CACHOEIRAS DE MACACU, Brazil — Gesturing across the still, green water reflecting the backdrop of forest-clad mountains, Nicholas Locke told of the time when this flourishing wetland was once a barren pasture after being drained, cleared, and used for cattle grazing. Over the last five centuries, much of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest has suffered a similar […]
Tag: tapir
Tapir populations threatened by slow reproductive rates and fragmented habitats
In Brazil, calling someone a tapir is considered a derogatory term. However, there are several reasons why it should be seen as a praise. Tapirus terrestris, South America’s largest native land mammal and one of the planet’s most efficient supporters of biodiversity, is one of the most important, underappreciated, and persecuted species. The tapir, like […]
‘Highway of death’: animals pay ultimate price on Brazil’s most dangerous road for wildlife
The last time Schwartz’s tracking monitor registered his location, he was standing at the edge of the “highway of death”. A massive male giant anteater, he was roaming his habitat in the Brazilian Cerrado – a vast tropical savanna that neighbours the world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal – when he disappeared next to the […]
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 […]
Black, white and unique: the Malayan tapir struggles for recognition
Two-month old Asahan sucks milk greedily from a bottle. The baby Malayan tapir — his spotty brown juvenile coat already morphing to the distinctive black and white of an adult — was rescued by local villagers who found the displaced animal wandering alone through an oil palm plantation and then handed him over to Malaysia’s […]
Saving the Atlantic Forest would cost less than ‘Titanic’
Want to save the world’s most imperiled biodiversity hotspot? You just need a down payment of $198 million. While that may sound like a lot, it’s actually less than it cost to make the film, Titanic. A new study published today in Science finds that paying private landowners to protect the almost-vanished Atlantic Forest would […]
Scientists discover a new species of tapir in Brazil
In what will likely be considered one of the biggest (literally) zoological discoveries of the Twenty-First Century, scientists today announced they have discovered a new species of tapir in Brazil and Colombia. The new mammal, hidden from science but known to local indigenous tribes, is actually one of the biggest animals on the continent, although […]