On Friday, March 15, authorities in Thailand intercepted two wildlife smugglers trying to carry hundreds of endangered tortoises through Suvarnabhumi International Airport. Among the animals recovered were 54 critically endangered ploughshare tortoises (Astrochelys yniphora) from Madagascar. The entire wild population for this species is estimated at just 400 to 600 tortoises, meaning this seizure represented [...]

Rare sharks, toads, rhinos and bears are among the endangered species in the news this week. Hammer Time: David Shiffman offers 10 reasons why great and scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna mokarran and S. lewini) deserve Endangered Species Act protections and encourages people to take direct action in support of a move to do just that. [...]

Rhinos, cheetahs, gray wolves and frogs are among the endangered species in the news this week. Worst News of the Week: All of the rhinos in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park have been completely wiped out by poachers, who are now turning their effort to the park’s elephants. The 1.1 million hectare park is the size [...]

Pygmy elephants, Asiatic lions and Siamese crocodiles are among the endangered species in the news this week. Pygmy elephant update: Remember the 14 pygmy elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis) that were poisoned in Borneo back in February? There’s both good and bad news about the case. The good news is that Baby Joe, the youngster that [...]

Bornean orangutans, gray bats and Grauer’s gorillas are among the endangered species in the news this week. This Week’s Most Heartbreaking Story: A family of Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) was photographed clinging to the sole remaining tree in their former forest habitat after the rest of it had been chopped down for a palm oil [...]

Ethiopian lions, Florida panthers, Sumatran rhinos and Yangtze porpoises are among the endangered species in the news this week. Well that was Interesting: The Internet was abuzz this week with “news” about how a pack of lions in Ethiopia supposedly saved a teenage girl from kidnapping rapists. That story actually dates back to 2005 but—as [...]

Central Africa has become increasingly inhospitable to forest elephants, according to a study published March 4 in PLoS One that found that 62 percent of the species was killed by poachers between 2002 and 2011. The study—by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and more than a dozen other institutions—also found that 30 percent [...]

Ivory smugglers, manatees, Iranian cheetahs, slow lorises and Britain’s beloved hedgehogs are in the news this week. Ethics and Endangered Species: A new study accuses wildlife photographers of unethical behavior when it comes to the slender loris (either Loris tardigradus or L. lydekkerianus). The photographers reportedly convinced tribesmen (who consider the species to be taboo) [...]

Nearly 3,000 chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans are illegally killed or stolen from the wild each year, according to a new report (pdf) from the United Nations Environmental Programme’s (UNEP) Great Apes Survival Partnership (GASP). The report, released to coincide with this week’s meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild [...]

As go the elephants, so go the trees. That’s the message of a new study published in the May 2013 issue of Forest Ecology and Management that found more than a dozen elephant-dependent tree species suffered catastrophic population declines in new plant growths after forest elephants were nearly extirpated from their ecosystems. The fruit-bearing trees [...]