topic: Mass Extinction

topic: Mass Extinction

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Haunting song pays tribute to Toughie, the frog whose extinction went unnoticed
- The extinction of the last Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog, named Toughie, in 2016 received little media coverage, prompting environmental journalist Jeremy Hance to express his anger in an article for The Guardian.
- Musician Talia Schlanger was deeply moved by Hance’s article and wrote a song titled “The Endling” as a tribute to Toughie.
- The Earth is facing an extinction crisis driven by human activity and amphibians like Toughie have experienced massive population declines due to the chytrid fungus.
- Schlanger and Hance say that art and storytelling play a vital role in helping people connect emotionally to the biodiversity crisis.

Will the world join Indigenous peoples in relationship with nature at COP-15? (commentary)
- Indigenous peoples are recognized as the world’s top conservationists and protectors of biodiversity, and have a strong presence at the COP-15 meetings on biodiversity now in progress in Montreal.
- Many of Canada’s First Nations have lived in relationship with caribou for 10,000 years, for instance, but the herds are faltering as delegates debate hundreds of kilometers to the south.
- “Regardless of what is decided in Montreal, Indigenous peoples will continue to nurture and fight for the wellbeing of the flora and fauna on our lands, though we are hopeful that the world will join us,” the Indigenous authors of a new op-ed argue.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Seed dispersal is just as important as pollination (commentary)
- Why does it seem like conservationists only care about pollination, and the creatures like bees that do it?
- Seed dispersal is every bit as important, and to ensure a future with the greatest plant diversity, we should focus effort on conserving the animal groups known for this activity, known as ‘zoochory.’
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Study shows it took the Amazon as we know it over 6 million years to form
- An asteroid impact near Mexico 66 million years ago triggered an ecological catastrophe that claimed nearly half of all plant species and took Amazon forests more than 6 million years to recover from.
- Colombian researchers analyzed fossilized pollen and leaves and found plant diversity declined by 45% after the impact; when plant diversity finally recovered, open forests of ferns and conifers had been replaced by dense, closed-canopy forests dominated by flowering plants.
- The researchers suggested three interlinked explanations for the sudden transition: the extinction of large-bodied dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous reduced forest disturbance; dust from the impact acted as a fertilizer; conifers were more likely to go extinct.
- In the time periods studied, Earth’s climate was warmer and CO2 levels were higher, showing that climate alone is not enough to trigger a forest-to-savanna transition, with the pace of warming and deforestation the crucial puzzle pieces that determine whether today’s forests can survive.

Reptile traffickers trawl scientific literature, target newly described species
- The descriptions and locations of new reptile species featured in scientific literature are frequently being used by traders to quickly hunt down, capture and sell these animals, allowing them to be monetized for handsome profits and threatening biodiversity.
- New reptile species are highly valued by collectors due to their novelty, and often appear on trade websites and at trade fairs within months after their first description in scientific journals.
- In the past 20 years, the Internet, combined with the ease and affordability of global travel, have made the problem of reptile trafficking rampant. Some taxonomists now call for restricted access to location information for the most in demand taxa such as geckos, turtles and pythons.
- Once a new species has been given CITES protection (typically a lengthy process), traders often keep the reptiles in “legal” commercial circulation by making false claims of “captive breeding” in order to launder wild-caught animals.

New paper urges shift to ‘nature positivity’ to restore Earth
- A new paper, published by leading conservationists and the heads of various global institutions, argues for adopting a “nature-positive” goal.
- This would require restoring the Earth from 2020, placing the world on a nature positive path by 2030 to mount a full recovery by 2050.
- According to the authors, nature positivity would provide an overarching goal for nature that would coincide with the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) mission and streamline agreements for climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development into one common vision.
- The paper was released a few days before the start of the meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), where parties will provide advice on the CBD’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

‘Race against time’: Saving the snakes and lizards of Brazil’s Cerrado
- Brazil’s Cerrado is among the world’s most biodiverse savannas, covering two million square kilometers (772,204 square miles), nearly a quarter of the country and half the size of Europe.
- Once thought of as a “wasteland,” scientists have counted 208 snake species, some 80 lizards, 40 worm lizards, seven turtles and four crocodile species — many recently logged in the biome’s grasslands, palm-covered riverscapes, lowland forests and dry plateaus.
- But half of the Cerrado’s natural vegetation has been lost to mechanized agribusiness and ranching, with native plants and wildlife also at risk from climate change, and more frequent and intense fires. Today’s biome is fragmented, with just 3% under strict protection, and another 5% “protected” in farmed, inhabited mixed-use areas
- While researchers agree that there is an urgent need to protect large swathes of remaining savanna, there is also a vital requirement to preserve patches of unique habitat where diverse, niche-specialized reptilians make their homes.

