Myanmar is a country of extremes. From tropical forests, mangroves and wetlands to frost-bitten alpine mountain slopes and jagged limestone karst outcrops, it’s home to tremendous botanical diversity. Orchids alone…
CAPE TOWN — Western leopard toads have been listed as endangered since 2016. Andrew Turner, scientific manager for CapeNature, the government body that manages protected areas and conservation in South…
Deep within the cloud forests of the San Martín region of Peru lie two places so high, cold and remote that they remained virtually unexplored for decades. In 2022, and…
Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area encompasses an area of Amazon Rainforest more than half the size of Belgium. Or at least it used to. The embattled reserve has…
Elephants are considered a sacred totem by many in northwestern Zimbabwe, but they also frequently raid villagers’ crops near harvest time, says Agripa Ngorima, who has studied attitudes toward conservation…
On Nov. 1, in a residential area of Bangladesh’s bustling capital city, Dhaka, the NGO Bangladesh Animal Welfare Association rescued two adult Padma Gokhra snakes (monocled cobra, Naja kaouthia) along…
KANCHANABURI, Thailand — Following the path of the tiger isn’t easy. Yet the three rangers, clad in camouflage, move lithely through the steep bamboo thicket, tracking the muddy hoofprints of…
In what’s being called immensely good news for the African golden cat, often described as the continent’s most elusive and threatened wildcat species, Uganda’s Echuya Forest will become a national…
Since being collared in Zambia two years ago, a young bull elephant known to researchers as Z16 has walked nearly 12,000 kilometers, or 7,500 miles — three times the distance…
KATHMANDU — Birds prefer to live in a mix of forests, fields and wetlands, but human activities such as logging, hunting and sand and gravel mining are taking a toll…
COLOMBO — Playful 7-year-old Thinuli loved accompanying her father to his chena fields in a remote village in Hambantota, in Sri Lanka’s deep south. In August, she joined him as…
It was 2006 and Ismail Ebrahim, a botanist with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), was worried. While surveying one of the last remaining patches of renosterveld shrubland in…
In the remote rainforest of Sumatra, Indonesia, and the Annamite Mountains straddling Vietnam and Laos, two species of nocturnal rabbits live elusive lives. These species, both of which have distinctive…
For decades, biologists have warned that humanity is precipitating a sixth mass extinction. By some estimates, species are vanishing at up to a thousand times the natural background rate. Yet…
A single camera trap image of an Asian golden cat, photographed in Nepal's Jajarkot district, has expanded this felid species’ range westward by nearly 400 kilometers (248 miles). Out of…
When elephant biologist Seema Lokhandwala, with the Elephants Acoustic Project, visited a village near Balipara in India’s Assam state, as part of her fieldwork in December 2015, she witnessed firsthand…
CENTRAL TAPANULI, Indonesia — Since it was first described by scientists in 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of the world’s rarest great apes, was believed to live only in the…
A survey of Colombian birdlife, which evolved over more than a decade into the world’s largest-ever ornithological study, has found that clearing forests to create new pastures is causing as…
The guiña, a small cat species found only in Chile and northern Argentina, has just been reclassified as of least concern by the IUCN. Until recently it was listed as…
PETCHABURI, Thailand — Swaths of butterflies flutter around Chalong Thongsong and his team of rangers and researchers as they walk along a muddy trail into the forest of Kaeng Krachan…
NUSA PENIDA, Indonesia — Two young conservation workers rattle up on a motorbike and dismount at the edge of a coconut grove. Picking through husks, fallen fronds and stray plastic…
It’s early August 2025. Deep in the rainforests of Upolu, on the island of Samoa, Moeumu “Moe” Uili and I have paused our hike, counting the seconds between coo calls…
A journey into Nepal’s Limi Valley is always profound. We at the Himalayan Wolves Project first visited the area more than a decade ago and were immediately struck by its…
“If you can imagine walking into a huge, 1,000-kilometer square [386-square-mile] tropical forest … it's moist and damp [with] rich soil and an overstory. You imagine walking into a 10-meter…
GALLE, Sri Lanka — The hog deer is Sri Lanka’s rarest and most elusive deer, and was thought to be extinct a few decades ago. Classified as critically endangered within…
FORT BRAGG, U.S. — In 2024, I was scuba diving in Northern California’s Casper Cove where the Watermen’s Alliance, a group of ex-abalone sports divers, has been culling purple urchins…
Francis’s gorgeous sapphire — a new-to-science species of butterfly — has just been described in the high-altitude evergreen forests of western Angola. The identification of Iolaus francisi, with its shimmering…
Animals living on small islands are often thought to be more susceptible to extinction compared to those distributed across mainland land masses. Small population sizes, limited habitat availability, and genetic…
The megafish of the Mekong River are shrinking, a new study has found. In the most comprehensive analysis of species size in Southeast Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin, researchers have tracked…
A camera trap in an Indonesian mountain forest has recorded a rare Javan leopard, sparking renewed conservation monitoring efforts in the area. The Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas) was captured…
CONHUAS, Mexico — Esteban Dominguez has lived for more than 20 years close to one of the biggest conservation areas in southeastern Mexico — Calakmul Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatán…
“Most people have a turtle story, whether that's seeing a turtle at an aquarium, having a turtle as a pet as a kid, or they helped one cross the road,…
