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All in Conservation
It’s a girl. The Metro Richmond Zoo in Moseley, Virginia received a delightful early Christmas present this year: 16 pounds of pygmy hippopotamus. That’s what she weighed at her first neonatal exam, three days after she came into the world on December 6, to Iris and Corwin. The zoo issued the birth announcement on the 22nd and has yet to name the baby girl.
Researchers have observed that the female southern pied babbler, a small black-and-white bird found across the southern African savannah, gets less smart as it ages, a correlation tied to the number of chicks she has over the years.
A female zebra shark at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium brought some pups into the world by virgin birth, according to a new study appearing in the Journal of Fish Biology. It took a few years for the aquarium researchers to realize the shark had produced offspring via parthenogenesis, in which an egg develops into a viable embryo without the hassle of sperm fertilization.
There are only a few hundred pink iguanas on Earth, and all of them live on the slopes of Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos. Now rangers from the Galápagos Conservancy and national park have spotted nesting sites and hatchlings of this critically endangered species for the first time.
A lot of people in Utah are reporting wildlife sightings, especially of cougars that stray into town. The state’s Division of Wildlife Resources is getting so many calls that this week it asked everyone to relax: you needn’t report it every time you see a big cat.
Turkeys don’t stand a chance this time of year, but one flock of gobblers is taking back what’s theirs (America) starting with one New England town. The human inhabitants of Woburn, Massachusetts, population 41,000, have been under attack by an obnoxious group of five wild turkeys, a thuggish gang led by a tom named Kevin.
The situation is going from bad to worse for Florida’s shrinking manatee population: the gentle aquatic mammals are dying by the hundreds, mostly from starvation. A coalition of conservation groups are now petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the manatee as an endangered species, as it once was, with the hope of improving the creature’s habitat.
A barred owl in Hansville, Washington has a territorial feud ongoing with a local woman. The aggressive bird has attacked her twice – silent swoops from above that result in painful smacks to the back of her head – and biologists say such avian sorties will become more common.
For the first time, Alaska has canceled its winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea because of a shocking decline in the crab population. There were an estimated eight billion snow crabs in 2018, a number that dropped off a cliff to a mere one billion last year.
This week Sinogene Biotechnology of Beijing showed off its latest creation, a clone of a Canadian Arctic wolf born to a surrogate beagle mom. The cub, named Maya, was born (if that’s the right term) on June 10. The surrogate mom remains nameless. (Why?)
A gigantic and ancient stand of aspen known as Pando is at risk of fragmentation and decline, researchers say. Located in central Utah on the Fishlake National Forest, Pando’s size might be no match for the insects, disease, and grazing animals that have been nipping at the trees and slowing its regeneration.
The world’s largest pelicans have survived many threats, but in Albania a planned airport construction could finally do them in. The Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus) is listed as ‘near threatened’ by the IUCN.
Prime minister Narendra Modi himself opened the gate to release the new arrivals into their quarantined pen. “Cheetahs have returned to India after decades. There is new energy in India’s wildlife lovers,” the prime minister said. “I am sure that these cheetahs will teach us about our values.”
Three bottlenose dolphins swam to freedom last week after years of confinement and degradation for the amusement of tourists. The three males – Johnny, Rocky and Rambo – were released off the island of Bali in Indonesia.
The rise of the lithium-ion battery has been essential to the tech revolution, as it is a crucial component of smartphones, electrical vehicles, and every electronic gizmo in between. But lithium exacts a harsh price on the environment, from cradle to grave: mining trashes local environments at the point of extraction, a
An enduring and endearing staple of nature shows is the monogamous penguin. The idea that these tuxedo-clad flightless birds mate for life without the occasional affaire de coeur is adorable, but is it true?
Scientists at the far reaches of South America have identified a new bird species, the subantarctic rayadito. The little bird inhabits the Diego Ramírez Archipelago, 62 miles from southern Cape Horn and the southernmost point of the Americas. The discovery is reported in the journal Nature.
Conservationists in Zimbabwe are attempting to be Noah but without the ark. An effort to move thousands of animals – elephants, impalas, giraffes, buffaloes, wildebeest, zebras, elands, lions, and wild dogs – is underway as severe drought threatens this menagerie.
The CV for Sylvia Earle, who turns 87 today, is long, varied, and deep. The marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and science communicator has won a UN Lifetime Achievement Award, the Walter Cronkite Award, the Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science, and so many more.
The IUCN’s announcement last month that the Chinese paddlefish is officially extinct was really a formality. This species of sturgeon, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish, checked out sometime between 2005 and 2010. It was already considered “functionally extinct” in 1993 when a tiny remaining population could no longer sustain itself.