Study warns of ‘biotic annihilation’ driven by hunting, habitat destruction
- Humans are driving wildlife to extinction 1,000 times faster than the natural rate, robbing the planet not just of species but also of functional and phylogenetic diversity, the authors of a new paper argue.
- Different kinds of human activities affect biodiversity differently, with hunting having the largest impact on terrestrial mammals, the research found.
- Millions of years of evolution are encoded into species that coexist with humans today; to lose them is also to lose that biological heritage.
- The research maps out the relationship between species richness and functional and phylogenetic loss for individual countries to aid national-level policymaking.

Crimefighting NGO tracks Brazil wildlife trade on WhatsApp and Facebook
- A nonprofit, the National Network Combating Wild Animal Trafficking (RENCTAS) was founded in 1999, and since then has won international awards and acclaim for its innovative approach to tracking and combating the global illegal wildlife trade, especially the sourcing of animals in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna biomes.
- The group’s pioneering strategy: use social media to track the sale and movement of animals out of Brazil, and turn over the data to law enforcement. In 1999, it identified nearly 6,000 ads featuring the illegal sale of animals on e-commerce platforms. By 2019, it reported 3.5 million advertisements for the illegal trade on social networks.
- The most trafficked Brazilian animals currently: the double-collared seedeater (Sporophila caerulescens); a small, finch-like songbird with a yellow bill that thrives in the southern Cerrado, and the white-cheeked spider monkey (Ateles marginatus), found across the Amazon basin. Sales of animals have been tracked to 200+ illegal trafficking organizations.
- Tragically, of the millions of Brazilian animals captured, sold, resold, and transported, only an estimated 1 in 10 ever reach Brazilian and foreign consumers alive. The rest, ripped from their homes, starved and abused, die in transit.

The riddle of Madagascar’s megafauna extinction just got trickier
- Madagascar saw a relatively recent mass extinction event about 1,000 years ago, when gorilla-sized lemurs, towering elephant birds, and grand tortoises were all wiped out from the island.
- A recently published paper complicates the widely-held understanding that humans were to blame for the crash, by drawing attention to a megadrought that the authors say also played a role.
- The new study uses geological evidence from Madagascar and Rodrigues, an island now part of Mauritius about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of Madagascar, to construct a climatic record.
- Some scientists have questioned whether the geological record from Madagascar paints an accurate picture of past climate, or whether the data from Rodrigues can shed light on conditions in Madagascar.

One year on: Insects still in peril as world struggles with global pandemic
- In June 2019, in response to media outcry and alarm over a supposed ongoing global “Insect Apocalypse,” Mongabay published a thorough four-part survey on the state of the world’s insect species and their populations.
- In four, in-depth stories, science writer Jeremy Hance interviewed 24 leading entomologists and other scientists on six continents and working in 12 nations to get their expert views on the rate of insect decline in Europe, the U.S., and especially the tropics, including Latin America, Africa, and Australia.
- Now, 16 months later, Hance reaches out to seven of those scientists to see what’s new. He finds much bad news: butterflies in Ohio declining by 2% per year, 94% of wild bee interactions with native plants lost in New England, and grasshopper abundance falling by 30% in a protected Kansas grassland over 20 years.
- Scientists say such losses aren’t surprising; what’s alarming is our inaction. One researcher concludes: “Real insect conservation would mean conserving large whole ecosystems both from the point source attacks, AND the overall blanket of climate change and six billion more people on the planet than there should be.”

World’s plants and fungi a frontier of discovery, if we can protect them: Report
- The “State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2020” report, released this week, was born of the collaborative effort of 200 scientists from 42 different countries and delves into a global assessment of plants and fungi as food, fuel, medicine, tools for urban resilience, and more.
- In 2019 alone, 1,942 plants and 1,886 fungi were newly described by scientists, some closely related to known medicinal species and potentially new sources of medicine.
- More than 7,000 edible plants hold potential as future crops, according to the report, meeting the criteria of being nutritious, robust and historically used as food.
- Nearly 40% of plant species are estimated to be threatened with extinction.

