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All in Conservation
Scientists have identified seven new frog species in Madagascar. The herpetologists who found them happen to be Star Trek fans, so each of the new species are named after characters from the sci-fi show.
This week the Bureau of Land Management finalized plans to protect the Gunnison sage-grouse, a threatened species in western Colorado and eastern Utah.
A rancher in Montana illegally used tissue and testicles from wild sheep to breed “giant” hybrids, which he planned to sell to private hunting grounds in Texas and Minnesota, where they would have been slaughtered by trophy hunters.
Researchers have found that female gibbons sometimes move in ways that look for all the world like dancing. Zoologist Kai Caspar and colleagues have analyzed these stylized movements in a study to be published in the journal Primates (a preprint is available here).
Just a few years ago the population of the Florida grasshopper sparrow, a “critically imperiled” species and the most endangered bird on the continent, was hanging by the thread.
A guiding principle of the Bird Photographer of the Year contest is “celebrating bird life from around the world,” but this year’s overall winner instead focuses on avian death. Patricia Homonylo’s “When Worlds Collide” depicts thousands of dead birds, victims of building collisions, arranged in concentric circles.
A herd of elephants has come to New York City’s Meatpacking District. The Great Elephant Migration is a traveling art installation and fundraiser centered on 100 life-sized elephant sculptures.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration, the Department of the Interior, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service – all because of a lizard barely two inches long.
When the population of vultures in India collapsed in the early 2000s, their absence led to the deaths of some 500,000 people, according to new research published in the American Economic Review.
In places where bat populations have collapsed in the US, infant mortality has gone up. A new study by economist Eyal Frank, appearing in the journal Science, explains the connection.
The northern bald ibis had been extinct in Central Europe for four centuries, but a dedicated conservation and research group has reintroduced a small population into the wild. The only problem: the birds have no clue how or where to migrate when seasons change, so the humans are teaching them.
On the day before her 19th birthday, Ying Ying the panda delivered two cubs, making her the oldest giant panda ever to give birth for the first time. The new arrivals, tiny and pink and as yet unnamed, are also the first pandas born in Hong Kong.
When should we announce the birth of a kangaroo? Technically a baby roo – the Matschie's tree kangaroo – was born in the Bronx Zoo last December, but it would be inaccurate to say the joey had “entered the world,” since she would spend the following several months tucked safely inside mama’s pouch.
The Cheshire zoo has announced the birth of an onager, or Asiatic wild ass, the world’s rarest equid. The foal, a male named Jasper, was born to Azita following a year-long pregnancy. Mother and son are healthy and thriving.
A team of scientists led by Mary Hagedorn, a research scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, have proposed an extreme idea to save endangered species: by storing them frozen on the moon. The proposal appears in the journal BioScience.
Almost all of the giant pandas on loan from China have been returned to their homeland as the loan agreements expire, with the last US facility, Zoo Atlanta, scheduled to return their gentle giants by year’s end. But this week the San Diego Zoo has announced it will soon welcome a new pair of pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao.
The zookeepers at London Zoo are gushing like new parents, because in a way they are. “To say we’re happy about this new arrival would be a huge understatement,” says primate section manager Kathryn Sanders. “We’ve all been walking around grinning from ear to ear.”
A team of scientists – and a couple of lucky television crews – have “discovered” what is being characterized as the world’s largest snake, a giant anaconda. The team, led by biologist Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland, captured and studied several specimens of the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), located in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Something funny is going on with our closest relatives – chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. Like humans, our cousins seem to revel in comedy – slapstick mainly, but comedy nonetheless. The Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior is looking into the fun.
No one had seen the extremely rare Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna since 1961, so it was assumed that the weird, egg-laying mammal was extinct. Earlier this month the beast that looks like a spiny anteater was rediscovered in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains, likely the only place on Earth the creature exists.
