Margaret Kinnaird has worked in conservation for decades, from North America to Africa. But it was only when she started working in Indonesia that she heard the acronym NATO, or “No Action, Talk Only.” And for Indonesia’s two rhino species, there’s been a lot of talk. The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) and the Javan rhino […]
Tag: Jeremy Hance
‘I’m not distressed, I’m just pissed off’: Q&A with Sumatran rhino expert John Payne
In 2019, the last Sumatran rhino in Malaysia died. Her name was Iman and ever since her capture in 2014, she had been under the care of the Bornean Rhino Alliance (BORA), headed by executive director John Payne in the Malaysian state of Sabah. After her death, Payne, who’d worked on Sumatran rhinos since 1979 […]
Mountain islands: Restoring a transitional cloud forest in Costa Rica
In 2001, South African-born couple, Genevieve and Ian Giddy traveled to Costa Rica to climb Mount Chirripó, one of Central America’s highest peaks, protected within Chirripó National Park. Coming down from the 3,821-meter (12,536-foot) summit, the couple viewed a stark divide between the protected biodiverse high-altitude cloud forest and the deforested cattle pasture and farms […]
Trouble in the tropics: The terrestrial insects of Brazil are in decline
In 1978, when he moved to his current home on the rural outskirts of Campinas, Brazil, Thomas Lewinsohn, a professor of ecology at Campinas University, routinely encountered a “rewarding assortment of insects” at night, he writes in a new paper in Biology Letters. Today, Campinas, 100 kilometers (60 miles) from São Paulo, is a booming […]
Meet the kitten-sized, clown-faced monkey that’s leaping toward extinction
I’ve been writing about wild things for more than 10 years, and while there are many animals I don’t know, I thought I’d at least heard of most of the world’s primates: monkeys, lemurs and apes. And then a conservationist sent me a photo of a buffy-headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps). My response: Holy bananas, what […]
Sumatran rhinos show low inbreeding — but when it happens, collapse is quick
The outlook is bleak for Sumatran rhinos. Decades of poaching and habitat loss have precipitated a steep population decline. Once found across Southeast Asia, from the Himalayan foothills to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the critically endangered species, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, is now only found in Indonesia. Conservationists estimate that fewer than 100 individuals survive […]
Study warns of ‘biotic annihilation’ driven by hunting, habitat destruction
Humans are driving species to extinction 1,000 times faster than what is considered natural. Now, new research underscores the extent of the planet’s impoverishment. Extinctions don’t just rob the planet of species but also of functional and phylogenetic diversity, the authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argue. […]
U.S. fund that supports Sumatran rhino research faces deep cuts under Trump
The Sumatran rhinoceros — the smallest, hairiest and most endangered of all rhino species — is today only found in Indonesia. But for a quarter century, the remaining few have benefited from a program established by the United States government to support endangered species around the world. The Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act, signed into […]