Thirteen years, 1,500 infrared cameras, hundreds of catnip-baited hair traps and an almost incalculable number of hours in the field have confirmed what scientists have long feared: the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura) is in all likelihood extinct. The subspecies, endemic to Taiwan, was wiped out by poaching, trade in its pelts during the [...]

History books tell us that the last wild Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) was probably killed in 1922 by a French colonial hunter in Morocco. But in repeating the tale of this well-documented death, the history books may have left a chapter or two out of the story. Barbary, or Atlas, lions once roamed throughout [...]

In 1877 a British lieutenant colonel and naturalist named R.H. Beddome looked under a rock in the Indian state of Orissa and discovered a new gecko species. That was the last time it was ever seen. Until now. After more than 135 years, the Jeypore ground gecko (Geckoella Jeyporensis) has been rediscovered by a team [...]

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 [...]

There’s nothing like the scientific thrill of discovering something for the very first time—or, in rare cases, rediscovering something that most people had presumed forever lost. Take the Cuban solenodon (Solenodon cubanus), for example. Unseen after 1890 and long presumed extinct, it unexpectedly showed up again in 1974. Sightings after that were few and far [...]

Three moth species have disappeared from the U.K. in the past decade and two thirds of the species that remain have suffered dramatic population crashes according to new research from the organizations Butterfly Conservation and Rothamsted Research. The news is published in the new report “The State of Britain’s Larger Moths 2013″ (pdf), which covers [...]

Two American zoos have helped to save an African amphibian from extinction. The Kihansi spray toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis) was declared extinct in the wild in 2009 after its only habitat, the waterfalls of Kihansi Gorge in Tanzania, dried up following the establishment of a nearby hydroelectric dam. But this month 2,000 toads returned to Kihansi, [...]

The body of the last wild Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) in Vietnam was found floating in Ea Lam Lake on September 29. The 3.2-meter-long, 100-kilogram female had been strangled by two steel wires, possibly by hunters. She was estimated to be nearly 100 years old. Once present throughout Southeast Asia, critically endangered Siamese crocodiles have [...]

After not being seen for more than 30 years, the Japanese river otter (Lutra lutra whiteleyi) has been declared extinct by the country’s Ministry of the Environment, which also last week declared several other species extinct. Once numbering in the millions, Japanese river otters—a subspecies of the European or Eurasian otter (L. lutra)—were overhunted for [...]

He was the last of his kind and now he is gone. Lonesome George, the world-famous Pinta Island tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) has died in the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. George, estimated to be at least 100 years old, was the last known member of his subspecies, and his solitary existence for [...]