Announced at the end of March, the “Atlas for the Americas Flyways” website tracks high concentrations of migratory bird species at risk of major population declines along their routes throughout…
Can listening to forests help us understand if the life inside them is thriving? Apparently, yes. Giacomo Delgado likens it to a doctor examining heart health. “A doctor has listened…
Along a stretch of the Oregon coast where the Pacific meets an exposed working waterfront, fishing has long been shaped by constraint. Port Orford lacks the shelter of a…
Worldwide, people buy and hunt nearly half of the 11,000 bird species in existence. In Asia, Europe, and North and South America, songbirds and parrots are highly desired pets. Collectors…
The Selway–Bitterroot Wilderness was part of the original class of lands designated under the United States’ 1964 Wilderness Act: 1.3 million acres, or about 526,000 hectares, of steep river canyons,…
Best-selling author Scott Weidensaul's new book is a celebration of species recovery efforts led by scientists, conservationists, and Indigenous communities around the world, beginning with the successful rebound of the…
As winter comes to the Canadian Arctic, muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) abandon the valleys and head to higher ground, where winds sweep away the snow. That’s where we go to find…
Along the warm waters of Mexico’s Caribbean coast lives a creature so gentle that sailors once mistook it for a mermaid. Slow-moving, peaceful and curious, manatees have glided through rivers…
A pair of California condors reintroduced to the Pacific Northwest by the Yurok Tribe appears to have established the species’ first nest in the region in more than 100 years,…
Imagine you're at a tea party with a bonobo. What kind of tea are you serving? Are there cakes? What is the bonobo wearing? Is the ability to imagine things…
Healthy reefs aren’t just about colorful fish — they also shield shorelines from intense tropical storms. If Florida’s reefs keep degrading, flooding during tropical storms could get much worse, increasing…
For about three decades, beluga whales and bottlenose dolphins greeted more than a million annual visitors to Marineland of Canada. In the sprawling 162-hectare (400-acre) theme park, located a stone’s…
With hues of orange and black on its wings and a furry, fluffy face, the painted woolly bat is a stunner. But its beauty has become a deadly liability. People…
PORT ORFORD, Oregon, U.S. — Aaron Longton reached down into the rinsing sink in his garage-turned-fish-processing facility on the Oregon coast and hoisted a redbanded rockfish by its fat bottom…
Paul Brainerd did two things that rarely sit comfortably together. He helped make publishing cheaper and easier, then spent much of what he earned trying to protect the landscapes that…
America’s national parks were conceived as sanctuaries from the forces remaking the rest of the continent. Climate change is now breaching that boundary. A recent assessment of park vulnerability…
Ever since a deadly strain of avian influenza, H5N1, killed some 17,000 southern elephant seal pups on South American coastlines in 2023 and 2024, researchers and public officials have kept…
Mexico’s sundry landscapes have few parallels. Straddling the northern boundary of the Tropic of Cancer, the country boasts low-lying deserts and humid rainforests, scrubby chaparral and tangled mangroves, with long…
CUAUHTÉMOC, Mexico — On a wind-battered beach in San Mateo del Mar, Mexico, four figures haul a net into shore. Frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) mark the fishers’ position in a high,…
Unintentional catch is a big reason that more than a hundred shark species are threatened with extinction. Yet creating a small electric field around fishing hooks using cheap inputs —…
Agriculture is on the cusp of its most profound transformation in a century. Just as the Green Revolution shifted farming from sun and soil to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, we…
Many view conservation as a ledger of discrete gains—acres saved or species rebounded—but for Gary Tabor, the more vital metric is architecture. He focuses on systems that hold when pressure…
A U.S. federal agency is considering allowing companies to lease more than 45.7 million hectares (113 million acres) of waters off Alaska for seabed mining. Alaska is the latest of several…
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials have proposed scaling back fishing regulations meant to protect a narrow stretch of ocean home to the last 10 remaining vaquitas, the world’s smallest species…
In California’s interior, a long, straight aqueduct carries snowmelt south to a city that grew as if water were a birthright. Along the way it passes a valley that was…
Mangrove forests, located along tropical and subtropical coastlines, are increasingly recognized for their role in buffering climate disasters, storing carbon, supporting wildlife and livelihoods. Yet even as interest in mangrove…
After her father’s death, Bigga-Helena Magga and her sister were determined that their ancestral homeland, Alttokangas, a Sámi boreal forest and peatland in Finland’s Inari municipality, would not be turned…
Division was four years old when he died, a young age even by the shortened standards now applied to North Atlantic right whales. His body was found in late…
CRANBROOK, British Colombia | At the Nupqu Native Plant Nursery in the Canadian province of British Columbia, sulfur buckwheat seedlings fill Styrofoam trays. It’s October, the end of the growing…
Doug McConnell spent much of his adult life doing something that sounds simple and is not: he helped people look closely at the places where they lived. For decades he…
Marine heat waves have become longer and more frequent along the U.S. West Coast, as elsewhere in the world. But heating doesn’t always lead fish to change their location. A…
Why Mongabay is reporting on California’s biodiversity Mongabay’s coverage of biodiversity has long been associated with tropical forests and far-flung frontiers. Yet California—wealthy, populous, and intensively studied—presents a different…