An Australian court has set aside the federal government’s approval for major gas company Santos Limited’s drilling plans in the Timor Sea, north of the island nation, ruling in favor…
Conservation apps have emerged in recent years as an efficient and cost-effective way to get citizens to monitor and document wildlife across the world. But an Australian initiative is going…
For years, seabird ecologist Jennifer Lavers longed to survey the colonies of short-tailed shearwaters on Figure of Eight Island off the coast of Western Australia. She’d identified this remote island…
A hawksbill turtle’s protective shell is in some ways its greatest weakness. Exquisitely patterned and thick enough to sculpt, hawksbill shells are the most popular type of tortoiseshell, a material…
Earth’s vast underwater kelp forests are a vital source of food, pharmaceuticals, and more, while storing huge amounts of carbon. These undersea forests are also at risk, but researchers are working to restore them.
If you can read, hear or feel this, you have power. It was as if I were being let in on a secret. Obviously, I’d already heard of global warming…
Google and the World Resources Institute (WRI) this week announced the launch of a new mapping tool touted as providing an unprecedented level of detail about how land is being…
In the 18th century, when European ships sailed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Northwest coast of the Pacific Ocean, they raved about the “wilderness” of the…
Seven grassroots environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize today, on May 25. Known as the Green Nobel Prize, the Goldman Prize honors environmental activists from each of…
In the cool of the desert night, the small gray-furred creature emerges from the safety of its burrow in search of food. The bilby (Macrotis lagotis) has a surprising combination of…
In February 2020, lightning struck Figure of Eight Island in Western Australia’s Recherche Archipelago, igniting a fire that burned through most of its vegetation in just a few days. While…
In 2017, a dugong washed ashore on a beach north of Townsville, Queensland, near the Great Barrier Reef. The dead animal had scratch marks on its belly and back, and…
The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing a sixth mass bleaching event, the marine park’s authority confirmed today after completing aerial surveys of the region. This is the fourth time the…
When conservation ecologist Rob Harcourt went surfing off the coast of Sydney, Australia, he immediately knew the water was warmer than usual. “We had at least 23 [degrees Celsius, or…
The “Black Summer” bushfires burned an area the size of the U.K. in Australia in 2019-20, forcing foresters to reconsider the meaning of forest resilience and how best to restore forests as climate change and drought intensify.
The tooth-billed bowerbird gave itself away with a not-quite-right call. Suspicious, I’d panned my binoculars toward the sound and there he was, the mimic, high in the canopy of a…
WEST KIMBERLEY, Australia — November marks the end of the dry season in the Kimberley, the northernmost region of Western Australia, the country’s largest state. As the monsoonal rains start to…
JAKARTA — When the STS-50 was seized in Indonesian waters for illegal fishing in April 2018, it became the poster child for global efforts to reveal the true identity behind…
Scientists have completed the first-ever global, high-resolution map of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs. The map is part of the Allen Coral Atlas, an open-access, user-friendly coral reef monitoring…
BROOME, Australia — A cool breeze blows through the savanna country east of Broome, a small town on the far north coast of Western Australia, Australia's largest state. This time of year is known as Barrgana by the…
At a truck stop along a Western Australian highway, researchers noticed an unfamiliar wild tobacco plant. Covered in sticky hairs, the plant appeared to be a mass grave for small…
For decades, scientists speculated that seagrass seeds served only as a backup to vegetative proliferation; they settled into the sand beneath their parent plants, ready to germinate if anything untoward…
I’m a native of North Queensland. I love Rugby League, an arvo in my tinny angling for coral trout (translation: an afternoon in a fishing boat) and The Reef. These…
The Australian government has moved to create two new marine protected areas that cover an expanse of ocean twice the size of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The two…
HOBART, Australia — A dividing line of marking tape separates a clearcut area from intact native forest in the Denison Range of Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost state. An hour’s drive from…
The superb lyrebird has garnered worldwide recognition as nature's greatest voice impersonator. Researchers have found that besides imitating other species’ songs and artificial sounds from the environment, it is capable…
In July 2019, Australian authorities on the island of Tasmania received a report of a footprint spotted by an unnamed individual on a walk up to Sleeping Beauty Mountain in…
Parrots, with their bright colors, charisma and intelligence, are an iconic bird group. They are also at risk, globally. Nearly one-third of parrot species are threatened with extinction. In a…
This article is a one year follow up to the award-winning series, The Great Insect Dying published in June, 2019 on Mongabay. The original series documents insect losses in Europe, the U.S. and the tropics — here’s what we know today.
A sighting of one of the deep ocean's most mysterious beings, the bigfin squid, in Australian waters for the first time is creating waves among the scientific community's squid squad.…
People seldom think of wet soil until they step in it, but the Earth’s soggy places quietly do the work of legions: holding together coasts, giving shelter to young fish,…
A hunger for shark fin soup — a brothy, gelatinous dish that’s considered a delicacy in East Asia — is responsible for the deaths of about 73 million sharks each year.…