Biologists warn ‘extinction denial’ is the latest anti-science conspiracy theory
- There’s a growing refusal by some groups to acknowledge the ongoing global extinction crisis being driven by human actions, conservation scientists say.
- These views are pushed by many of the same people who also downplay the impacts of climate change, and go against the actual evidence of widespread species population declines and recent extinctions.
- Scientists say this phenomenon will likely spike again this week, since a major Convention on Biological Diversity report is due to be released.
- The authors of a new report on extinction denial advise experts to proactively challenge its occurrence, and present the “cold hard scientific facts.”

Rescuing Achilles: Southern pig-tailed macaques listed as endangered but still persecuted (commentary)
- It is alarming if a highly adaptive generalist species such as the pig-tailed macaque–which can thrive even in oil palm landscapes–is now threatened with extinction, the author argues.
- Not long after rescuing an infant macaque from a life on a chain, the author discovered that this once common species has been listed as endangered.
- “Conservation has to include all wildlife regardless of their status. As we can see from the pig-tailed macaque, the common species of today can easily become the endangered species of tomorrow,” he says.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Is Chinese investment driving a sharp increase in jaguar poaching?
- A 200-fold increase in the number of trafficked dead jaguars seized by authorities in Central and South America between 2012 and 2018 has been reported in a new study.
- Researchers suggest the major surge in the trade may be facilitated by Chinese investment networks in Latin America.
- Corruption and low incomes in source countries also are likely a significant factor boosting trafficking.
- Acting on the paper’s findings, initiatives organized by nations, states, municipalities, NGOs, universities and research institutes could help improve collaborative regional efforts to combat the illicit trade.

Traversing Russia’s remote taiga in pursuit of the Blakiston’s fish owl
- The Blakiston’s fish owl is the world’s largest owl, ranging from the eastern woodlands of Hokkaido, Japan, to the Primorye territory in the south of Russia’s Far East.
- The species is endangered, with only 1,500 to 3,700 fish owls remaining in the wild.
- In his new, just published book, Owls of the Eastern Ice, biologist Jonathan Slaght chronicles his experiences and misadventures as an American researcher in Siberia, while also revealing the fish owl’s fascinating secret world.
- To protect the fish owl, Slaght and his Russian colleagues advocate for limiting road access into high biodiversity areas in Siberia.

New land snail species discovered in Hawaii offers ‘gem of hope’
- Scientists recently announced a new species of land snail, Auriculella gagneorum, which was found living in the Waianae Mountains in O‘ahu, Hawaii.
- There are three known populations of Auriculella perpusilla on O‘ahu, and a small number of snails were selected for a captive-breeding program to help conserve the species.
- Hawaii once had 752 species of land snails, but more than half of them are believed to have gone extinct due to habitat loss and invasive species.

The Large-antlered muntjac — Southeast Asia’s mystery deer (Commentary)
- 12 species of muntjac, the so-called barking deer because of its unique auditory calls, are found only in Asia. The Large-antlered muntjac is Critically Endangered with members of its scant, rarely seen population inhabiting the rugged Annamites Range bordering the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Vietnam and Cambodia.
- One of the biggest dangers to muntjacs is snaring, a hunting method used widely across Indochina. No one knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of snares clutter Southeast Asia. But rangers in one Cambodian national park found 27,714 snares in 2015 alone — 7 snares per square kilometer, or 17.5 per square mile.
- If muntjacs are to be preserved, greater public awareness of their plight is required. On Vietnam’s Dalat Plateau and in Lao’s Nakai–Nam Theun National Protected Area, conservation appears possible, and scientists hope to garner better population density estimates in relation to the snaring threat. Captive breeding may be needed.
- This story is the second in a series by biologist Joel Berger written in conjunction with colleagues in an effort to make seriously endangered animals far better known to the public. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Brazilian Amazon drained of millions of wild animals by criminal networks: Report
- A new 140-page report is shining a bright light on illegal wildlife trafficking in the Brazilian Amazon. The study finds that millions of birds, tropical fish, turtles, and mammals are being plucked from the wild and traded domestically or exported to the U.S, EU, China, the Middle East and elsewhere. Many are endangered.
- This illicit international trade is facilitated by weak laws, weak penalties, inadequate government record keeping, poor law enforcement — as well as widespread corruption, bribery, fraud, forgery, money laundering and smuggling.
- While some animals are seized, and some low-level smugglers are caught, the organizers of this global criminal enterprise are rarely brought to justice.
- The report notes that this trafficking crisis needs urgent action, as the trade not only harms wildlife, but also decimates ecosystems and puts public health at risk. The researchers point out that COVID-19 likely was transmitted to humans by trafficked animals and that addressing the Brazilian Amazon wildlife trade could prevent the next pandemic.

