The Egyptian jackal, which may have been the inspiration for the Egyptian god Anubis, is actually not a jackal at all but a member of the wolf family. New genetic…
A tiny species of bat in Borneo has chosen an unusual roost: a carnivorous pitcher plant, according to a recent study. The study examines how this behavior actually benefits both…
Ecologists say they have used a computer model to put to rest a nearly century-old debate. Did Tyrannosaurus Rex, one of the world's most well-known dinosaurs, hunt down its prey…
Paleontologists working in China have discovered a first for dinosaurs: a species with only one finger. Named Linhenykus monodactylus, the extinct species stood only about two feet high and weighed…
Yesterday morning, 3 wildlife rangers and 5 soldiers working in Virunga National Park were killed by the rebel group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). These 8 were…
A Chinese national was caught attempting to smuggle 22 pounds (10 kilos) of ivory out of the Republic of Congo on Saturday, according to the AFP. Officials confiscated five elephant…
Since the 1980s, Liberia has lost 19,000 elephants to illegal poaching, according to Patrick Omondi of the Kenya Wildlife Service speaking in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. The poaching of…
Melting of the Greenland ice sheet was the most extreme yet in 2010, beating the previous melt record from 2007. This continues a long-term trend whereby melting in Greenland has…
Gir lions become more popular with tourists, but threaten livestock of adjacent villages. The last lions of Asia and the final survivors of the Asiatic lion subspecies (Panthera leo persica)…
A lot can change in three years. In January 2007, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) jumpstarted a program unique in the conservation world: EDGE, which stands for Evolutionarily Distinct…
Just six years ago the beautiful medium-sized Asian cat, the clouded leopard, was considered a single species. Then in 2006 researchers announced that there were, in fact, two unique species…
In 1206 AD Genghis Khan began the Mongol invasion: a horse-crazed bow-wielding military force that swept through much of modern-day Asia into the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But aside…
WWF, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the UN have all recently expressed concerns about two oil companies' plan to explore for oil in Africa's oldest…
The spiky, odorous, weighty, and almost impenetrable durian fruit is considered by some to be a fine delicacy, but others a putrid horror. Its taste has been described between a…
Four different global temperature records show the Earth is warming. Graph courtesy of NASA. Click to enlarge. New images released by NASA illustrate how four different global temperature records show…
Three hundred and thirty-three rhinos were killed in South Africa last year, the highest number yet. Ten of the rhino were black rhinos, which are listed as Critically Endangered by…
DNA evidence has shown that the forest elephant-Africa's smaller, shyer pachyderm-is indeed a separate species from the much more well-known savanna elephant. While scientists have long debated the status of…
It's a common image of the African savanna: vultures flocking to a carcass on the great plains. However, a new study has found that vulture populations are plummeting in Kenya's…
In November of 2010, the Antarctic toothfish fishery was deemed sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. This certification goes against the advice of many marine scientists who claim that insufficient…
An interview with Craig Hanson and Moray McLeish of the World Resources Institute. Jeremy conducted the interview; Rhett wrote the introduction, laid out the page, and developed the images. Oil…
Authors note: although reported on in 2011, the lemur breeding as described below occurred in 2001. After years of releasing captive-born lemurs into the wild, the Madagascar Fauna Group (MFG)…
Below is a quick review of some of the biggest environmental stories of 2010. Climate change rears it ugly head (Hance) A streak of freak floods in the US, a…
As pressures increase on the rich forests of Papua New Guinea, how will biodiversity fare? A new study in mongabay.com's Tropical Conservation Science attempts to answer this question by looking…
One would think that it would be easy to track Asia's largest land animal, but in fact Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are generally shy, mostly nocturnal, and stick to the…
It's not easy or cheap to catch an elusive wild cat, and trapping such an animal can prove harmful to the individual. With such factors in mind, researchers are consistently…
A new study in mongabay.com's open access journal Tropical Conservation Science finds that the premontane forests of Argentina and Bolivia are susceptible to large-scale shifts due to climate change, losing…
Examining ten forest fragments in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, researchers have undercut the theory that the climate of forest fragment' is driven by the edge-effect. Writing in mongabay.com's open source journal…
Capybara are expanding into areas of deforestation throughout South America, reports a new study conducted by Kansas State University researchers and published in the journal of Global Change Biology. The…
Conservation appears to be working for the Critically Endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the Virunga massif region, as a new census shows an additional 100 individuals from the…
Scientists have discovered an extinct massive stork, standing nearly 6 feet tall (1.8 meter) and weighing 35 pounds (15 kilograms), which would have shared the island of Flores with the…