Despite a rapidly declining population and an important ecological niche, the U.S Fish and Wildlife service voted against listing the Monarch Butterfly as “Threatened” under the Endangered Species Act on Tuesday. A change in its status may have led to increased protective measures for the species and its habitat. The US Fish and Wildlife Service […]
By the 1960s, the North American jaguar had vanished from the southern US borderland after being hunted to extinction. Yet in the mid-1990s, there was a remarkable discovery: the jaguar had reappeared in the Sky Islands of Arizona, a region of rugged linked mountain ranges spanning the US and Mexico border that boasts the highest […]
Scott O’Grady, a famous former Air Force officer recently nominated for a top Defense Department role in the Trump administration, hunted and killed two elephants in Zimbabwe in 2014 and lobbied Congress to lift trophy hunting restrictions. The revelations were first reported by independent journalist Yashar Ali but come from congressional testimony by Mr O’Grady. […]
Thousands of migrating birds have inexplicably died in south-western US in what ornithologists have described as a national tragedy that is likely to be related to the climate crisis. Flycatchers, swallows and warblers are among the species “falling out of the sky” as part of a mass die-off across New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and […]
Before the first Polynesian settlers arrived roughly 1,500 years ago, the Hawaiian Islands were ruled from the sky. Not a single land-dwelling reptile or mammal called the archipelago home – just winged insects, one variety of bat, and a truly vast array of birds. While Hawaii is still flush with life today, many of those […]
Since the mid-eighties, giraffes have been on a steady decline. Population numbers have dwindled by 40 per cent, leaving around 68,000 mature adults in the wild. To put it in context, there is reportedly one giraffe for every four African elephants, which themselves are considered a vulnerable species. Despite giraffes’ precarious status, dubbed a “silent […]
When Brent Hughes started studying the seagrass beds of Elkhorn Slough, an estuary in Monterey Bay on California’s central coast, he was surprised by what he found. In this highly polluted estuary, excessive nutrients from agricultural runoff spur the growth of algae on seagrass leaves, which kills the plants. Yet in 2010, Hughes noticed that […]
BOISE, Idaho— In a key victory for wildlife, conservation groups finalized an agreement today that sets strict limits on how and where a federal agency can kill wolves in Idaho, bans the use of M-44 “cyanide bombs” statewide, and prohibits the use of snares to kill wolves on public lands. The new restrictions on wolf […]