Clinging tightly to rocky shores and hidden within shallow tidal pools, beadlet anemones are among the most intriguing — and often overlooked — creatures of the coastline. Where do beadlet anemones live? This beautiful creature is a common sight in rockpools all around the UK, and are one of the few anemones which can live on the […]
Bird flu has devastated wildlife around the world. What Australian birds are most at risk?
The deadly H5 bird flu that has devastated wildlife populations globally since 2021 is spreading across Australia. The federal government announced the first vaccination plans for captive native bird species last week and the Victorian government has moved to vaccinate wild little penguins after the first detections in terns on Phillip Island. On Saturday, the […]
Experts looked inside Cape Town’s largest predator. What they found has them worried
Most of Cape Town’s caracals have rat poison in their bodies. The discovery, reported in Environmental Pollution, raises concerns about the hidden effects of rodent control on wildlife, and calls for tighter regulation of these chemicals. Caracals are wild cats native to Africa and parts of the Middle East and Asia, instantly recognisable by their long, tufted ears. The […]
Only a few hundred Timor green pigeons may remain. There is still time to save them
On April 20, on the south coast of Timor-Leste, Jafet Potenzo Lopes saw three green pigeons. He had not seen the species for years. The birds were Timor green pigeons, and the site, in Manatuto municipality, had no previous record of them. With the species nearing extinction, finding three birds in a new place was […]
“In the blink of an eye, 6 of them hurtled towards me. Out of nowhere 1 landed on a branch just 5m away. I tried to back away, but I was easy prey…”
Twenty metres up, the canopy looks like a highway. Different shades of green, yellow and grey leaves fuse, creating the illusion of an endless rainforest. I spent most of 2013 in the canopy of a cloudforest in Colombia, collecting insects and arachnids from inside bromeliads and mosses. I was studying how their availability influences the […]
Florida sets record for sea turtle nests but Trump move could stall recovery
Wildlife groups in Florida are celebrating record numbers of sea turtle nests this season, but experts warn Donald Trump’s recent gutting of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) could reverse decades of their recovery from the edge of extinction. With more than two months of the summer nesting season still to run, loggerhead turtles have already made 13,770 nests, hundreds more […]
“I realised that I was in a very vulnerable position and retreated as fast as I could. It took a few sweat-pouring minutes of bounding over boulders…”
The chacma baboons had started moving away from the waterhole, which was nestled in a steep- sided gorge. Troop ‘elders’ led in a purposeful manner, while youngsters and some who had been resting in shady spots slowly followed suit. My colleague Charmaine and I followed, as many of the baboons settled around a rocky outcrop […]
Uzbekistan’s houbara releases serve hunting, not conservation, expert says
There’s no conservation motive or benefit behind the Uzbekistan government’s recent releases of more than 2,000 captive-bred Asian houbara bustards across its desert regions, according to an expert on the threatened species. The government has touted the releases over the past three months as a wildlife restoration effort, but Nigel Collar, a conservation biologist at […]