Turtles and tortoises in trouble: More than half of all species face extinction
- More than half of the world’s turtle and tortoise species are now threatened with extinction, according to a new study published by a group of 51 global turtle and tortoise experts.
- Loss of habitat is the biggest threat to turtles and tortoises globally. Other threats include the pet trade, overconsumption for food and medicine, pollution, invasive species, and climate change.
- Preventing turtle extinctions this century requires protecting their remaining habitat, the authors write, particularly limited nesting habitats.
- Individuals also have a role to play in safeguarding turtle and tortoise survival worldwide by being aware of the risks involved in the pet, food and medicine trades, keeping dogs under control in important turtle habitats, and keeping off-road vehicles away from sensitive beaches and desert areas where turtles roam and nest.

Less than a thousand remain: New list of animals on the brink of extinction
- More than 500 vertebrate species are on the brink of extinction, with populations of fewer than a thousand individuals, a new study says.
- According to the authors, the Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction, extinction rates accelerating, and human activity is to blame.
- The authors call the ongoing extinction perhaps “the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible.”
- “The conservation of endangered species should be elevated to a national and global emergency for governments and institutions, equal to climate disruption to which it is linked,” they say.

Our growing footprint, wildlife extinctions, and the importance of contraception (commentary)
- We’re not exactly treading lightly on planet Earth. A new study finds more than 20,000 land animal species are experiencing intense pressure from the global human footprint. It’s no wonder that last year the United Nations said that a million species may face extinction in the coming decades.
- Wildlife extinctions have been a fact of life on our planet for eons. But the extinction rates we’re seeing now are about 1,000 times higher than the background rate. Humans have never witnessed these kinds of large-scale die-offs — and it’s our own fault.
- Human population growth is a big part of the equation — we’ve more than doubled our numbers on the planet since 1970. We can start to address that by reducing unplanned pregnancies and promoting reproductive rights and contraception access for all.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As we act on climate, we mustn’t neglect nature (commentary)
- The discussion of the environment has been unbalanced. While all the talk is about carbon and climate, that is actually only half the story when it comes to our environmental crisis. The other catastrophe is of course the destruction of the natural world, the ecological crisis which threatens a million species with extinction over the coming decades.
- These twin evils are as important and serious as each other, but you wouldn’t think it from a glance at the papers – media coverage of the ecological crisis is being completely eclipsed by the climate, which received eight times more press attention in recent years.
- This imbalance needs to be rectified, and we must start treating our twin crises equally, because we cannot address them in isolation. Natural ecosystems, such as forests, wetlands, and seagrass beds, store huge amounts of carbon, and protecting and restoring them is the cheapest and most effective action we can take to lessen the climate crisis. The trouble is, our efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change can seriously undermine these key natural ecosystems.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Time is running out for Southeast Asia
- Several species and subspecies have gone extinct in the last 100 years. Others remain missing.
- Most of Southeast Asia’s large-bodied animals are now threatened with extinction.
- Deforestation and the wildlife trade have even left smaller-bodied species decimated as well.
- Southeast Asia has to decide if preserving its irreplaceable and unique wildlife is a priority – or the losses will continue to mount.

Amazon’s giant South American river turtle holding its own, but risks abound
- The arrau, or giant South American River turtle (Podocnemis expansa), inhabits the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries. A recent six nation survey assessed the health of populations across the region in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
- The species numbered in the tens of millions in the 19th century. Much reduced today, P. expansa is doing fairly well in river systems with conservation programs (the Tapajós, Guaporés, Foz do Amazonas, and Purus) and not so well in others (the Javaés and Baixo Rio Branco, and the Trombetas, even though it has monitoring).
- The study registered more than 147,000 females protected or monitored by 89 conservation initiatives and programs between 2012 and 2014. Out of that total, two thirds were in Brazil (109,400), followed by Bolivia (30,000), Peru (4,100), Colombia (2,400), Venezuela (1,000) and Ecuador (6).
- The greatest historical threat to the arrau stems from eggs and meat being popular delicacies, which has led to trafficking. Hydroelectric dams and large-scale mining operations also put the animals at risk — this includes mining noise impairing turtle communication. Climate change could be the biggest threat in the 21st century.

