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All in Conservation
The Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Italy, is world-renowned for its marble mines, with about 160 active quarries in the Massa Carrara and Lucca regions. The quarries, many of them decommissioned, are also home to the endangered Italian alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris apuana), whose recent discovery here has mobilized the locals.
The National Park Service in Kula, Hawaii, announced this week that they will soon be releasing millions of mosquitoes in Haleakalā Park in an effort to combat the avian malaria that is endangering forest birds.
This week Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo announced the arrival of its newest resident, a five-foot-seven, 108-pound female giraffe. Her mother is 8-year-old Zola, the father is Jawara, 14.
This week Wired questions the ethics of the next big thing in food production, insect farming. The nascent industry already slaughters trillions of insects each year, and the practice is expected to expand exponentially. But we don’t even know if the bugs feel pain.
The Endangered Species Act turns fifty this year and it has had a pretty good run. Thank Richard Nixon who launched the ESA (along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act).
There’s a class of chemicals used to manufacture all kinds of consumer products that, in humans, are linked to cancers, reduced immune function, and other ailments. A new study reveals that the nasty pollutants are causing problems in nonhumans as well, and they’re everywhere.
Researchers in Tanzania's Ukaguru Mountains have stumbled upon a new frog species notable for its silence. The Ukaguru spiny-throated reed frog (Hyperolius ukaguruensis) does not croak, sing, or ribbit.
A student from Southern Illinois University Carbondale may have accidentally discovered a way to track the invasive Burmese pythons plaguing south Florida. Graduate student Kelly Crandall was examining how human activities influence the movements of raccoons and possums in and around Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Key Largo. Crandall and her colleagues captured 30 possums and raccoons, fitted them with GPS collars, and set them loose.
The Prague Zoo has announced the arrival of a brand new Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla), the first birth of the critically endangered species in captivity in Europe. The newborn had a rough start but is doing well, according to the zoo.
Herds of wild pigs – dubbed “super pigs” for their size, intelligence, and hardiness – have been spotted within 10 miles of the US border and North Dakota. Invasive pigs have had a foothold in Canada since the 1980s, when farmers began breeding domestic pigs with wild boars imported from Europe. But there wasn’t much of a demand for the new breed of Canadian bacon and the Frankenpigs were turned loose.
Good news for the wood stork. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to remove the big bird from the federal list of endangered and threatened species. Forty years ago the wood stork population was down to fewer than 5000 nesting pairs, most of them in south Florida’s Everglades and Big Cypress ecosystems. Today there are twice that number, and the birds have spread to the coastal plains of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
For the first time in over 40 years a Peruvian Diving-petrel chick has hatched on Chile’s Chañaral Island. The rare seabird once thrived here but was pushed out by invasive species. Now a concerted effort by environmental groups and the Chilean government to make the island habitable again have paid off.
Hunting whales for meat has been losing its mojo in Japan for years, but a Japanese whaling firm is looking to revive the industry. Last month Kyodo Senpaku introduced three whale-meat vending machines in Yokohama aimed at re-whetting the nation’s appetite.
Zookeepers at Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki Prefecture have solved a two-year-old mystery: How did a female lar gibbon get pregnant while living in her own enclosure without a male present?
Rice's whale, found only in the Gulf of Mexico and described in 2021, is already critically endangered. Marine biologists are wondering what can be done to save the whales, if anything.
A new study tracks the movements of Australia’s endangered northern quoll, a small carnivorous marsupial. Researchers found that the males are losing so much sleep looking for mates that it’s killing them.
There are 66 known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica. The most recently discovered group, about 1000 adults with chicks on the West Antarctic coast, gave away their position to satellite cameras — with their guano.
Japan’s endangered Amami rabbit has entered into a strange relationship with a parasitic plant called Balanophora yuwanensis. Researchers at Kobe University recently documented the symbiosis between these odd bedfellows.
New Yorkers were thrilled this week when a couple of dolphins swam up the Bronx River and were seen cavorting as far north as Starlight Park. “This is great news,” gushed NYC Parks on Twitter. “It shows that the decades-long effort to restore the river as a healthy habitat is working. We believe these dolphins naturally found their way to the river in search of fish.”
The smallest, and probably the rarest, rabbit in the world is on its last legs in the Pacific Northwest. The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit thrived for thousands of years in the sagebrush steppe of what is now central Washington, but massive habitat loss has pushed the species to the brink of extinction.
