Australia is known for protecting its sea life in a 3.3 million square kilometer (1.3 million square mile) system of marine parks that covers 36 percent of the country’s oceans. The protection of those parks is now at stake, as the government last week approved five long-awaited management plans covering 44 parks. The new plans […]
Just weeks after the Trump administration announced a new policy allowing the importation of dead African elephant and lion parts by U.S. trophy hunters, a group of environmental and wildlife conservation NGOs has filed a lawsuit alleging the move goes against recent court rulings. Around the same time, Born Free USA filed a second lawsuit […]
In Antarctica, it’s usually the whales, seals and penguins that take the spotlight, but a new report focuses on an animal further down the food chain: the Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba). In a report issued last week, Greenpeace International outlines the vital role that this minute crustacean plays in Antarctica’s marine ecology and documents incursions […]
Hornbills, vultures and eagles are being hunted for bushmeat in Cameroon in much greater numbers than previously thought, a new study has found. Previous research has shown that relatively few birds are sold in Cameroon’s markets compared to mammals and reptiles. However, market surveys can be biased toward commercially valuable wildlife, missing animals that are […]
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — A wildlife conservation agency in Indonesia has deployed two special teams to capture alive a tiger blamed for killing two people this year, amid mounting calls for the animal to be killed. The Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) in Riau province has been on the trail of the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris […]
For Cambodia’s last remaining Indochinese leopards (Panthera pardus delacouri), extinction could be just around the corner, a new study has found. The only breeding population of this leopard subspeciesin Cambodia is believed to occur within a large protected area complex in a part of the country called the Eastern Plains Landscape (EPL). But in just […]
BOLIVIA — A skull rests in the hands of a hunter. It is a jaguar’s skull that has all of its teeth in place, except the four fangs that the jaguar used to sink into the necks of its prey – until Jesús shot him with an old shotgun in the Bolivian Amazon. “For the […]
Lions put a damper on the number of young giraffes that survive to maturity, according to a new study, raising concerns about a species that has recently slipped into decline. “It is thought that lions preferentially target giraffe calves in the wild, and there is anecdotal evidence of this,” biologist Zoe Muller said in a […]
JAKARTA – The clearing of Indonesia’s last untouched swath of pristine forest has begun in earnest, with an area the size of Washington, D.C., razed for just a single oil palm plantation in Papua province, new data show. Nearly 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of forest have been cleared in Merauke district since 2014 […]
On December 22, a federal appeals court ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) did not properly follow procedures when it banned importing elephant “trophies” – including heads, tusks, or other parts – from Zimbabwe in 2014. While the ruling was aimed at an Obama Administration policy, its impact will likely influence how […]
A country’s citizens aren’t the only ones to benefit from living in a place that’s run well. In a new study, a team of scientists reports that the most important factor that determines the conservation status of waterbird species is how effectively a country is managed. “Political instability can weaken legal enforcement, and consequently promote […]
On Dec. 9, researchers discovered the remains of an extremely rare bird in India’s Thar Desert, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. All that remained was a pile of bones, and large, brown feathers, fluttering beneath a power line. The dead bird, one of the last remaining wild individuals of the critically endangered great Indian […]
One of the world’s rarest birds — the tiny spoon-billed sandpiper— could soon lose a critical habitat to land reclamation projects, warns a new report by Greenpeace. Every year, the reddish-brown spoon-billed sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus) makes a 5,000-mile long journey, flying from its breeding grounds in Arctic Russia to its wintering sites in places like […]
