Why did the passenger pigeon die out?
Why do species die out? This is the overarching question being asked by many leading researchers. Knowing more about what leads to a species' becoming extinct could enable us to do something abou…
Showing posts with the label Wildlife
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…
Climate change drives collapse in marine food webs
A new study has found that levels of commercial fish stocks could be harmed as rising sea temperatures affect their source of food. University of Adelaide scientists have demonstrated how climate cha…
Closing roads counters effects of habitat loss for grizzly bears
It's simple math, says scientist Clayton Lamb. The closer grizzly bears are to humans, the more ways there are for the bears to die. Put more simply, more roads equal fewer grizzly bears. Credit:…
What species is most fit for life? All have an equal chance, scientists say
There are more than 8 million species of living things on Earth, but none of them -- from 100-foot blue whales to microscopic bacteria -- has an advantage over the others in the universal struggle fo…
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…
The Caribbean is stressed out
Forty percent of the world's 7.6 billion people live in coastal cities and towns. A team including Smithsonian marine biologists just released 25 years of data about the health of Caribbean coast…
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…
Hibernating squirrels and hamsters evolved to feel less cold
The ground squirrel and the Syrian hamster, two rodents that hibernate in the winter, do not feel cold in the same way as non-hibernators, such as rats or mice. Yale researchers have discovered that …
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…