Ecuadorian authorities said they caught a Russian woman at the airport in Quito, the capital city, trying to smuggle 32 live marine iguanas, endemic to the Galápagos Islands. The iguanas — bound and stuffed in eight plastic boxes — were headed to Iceland. The dehydrated lizards were transferred to a conservation center in Pichincha for […]
Seabirds can suffer jet lag that throws them off course, say experts
Manx shearwaters can experience a form of jet lag that causes them to veer off course when navigating by the sun, a study has found. Researchers from Oxford University analysed two decades of GPS tracking data from 1,045 Manx shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus), covering 3,688 foraging trips across the Atlantic. The study suggests the birds’ internal […]
How penguin poo is making Antarctic snow melt faster
Researchers find the birds’ guano feeds algal blooms that absorb significantly more solar energy Penguin poo is making the Antarctic snow melt faster, a study shows. As temperatures rise, penguins are waddling closer to the south pole, with potential for this previously unrecognised phenomenon to affect a wider area. Snow algae are tiny single-celled plants […]
Researchers studied these mysterious penguins for the first time in over 25 years. They were shocked at the results
The erect-crested penguin is one of four extant penguin species currently listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Now a groundbreaking species-wide assessment of all the breeding colonies of these penguins has revealed new information crucial for the future conservation and survival of the species. The erect-crested penguin (Eudyptes sclateri) is limited to two […]
High expectations but no agreement on Antarctic marine protection, krill fishing
The multilateral body charged with regulating fishing and protecting ecosystems in the Southern Ocean reached no agreements on establishing new marine protected areas or adopting new krill-fishing management measures at its recent annual meeting. The 45th meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) took place Oct. 19-30 in Hobart, […]
The seals that shouldn’t exist: How did 100,000 end up trapped in the middle of Siberia, a whopping 2,000 miles from the ocean?
Deep in the Russian wilderness, over 3000km from the nearest ocean, 100,000 seals live on a huge frigid lake. They are Baikal seals, known in Russian as nerpas, and are the only seal species found in freshwater. So how did the Baikal seal end up living in the middle of Siberia? Was it stranded as […]
North America’s most widely distributed game bird is under threat
Every November, hundreds of hunters descend on four designated wilderness areas in southern Ohio in pursuit of the elusive ruffed grouse. But not this year. Dispersed across an enormous range from the southern Appalachian mountains to Alaska, the ruffed grouse is one of the most popular game birds in North America. But for the first […]
“I shudder to think how often I’ve courted disaster, unknowingly, like this…”
It’s the last day of a week long rafting trip I’m guiding on the Canning River, which snakes from northern Alaska’s Brooks Range into the Arctic Coastal Plain. Sipping coffee in the quiet of the morning, and looking south from the top of the bluff where we have pitched our tents, I notice a white […]