The eastern Baltic cod has shrunk dramatically in size in recent decades due to rapid evolution — changes at the genetic level — caused by decades of intensive fishing, a…
KHAO LAK, Thailand — Conservationist Ying Pemika Choovanichchanon holds a small basket in her hands, careful not to disturb the leathery brown pouches nestled inside. When she shines a light…
With its long, pendulous nose, characteristic pot belly and large size, the odd-looking, leaf-eating proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) may not feature on the list of the world’s cutest animals. Yet,…
The Andean nations are unitary republics by history and constitution. Consequently, the push to devolve power to lower jurisdictions is less obvious and its degree of implementation variable. Over the…
In early springtime in the Mojave Desert, Joshua trees provide one of the few foods available to many of the wildlife species in this part of the southwestern U.S. Stretching…
When the government of Sri Lanka published the National Red List of threatened plants in 2020, my eyebrows shot up. We’ve all become accustomed, after all, to the grim news…
When Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa was a child, her mother sent her to market with a basket woven from grasses. “But now we don't do that,” she says, because plastic has taken…
In March this year, Dutch investigative journalist Olivier van Beemen published In the Name of Nature: An Investigation into the Neocolonial Practices of the NGO African Parks. The result of…
In 1996, when herpetologist Rafe Brown accompanied a few biologists to the Philippine island of Mindanao to study frogs, they heard a cacophony near their campsite. In a puddle that…
In southern California’s Coachella Valley, pale sand dunes sprawl under the desert sun, shifting and re-forming in the wind. In dry years, lone shrubs dot the dunes. But the landscape…
A global study tracking nearly 13,000 individual marine animals has uncovered a sharp disconnect between where these animals actually spend their time and where marine protections exist. The findings raise…
This is Part 4 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Twenty months after a landmark court ruling in…
KAFUE NATIONAL PARK, Zambia — At a bend in Zambia’s Kafue River, the bicolored waterberry trees resemble an avenue planted along a city boulevard. Their evergreen crowns stretch as far…
These are turbulent times for the global economy and multilateralism. Uncertainty lies at every turn, yet for Antigua and Barbuda — and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like ours…
This is Part 3 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4. A landmark land title in an Amazon protected…
This is Part 2 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4. In Ecuador’s Amazon, the use of agreements with…
The destruction of tropical rainforests — seen in shocking images of huge wildfires, vast clear-cuts and dying drought-stressed trees — is unfolding annually before the world's eyes. But some serious…
KAFUE NATIONAL PARK, Zambia — “Hippos ahead.” The warning comes from the lead canoe. Hippos are dangerous — highly territorial and fiercely protective of their young. They are capable of…
Most people would have walked past the flower. Even fewer would have recognized the insect on it. But in 2009, Sheila Colla did both. As her car left Ontario’s Pinery…
African Parks, the conservation NGO, has a 20-year agreement with Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) to co-manage Kafue National Park. Running through the heart of the park…
This is Part 1 of a four-part series on Indigenous land rights in Ecuador. Read Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. In Ecuador, a 2023 court decision that recognizes…
On April 13, 2025, members of the community forest monitoring committee from the Kakataibo Indigenous community faced an attack while carrying out a routine patrol of their ancestral territory in…
While supporting conservation research in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental with teams from the U.S.-based Columbia University and San Diego Zoo Global, I assisted in work involving the endangered thick-billed parrot.…
A stretch of rainforest in Belize that allows wildlife to pass freely between protected areas is under threat of deforestation, and conservationists are scrambling to contain the damage. Mennonites, a…
A crocodile flips over on the river’s surface right in front of the canoe, then disappears into the white water frothing through the narrow channel. It’s too late to stop,…
Chisomo M’hango is a trainee field ecologist at Musekese Conservation (MC), a nonprofit whose research station is located deep inside the Musekese-Lumbeya section of Zambia’s Kafue National Park. M’hango and…
For more than three decades, Mark Erdmann has worked where many only dream of diving—on the reefs and in the tangled mangroves of Indonesia’s farthest reaches. A marine biologist by…
On Dec. 20, 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights publicly announced a landmark decision against the Colombian government and found it responsible for multiple human rights violations against the…
The Chilean government has recently approved a new port project in Magallanes and the Chilean Antarctic Region, an area that recently attracted a lot of attention due to its enormous…
KAFUE, Zambia — “Three cattle on the left, 20 elephants on the right,” shouts the expedition leader from the bow seat of the first of five canoes snaking along a…
Many conservationists dedicated to protecting the endangered Andean cat have never seen one in the wild, with the species known to science by just a few photos until the late…
In 2013, when Sandra Altherr, co-founder of the German NGO Pro Wildlife, began looking into the reptile trade in Europe, she wondered why people paid thousands of euros for little-known…
