News and research about endangered species from around the world
More than half of the U.K.'s rarest birds have seen recent population increases, according to the 10th annual "State of the U.K.'s Birds" report (pdf).Published by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in association with several local conservation groups, the report assesses the status of 210 bird species.Of the 63 rarest U.K...
As the deadly chytrid fungus ( Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd ) continues its spread around the globe, putting thousands of amphibian species at risk of extinction, scientists are taking a few steps to control it, or at least understand it better.First, researchers led by Jamie Voyles of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, believe they have finally figured out how the chytrid fungus kills...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed designating some 200,000 square miles of lands and waters along the north coast of Alaska as "critical habitat" for endangered polar bears ( Ursus maritimus )...
Twenty years after the international ban on ivory trade took effect, poachers are still slaughtering more than 100 elephants a day, according to a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).The ban on ivory trade, established by the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), took effect on October 17, 1989...
Captive breeding of endangered snow leopards ( Panthera uncia ) has relied since 1976 on an international studbook that matches animals at zoos around the world for purposes of keeping the big cats from becoming too inbred.Breeding via studbook, however, is a slow process that does not offer many benefits to an endangered species with small populations, such as the snow leopard...
There are no wild penguins in the U.S. But many penguin species worldwide are in danger—some dramatically—and all populations are dropping fast. What to do, what to do?Last December, the U.S...
Protecting endangered species is an expensive proposition. The U.S. federal and state governments spent $1,537,283,091 toward conserving threatened and endangered species in 2007, plus another $126,086,999 in land purchases for habitat preservation, according to a new report from the U.S...
Heading into the jungles of Madagascar in search of the world's rarest lemur—the greater bamboo lemur ( Prolemur simus )—was a gamble that paid off, said Damian Aspinall of The Aspinall Foundation...
For the first time in more than 70 years, black-footed ferrets ( Mustela nigripes ) are now living wild on Canadian soil. Last Friday, the Toronto Zoo released 34 black-footed ferrets into the prairies of Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan near the U.S...
As goes the water, so go the dragonflies. That's the finding of a new report from the IUCN concluding that one fifth of dragonflies and damselflies in the Mediterranean region are threatened with extinction as a result of increasing freshwater scarcity...
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