People often ask me, “How can you write about endangered species all the time? Isn’t it depressing?” Sure, it can be, but not as depressing as the sheer number of stories that I don’t get to write about. So let’s catch up on some of the stories that should have made headlines this month. First [...]

When I last wrote about Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) this past December, the species was in pretty dire straits. A contagious cancer known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD) had, at that point, wiped out at least 70 percent of devils in the wild, forcing scientists to resort to captive breeding, a sperm bank and [...]

Illegal demand for rhino horns for use in traditional Asian medicine has soared in recent years. As a result, rhino deaths by poaching hit an all-time high in 2010, and 2011 is likely to beat that number. Last year, the owner of the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve near Johannesburg, South Africa, proposed a new [...]

The news about endangered species doesn’t slow down. Here, we update some Extinction Countdown stories covered in recent weeks: A plan to save bats The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a national plan to combat the bat-killing white-nose syndrome (WNS) on May 17. As we have reported here many times before, the fungus that [...]

Four new “vulture restaurants” have opened in India to provide the critically endangered and ecologically important birds with food that won’t kill them. Vultures used to be a fixture in Indian skies, but now the scavengers are almost gone due to a commonly used veterinary drug called diclofenac. An anti-inflammatory for humans and livestock, diclofenac [...]

As the World Cup launches in South Africa this week, conservationists fear that gamblers looking for a little extra luck will turn to a source those of us in the West might not expect: the practice of smoking vulture brains. The custom stems from the traditional medicine known in South Africa as muti. The vulture [...]

As if it weren’t bad enough that 99.9 percent of Asian vultures have been killed off in the past 20 years, now comes news that yet another potential man-made disaster waits in the wings. Millions of Asian vultures, particularly those in India, have died off over the last two decades after being poisoned by the [...]

India’s three vulture species have all but disappeared from the country’s skies. Over the last 20 years, virtually all of India’s vultures have died, the victims of unintentional poisoning. Vultures feed on dead cattle and other livestock that had been treated with an anti-inflammatory drug called diclofenac, which sends vultures into renal failure. Unfortunately, the [...]