The Louisiana black bear, the animal credited with spawning the phrase “teddy bear”, is to be removed from the federal list of endangered wildlife following a two-decade conservation effort. The US Department of the Interior said the “conservation success” of the bear meant it no longer required the protection of the endangered species act, which […]
Tag: endangered
Saving the Blakiston’s fish owl
It’s not easy studying an endangered species few people have ever heard of: it’s difficult to raise money, build awareness, or quite simply get people to care. But still, Jonathan Slaght – one of the world’s only experts on the massive, salmon-eating, frog-devouring Blakiston’s fish owl – insisted there are upsides. “I had a conversation […]
Poachers Went After This Amazing Antelope for Fun
Life in the Sahara is no cakewalk. The baking sun raises temperatures to more than 120 degrees, howling winds conjure up dust devils and sand storms, and years can pass before a drop of rain falls. One desert creature is spectacularly adapted to these conditions: the addax, an ethereal-looking antelope with elongated, corkscrew horns. The […]
Dodging Wind Farms and Bullets in the Arctic
Troms County, Norway – A lone reindeer emerges from the forest, prompting the Sami herders to bring their snowmobiles to a stop in the middle of a clearing. All three are bundled in sheepskin hats and wool capes, called luhka, against the chill wind of a late January morning in the Norwegian Arctic. Johann Anders […]
POLL: Should grizzly bears face end of endangered species protection?
The federal government is proposing to strip endangered species protections from Yellowstone’s famed grizzly bears, with officials claiming a “historic success” in the recovery of the bear population. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said it planned to delist one of the last remaining grizzly populations from the Endangered Species Act, which has protected […]
The all-female patrol stopping South Africa’s rhino poachers
The Black Mambas are winning the war on poaching,” insists Siphiwe Sithole. “We have absolutely zero tolerance for rhino poaching and the illegal wildlife trade. The poachers will fall – but it will not be with guns and bullets.” Sithole and Felicia Mogakane are members of South Africa’s Black Mambas, the world’s first all-female anti-poaching […]
The World’s Smallest Penguin May Be In Danger
The world’s tiniest penguin may be in big trouble. Warming ocean waters could make finding food increasingly difficult for the little penguin, Eudyptula minor, which stands less than a foot (0.3 meter) tall. Because their prey is sensitive to heat, “we’re seeing that warm years are quite bad for the penguins, and it’s not hard to see that if the temperature keeps going up, things might get worse,” says Gemma Carroll, […]
A new plan to pull the Okapi back from the brink of extinction
The rare “forest giraffe,” a native of the lowland rainforests in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, faces numerous threats, including habitat loss, armed conflict, poaching, and, increasingly, the mining and oil industries. Okapi, sometimes referred to as “forest giraffes” because they are the only other member of the Giraffidae family besides giraffes, are mostly […]