San Antonio, Texas – A ritual of nature is happening in the woody hills around Austin and San Antonio. The first golden-cheeked warblers, with brilliant yellow faces streaked with black, have arrived from Mexico and Central America to raise their young. The Texas Hill Country is the only place on Earth where this little songbird, […]
Category: News
Small copper butterfly in ‘inexorable decline
A tiny but unmistakably dazzling butterfly, the small copper, suffered its worst ever year last summer according to the annual scientific survey of Britain’s butterflies. The bright ginger butterfly joins a growing band of once-common butterflies in apparently inexorable decline despite no discernible habitat loss in recent years and conservationists are warning that climate change […]
African elephants ‘killed faster than they are being born’
More African elephants are being killed for ivory than are being born, despite poaching levels falling for the fourth year in a row in 2015. The new data, released on UN world wildlife day on Thursday, shows about 60% of elephant deaths are at the hands of poachers, meaning the overall population is most likely […]
The special plight of Trans-Saharan migratory birds
Long distance migratory birds that use the African Eurasian flyway have been in serious trouble for at least a few decades, more so than their counterparts that travel shorter distances. Major declines have been observed for a number of species – including popular symbols of spring, such as the Nightingale – that fly each year […]
Pigeon patrol takes flight to tackle London’s air pollution crisis
They’ve been driven from Trafalgar square for being a nuisance, derided as rats with wings and maligned as a risk to public health. But now pigeons could play a small part in helping Londoners overcome one of the capital’s biggest health problems – its illegal levels of air pollution blamed for thousands of deaths a […]
Bees and other pollinators are in dire need of help
Around the world, the animals that pollinate our food crops —over 20,000 species of bees, butterflies, bats and many others —are the subject of growing attention. An increasing number of pollinator species are thought to be in decline, threatened by a variety of mostly human pressures, and their struggles could pose significant risksfor global food […]
Win for Critically Endangered Australian Regent Honeyeater in Court Decision
BirdLife Australia is celebrating a landmark court decision to protect the Critically Endangered Regent Honeyeater. In a desperately needed win for the Critically Endangered bird, the NSW Land and Environment Court has found in favour of a challenge to the approval of a development which would have destroyed its habitat. In the decision, it was […]
15 Bornean rhinos discovered in Kalimantan?
Indonesia’s environment and forestry ministry will convert a former gold mining site into a sanctuary for the Sumatran rhinoceros in East Kalimantan province, after conservationists identified 15 of the critically endangered creatures in the area. The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) was until recently believed to be extinct in Kalimantan. Then in 2013, scientists on an […]