KATHMANDU — Nepal’s Ministry of Forest and Environment is preparing fresh regulations to allow hotels to return to national parks such as Chitwan, a decade after they were shut down based on environmental concerns. Although rumors were doing the rounds in the corridors of the ministry and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation […]
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Irrawaddy dolphin death in Thailand’s Songkhla Lake underscores conservation needs
The recent death of a critically endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin in southern Thailand’s Songkhla Lake has brought the plight of the waterbody’s tiny remaining population into stark focus. As few as 14 of the dolphins, Orcaella brevirostris, are thought to survive in the lake amid a slew of threats ranging from entanglement in fishing gear […]
Are biodiversity credits just another business-as-usual finance scheme?
Nature is in crisis. Yet, there’s a massive $700 billion gap between the financing needed to stop biodiversity collapse versus what’s available each year. In December 2022, nearly 200 governments agreed to close this financial gap by 2030 by signing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15. With this goal only six years away, […]
Comeback on the cards for Asian antelope declared extinct in Bangladesh
DHAKA — On Jan. 7, 2024, in a rural area of northwestern Bangladesh, a nilgai, the largest species of Asian antelope, crossed the border from India. It never crossed back. When villagers in Ranisankail subdistrict, Thakurgaon district, found out about the nilgai, also known as the blue bull, “they chased the animal and caught it,” […]
On Kaho’olawe, new technology could restore a sacred Hawaiian island
To bring seabirds back to Kaho‘olawe, you need to first find the cats. And to find the cats on Kaho‘olawe, you need to know where to find the bombs. Eleven kilometers, about 7 miles, off the coast of Maui, the island of Kaho‘olawe — the smallest of the main Hawaiian Islands — presents conservationists with […]
New trackers bring prairie dogs’ little-known underground life to light
To say tracking prairie dogs is difficult would be an understatement. The animals spend most of their time in burrows. Since conventional GPS collars don’t function underground, the movements and interactions of prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.) have remained notoriously elusive to the researchers who study them. What do they do? How do they move within […]
Not just polar bears — climate change could push African rhinos to extinction
New research is ringing alarm bells about how climate change may impact one of Africa’s most iconic and vulnerable animals: the rhinoceros. “Climate change has the potential of wiping out all of them in the blink of an eye,” says Hlelowenkhosi Mamba, an Eswatini native and Fulbright scholar. Mamba and Timothy Randhir, from the University […]
Global shark deaths increasing despite finning bans, study shows
Shark finning bans have had little effect on protecting global shark populations, according to new research. However, shark mortality decreased in pelagic fisheries, which suggests that regulatory measures in regional fisheries have had some positive impact. In a new study published in Science, an international team of researchers analyzed shark catch data from 150 countries […]