MAKASSAR, Indonesia — “Hi, This is Kamaruddin calling in, just parking my car.” “Great, go ahead and share your experience with this broadcast’s theme with the Natural Resources Conservation Agency.” “Thanks. So, I have a cockatoo and a hawk-eagle and I’m just learning they’re protected species. I bought them online and now if I want […]
Tag: Mongabay.com
Peccary’s disappearance foreboding for other Mesoamerican wildlife
The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), a hairy, pig-like mammal that once lived throughout the forests of Central and South America, now only skitters around in 13 percent of its former range, according to a report released in November 2018. More than two-thirds of white-lipped peccary populations are on the decline, said scientists who met to […]
The long journey to saving the Sumatran rhino, via Borneo (commentary)
In 1982, an orangutan researcher working in Indonesian Borneo wrote to a colleague at the biology department at the National University in Jakarta. He told of meeting a traditional-medicine trader at the market in Pangkalan Bun, a city in Central Kalimantan province. “A whole Sumatran rhino head is immersed in coconut oil in a basin,” […]
‘Death by a thousand holes’: Scientists race to avert a salamander crisis
Any day now. That’s when Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), the “salamander-eating” fungus, is expected to arrive in the United States, home to more than a third of the world’s species of these slippery amphibians.It all began in 2008, when Bsal traveledsome through the pet trade from Asia to northern Europe. There, it escaped into the wild […]
Shorebirds can no longer count on the Arctic as a safe haven for rearing their young
A new analysis of over 70 years’ worth of shorebird population data suggests that climate change has altered the migratory birds’ Arctic safe haven to such a degree that it is now helping drive rapid declines in their numbers. After studying data from 38,191 nests found across all seven continents and belonging to 237 populations […]
Pumas engineer their environment, providing habitat for other species
New research suggests that mountain lions in the western United States play an outsize role in changing their surroundings, leading the authors of the study to suggest that the big cats are “ecosystem engineers.” In a study published online Nov. 30 in the journal Oecologia, biologist Mark Elbroch and his colleagues demonstrate that the assortment […]
The female park rangers protecting turtles from traffickers in Nicaragua
The lights draw uncertain lines under the blanket of stars that joins the sea to the sky at El Ostional Beach in southern Nicaragua, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with Costa Rica. The silence of the darkness is interrupted by the noise of waves crashing on the shore and the clicks of flashlights […]
What makes a forest healthy? Māori knowledge has some answers.
RUATĀHUNA, New Zealand — In certain seasons, the forest used to look like a bride, recalled Māori elders in Ruatāhuna: vibrant, healthy, and clothed in all its glory. These days, they agreed, it looks more like an old lady, ragged and tired. There’s a feeling of loneliness there now, too, as if the forest is […]
