One of the world’s rarest fish species just got a lot rarer. The latest twice-annual count of tiny Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) at their sole habitat in Nevada has revealed just 35 of the critically endangered fish remain, down from 75 this past fall. This is the lowest count since the species was federally [...]

At some point in the next decade, if advances in biotechnology continue on their current path, clones of extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, Tasmanian tiger and wooly mammoth could once again live among us. But cloning lost species—or “de-extinction” as some scientists call it—presents us with myriad ethical, legal and regulatory questions that [...]

Efforts to save the critically endangered shore plover from extinction in New Zealand have suffered a major setback: nearly 60 of the birds have died due to unknown causes, reducing the world population of the species to just 200. Shore plovers (also known as shore dotterels or Tuturuatu, Thinornis novaeseelandiae) lived on both of New [...]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a $2,500 reward for information about the January 18 shooting death of a critically endangered red wolf (Canis rufus) in North Carolina. The wolf, which wore a radio collar around its neck, was at least the 10th member of his species illegally shot and killed in the [...]

Two Brazilian researchers doing some recreational bird-watching have made an amazing discovery: the first nest ever found for the critically endangered Stresemann’s bristlefront (Merulaxis stresemanni). One of the world’s rarest birds, the bristlefront has an estimated population of just 15 individuals, all at the 600-hectare Mata do Passarinho Reserve run by Fundação Biodiversitas in the [...]

On Wednesday, January 16, a four-year-old Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) named M1133 took the first careful steps out of his crate into Arizona’s Apache National Forest, near the New Mexico border. It was the first time he had ever been in the wild. Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and [...]

Few people have ever seen a critically endangered Malherbe’s parakeet (Cyanoramphus malherbi) in the wild. Luis Ortiz-Catedral has not only seen more of the birds than just about anyone else, one of them has landed on his head. He has also witnessed something that almost no one else has ever seen among this species: mating. [...]

This has been the deadliest year on record for Florida panthers (Puma or Felis concolor coryi), but the critically endangered big cats also ended 2012 with some pretty amazing news. For the first time, an uncollared female has been photographed carrying her cubs to a new den. The photographs, taken by motion-sensitive camera traps two [...]

In May 2011, after months of preparation, Jakob Shockey and two fellow biology students from Evergreen State College in Washington State found themselves on a tiny Panamanian island staring at one of the rarest mammals in the world: the pygmy three-toed sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus). “I felt humbled to finally stand knee-deep in the mud of [...]

Even as the ice-dwelling polar bear is threatened by climate change, so, too, is another bear that lives in a completely different habitat. In this case it’s the critically endangered Gobi bear (Ursus arctos gobiensis), the only bear species that has adapted to desert life. The last 22 members of this brown bear subspecies (known [...]