction. Gorongosa, among Afr…
Showing posts with the label Endangered Species
Researchers using DNA to protect the rhinoceros from extinction
Call it CSI meets conservation. Stephen O'Brien, Ph.D., a research scientist at Nova Southeastern University's (NSU) Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, has worked with colle…
Amazon biodiversity hotspot to suffer even more losses after contentious law passed
In August 2017, the Bolivian government passed a contentious law that paved the way for construction of a new 190-mile road cutting through one of the country's most iconic and biodiverse protect…
Swift parrots bred on predator-free islands at risk of extinction
New research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found genetic evidence that critically endangered swift parrots, which breed all over Tasmania and on predator-free islands, form a sing…
Snowy owl numbers far lower than once thought
Scott Judd trained his camera lens on the white dot in the distance. As he moved up the Lake Michigan shoreline, the speck on a breakwater came into view and took his breath away: it was a snowy owl,…
West African dolphin now listed as one of Africa's rarest mammals
A group of scientists now considers a little-known dolphin that only lives along the Atlantic coasts of Western Africa to be among the continent's most endangered mammals, a list that includes wi…
Scientists uncover patterns of elephant poaching in East Africa
Scientists analyzing data from aerial surveys carried out over one of East Africa's most important nature reserves have uncovered clusters of elephant carcasses close to some ranger posts. Poachi…
Mammal long thought extinct in Australia resurfaces
A crest-tailed mulgara, a small carnivorous marsupial known only from fossilised bone fragments and presumed extinct in NSW for more than century, has been discovered in Sturt National Park north-wes…
To trade or not to trade? Breaking the ivory deadlock
The debate over whether legal trading of ivory should be allowed to fund elephant conservation, or banned altogether to stop poaching has raged for decades without an end in sight. Scientists propose…
Hope for one of the world's rarest primates: First census of Zanzibar Red Colobus monkey
A team of WCS scientists recently completed the first-ever range-wide population census of the Zanzibar red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus kirkii) an endangered primate found only on the Zanzibar archi…
Scientists urge endangered listing urged for cheetahs
A comprehensive assessment of cheetah populations in southern Africa supported by the National Geographic Society reveals the dire state of one of the planet's most iconic big cats. In a study pu…
Officials: Whales, after deadly year, could become extinct
Officials with the federal government say it’s time to consider the possibility that endangered right whales could become extinct unless new steps are taken to protect them. A North Atlantic right wh…
Cooling climate drove evolution of Tasmanian Devil and its relatives
A big drop in global temperatures 12-14 million years ago may explain the evolutionary success of Australia's unique marsupial carnivores, a new study has found. Tasmanian devil [Credit: Universi…
Tigers cling to survival in Sumatra's increasingly fragmented forests
A research expedition tracked endangered tigers through the Sumatran jungles for a year and found tigers are clinging to survival in low density populations. Their findings have renewed fears about t…
2 kiwi birds are rare bright spot in grim extinction report
Two types of New Zealand kiwi birds are a rare bright spot in a mostly grim assessment of global species at risk of extinction. Northern brown kiwi in New Zealand [Credit: Neil Robert Hutton via AP] …