Florida’s wetlands are having a tense moment, the kind that makes biologists speak quietly and glance at the sky. From the sawgrass prairies of the Everglades to the mangrove-fringed flats of the Keys, rare animals are blinking red on scientists’ dashboards. Some species show flashes of recovery; others are slipping faster than expected. The drama ...
Winter on the Western Slope carried a new sound last year: a thin, testing howl threading across snowfields where none had echoed for generations. After a voter-approved directive, state biologists released a small group of gray wolves and watched them disappear into the timbered drainages like a secret being kept. The question now isn’t whether ...
Colorado’s majestic wilderness has always been home to some of North America’s most remarkable mammals. But beneath the stunning Rocky Mountain peaks and pristine alpine meadows, a quiet crisis is unfolding. From the smallest pika to the mighty Canada lynx, these extraordinary creatures are fighting an uphill battle for survival. The reasons are complex, interconnected, ...
For 23 years, brown bear Baloo has suffered a life of confinement, neglect, and mistreatment at a Romanian ski resort. Since a court in 2021 ordered his transfer to a sanctuary, he has continued to be jailed in a small cage on an unnatural cereal and lemonade and even alcohol-based diet and taunted by tourists ...
Holloman Lake used to be an unlikely oasis in the dry Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. It was a shimmering mirage for migratory birds, campers, and wildlife. But underneath its calm surface is a nightmare that can’t be seen: the highest levels of “forever chemicals” ever found in a natural ecosystem. What started out as ...
Three genetically modified “dire wolves” produced by biotech company Colasant Biosciences Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi have drawn worldwide interest. Scientific wonders, these large, white-furred canids resurrected from DNA fragments of a species extinct 12,000 years are. Underneath the show, though, is a crucial question: Should we be resurrecting Ice Age predators when living species are ...
Deep in the misty mountains of Java, Indonesia, a peaceful revolution is under way one that might decide the fate of the Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch), a primate whose eerie songs once filled the forests but now fade into silence. With just 4,000 wild acrobatic apes left, victims of unrelenting deforestation and human development are ...
A quiet crisis is developing in the densely human-dominated landscapes of northeastern Bangladesh. Once migratory guests from India, an elephant herd finds itself caught and unable to return home because of border fencing. Declaring a new protected area to protect these stranded giants, Bangladesh is acting boldly given human-elephant conflicts are growing. However, can this ...
Once a thriving transnational criminal activity, the illegal wildlife trade has seen an unexpected and steady downturn since the COVID-19 epidemic. Based on a ground-breaking analysis by the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), Disruption and Disarray shows that ivory and pangolin scale trafficking has dropped and, shockingly, has stayed that way. But what set off this ...
New research has revealed that emperor penguins are experiencing a faster-than-expected decline due to shrinking Antarctic sea ice. A study by the British Antarctic Survey analyzed satellite images from 2009 to 2024, showing a 22 percent drop in emperor penguin numbers across key colonies. This rate of loss is 50 percent worse than previous estimates, ...
