And then there was one. The last known Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) now lives by himself at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia after the zoo euthanized the only other member of its species. The euthanized frog, another male, had been experiencing a “marked decline in health and behavior” according to a Zoo Atlanta news [...]

In May 2011 Indonesian customs officials inspecting a shipment of fish and turtle meat bound for Vietnam came across a gruesome discovery: 5.9 metric tons of pangolin meat and another 790 kilograms of pangolin scales hidden within the cargo. It was just one of the nearly four dozen illegal pangolin shipments seized in Indonesia, Vietnam, [...]

Three hundred critically endangered kahuli tree snails (Achatinella mustelina) have a new home this week: a basketball court–size, predator-proof enclosure built for them by the U.S. Army in Hawaii’s Waianae Mountains. The snails, according to the Army, spent the past two years in a lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa while the new [...]

For centuries the tribal Nyishi people in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh have worn the magnificent beaks of hornbill birds as a part of their traditional headgear, called pudum, which are considered a sign of manhood and tribal identity. Hornbills are the state birds of Arunachal Pradesh, but overhunting for pudum threatened all five [...]

With a population numbering fewer than 300 individuals, Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) are the rarest and most endangered of the world’s four gorilla subspecies. Although they remain threatened by habitat loss and illegal bushmeat hunting, new research shows the gorillas have a bit more potential habitat to roam, and in fact inhabit a [...]

The death of an adult female kakapo (Strigops habroptila) on New Zealand’s Anchor Island this past weekend brings the population of these rare flightless parrots down to just 127 birds. The late kakapo, known as Sandra, was killed when her transmitter harness got entangled in a tree. All kakapos are outfitted with transmitters to help [...]

A member of one of the world’s most endangered turtle species is being tracked by satellites as it swims the rivers of Cambodia, helping scientists to learn more about how it navigates and the threats it faces in its native waters. With a satellite transmitter glued to her shell, the female southern river terrapin (Batagur [...]

Like hundreds of thousands of other people, my first encounter with a slow loris occurred online when I watched the now-famous 57-second video of one of these adorable primates being tickled and throwing up its arms in apparent glee. That video has been viewed more than nine million times since it was posted in June [...]

Jurassic meow? Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have come up with a novel idea for possibly saving endangered big cats: reproduce them in the lab. And the researchers have already accomplished the first step, creating embryonic stem-like cells from the tissue of an endangered adult snow leopard (Panthera uncia). The research was published [...]

Researchers working on the island of Borneo have discovered two tiny new populations of Miller’s grizzled langurs (Presbytis hosei canicrus), one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates. The species is so rare that it has probably disappeared from all of its previously known habitats, which have been almost completely logged and burned out of [...]