JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had it that the creatures, called orang pendek, or “short people,” by the locals, disappeared from the forest in the 1970s. Today, Onrizal is a forestry […]
Tag: Mongabay.com
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. […]
POLL: Should there be a worldwide ban on fishing with explosives?
Nighttime falls on the fishing port of Chimbote, a city on Peru’s Pacific coast in Huarmey province. Almensor Gómez, an artisanal fisherman, prepares to leave home with five fellow fishers. But they aren’t going fishing. Instead, the group will stand guard tonight against poachers who use bombs to fish. Armed with handguns, shotguns “and who […]
Pollution, water cuts strengthen calls for environmental law reform in Malaysia
In September 2020, more than a million households in Malaysia’s densely populated Klang Valley suffered extended water cuts after illegal chemical dumping debilitated the region’s aging water purification systems. In the midst of the pandemic, residents donned masks and lined up to fill buckets with water. A month later, before courts could identify and charge […]
Why do Eurasian badgers live with foxes? Candid Animal Cam spots badgers
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the Eurasian badger. Eurasian badgers live from England, Ireland and Spain to the eastern edges of Russia, China, and Japan. Due to their large range, 24 subspecies have been recognized. Badgers are […]
Podcast: Sighting of super rare Chacoan fairy armadillo in Bolivia ‘a dream come true’
The four-wheel-drive bumped over a rutted road. Rain that began as soon as they left the pavement was so thick that the road, compacted by traffic, became slippery, and the tires dug-in. It was 8 a.m. At the wheel was Nick Mcphee, Australian conservationist-turned Bolivian ecotourism uber-specialist, and with him were Bolivian biologist Huáscar Bustillos […]
Vaccinations may be vital for saving Amur tigers from virus outbreaks (commentary)
While the world focuses on the development of new vaccines against COVID-19, biologists are building the case for using vaccines for the conservation of wildlife. Our own research on the impact of canine distemper virus (CDV) in the Russian Far East concludes that vaccination of Amur tigers is a potentially important strategy to avoid extinction […]
Songbird trade in Indonesia threatens wild Sunda laughingthrush
JAKARTA — The songbird trade in Indonesia has battered the wild population of the Sunda laughingthrush, an important seed disperser in the primary forest ecosystem, a new study shows. Bird market surveys in more than 30 cities across Indonesia between December 1991 and February 2020 point to a population decline in the Sunda laughingthrush (Garrulax […]