The hen harrier has begun to drag its way back from extinction in England. But according to the grouse industry one organisation is stomping on its claws – the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). On Tuesday, according to the Telegraph, a report by government environment advisory body Natural England was “set to […]
Category: News
‘Golden jackals’ of East Africa are actually ‘golden wolves’
Despite their remarkably similar appearance, the “golden jackals” of East Africa and Eurasia are actually two entirely different species. The discovery, based on DNA evidence and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 30, increases the overall biodiversity of the Canidae—the group including dogs, wolves, foxes, and jackals—from 35 living species to […]
Rare White Rhino Dies, Leaving Only Four Left on the Planet
A northern white rhinoceros named Nabiré died Monday at a Czech zoo, leaving only four of the subspecies alive in the world. Their outlook is bleak: Only one male remains, and at 42 years old he can no longer breed. The 31-year-old female died at the Dvůr Králové Zoo after suffering complications from the rupture […]
Video: Behold the iridescent glory of hummingbird feathers!
The gorget (pronouced “gor-git”) is a shimmering patch of feathers found on the throats of males in many hummingbird species. The brilliant, shifting colours arise not from pigments in the feathers, but rather from their microscopic structure. Audubon explains: The term comes from days of old, when a knight-in-armor wore a metallic collar – or […]
Photos Show Sad Plight for African Elephants Lifted to China
New, secretly obtained photos show that elephants snatched from the wild in Zimbabwe months ago and airlifted recently to China are malnourished, sunken-looking, and scarred by wounds. “These calves look really horrible,” says Joyce Poole, co-founder of ElephantVoices, a Kenya-based research and advocacy organization. Poole reviewed the photos, which were sent exclusively to National Geographic. […]
Scientists: we are ‘condemning’ forest elephants by ignoring evidence
How do you tell two species apart? Let’s say you’re investigating a bird with two populations. One lives in the savanna, the other in the forest. The savanna population eats grasshoppers, but the one in the forest eats beetles. The savanna bird is big-bodied with a curvy beak; the forest bird is smaller with a […]
Beloved Storks, Emblems of Fertility, Rebounding in France
The same rule applies walking through the streets of Alsace, France, as it does in the Sistine Chapel: Don’t forget to look up. Nowadays, white storks—harbingers of fertility and good fortune—perch above Alsace (map) in nests that can grow large enough to almost fit a smart car. This wasn’t always true: Rewind to the 1980s, […]
Can Rewilding Bring Nature Back to Modern Britain?
Britain’s most endangered animals and plants have declined by 58 percent since the 1970s, and one in ten is threatened with extinction, according to a recent report. The U.K. has lost 44 million birds since 1966 and, historically, more large mammals—including wolves, lynx, bears, beavers, boars, moose, bison, and wolverines—than any other European country except […]