World is fast losing its cool: Polar regions in deep trouble, say scientists
- As representatives of the world’s nations gather in Madrid at COP 25 this week to discuss global warming policy, a comprehensive new report shows how climate change is disproportionately affecting the Arctic and Antarctic — the Arctic especially is warming tremendously faster than the rest of the world.
- If the planet sees a rise in average temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, the polar regions will be the hardest hit ecosystems on earth, according to researchers, bringing drastic changes to the region. By the time the lower latitudes hit that mark, it’s projected the Arctic will see temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius.
- In fact, polar regions are already seeing quickening sea ice melt, permafrost thaws, record wildfires, ice shelves calving, and impacts on cold-adapted species — ranging from Arctic polar bears to Antarctic penguins. What starts in cold areas doesn’t stay there: sea level rise and temperate extreme weather are both linked to polar events.
- The only way out of the trends escalating toward a climate catastrophe at the poles, say scientists, is for nations to begin aggressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions now and embracing sustainable green energy technologies and policies. It remains to be seen whether the negotiators at COP 25 will embrace such solutions.

Why you should care about the current wave of mass extinctions (commentary)
- The extinction crisis we are witnessing is only the beginning of a wave of mass ecocide of non-human life on Earth, a process that could wipe out a million species of plants and ani-mals from our planet in the short term (read: decades). About 15 thousand scientific studies (!) support this terrifying conclusion, as it can be read in the assessment report produced by the independent UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosy-stem Services (IPBES).
- Certainly this is not what I dreamed of as a child in love with nature and wildlife. But how could I have ever imagined back then, in the 1970s, that during my first 50 years of life the global human population would literally double? That the global economy would increase four-fold, and that in parallel — and not by coincidence — wildlife populations would drop by a staggering 60 percent globally? How could I have ever imagined back then that I would personally witness and document, as a field conservationist, actual extinctions on the ground?
- In order to create a critical mass of awareness globally, there is still an important question to answer: Why should we care to conserve what is left of wild ecosystems and species of our planet? This is a question we should be ready to answer clearly, especially considering that most of the world population currently lives in urban centers, remains quite unaware of eco-logical matters, and is disconnected from nature — and therefore can’t fully appreciate how much our survival as a species is still deeply dependent on ecosystems and nature.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

International wildlife trade sweeps across ‘tree of life,’ study finds
- About one in five land animals are caught up in the global wildlife trade, a new study has found.
- The research identified species traded as pets or for products they provide, and then mapped the animals’ home ranges, identifying “hotspots” around the world.
- The team also found that nearly 3,200 other species may be affected by the wildlife trade in the future.
- The study’s authors say they believe their work could help authorities protect species before trade drives their numbers down.

The climate crisis and the pain of losing what we love (commentary)
- World leaders came to the UN last week to decisively tackle climate change again. “This is not a negotiation summit because we don’t negotiate with nature. This is a Climate Action Summit!” declared the UN Secretary-General. But again, global leaders failed and committed to carbon cuts that fall far short of curbing catastrophe.
- In doing so, our leaders committed us to an escalating global environmental crisis that is already unleashing vast changes across Earth’s ecosystems — with many sweeping alterations charted by our scientists, but many other local shifts and absences only noted by those who observe and cherish wild things.
- The loss of familiar weather patterns, plants and animals (from monarchs to native bees) and an invasion of opportunistic living things (Japanese knotweed to Asian longhorned ticks) can foster feelings of vertigo — of being a stranger in a strange land — emotions, so personal and rubbing so raw, they can be hard to describe.
- So I’ve tried to express my own feelings for one place, Vermont, my home, that is today seeing rapid change. At the end of this piece, Mongabay invites you to tally your own natural losses. We’ll share your responses in a later story. This post is a commentary. Views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Wilderness cuts the risk of extinction for species in half
- Wilderness areas buffer species against the risk of extinction, reducing it by more than half, a new study shows.
- Places with lots of unique species and wilderness with the last remaining sections of good habitat for certain species had a more pronounced impact on extinction risk.
- The authors contend that safeguarding the last wild places should be a conservation priority alongside the protection and restoration of heavily impacted “hotspots.”

Mongabay investigative series helps confirm global insect decline
- In a newly published four-part series, Mongabay takes a deep dive into the science behind the so-called “Insect Apocalypse,” recently reported in the mainstream media.
- To create the series, Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and other scientists on six continents and working in 12 nations, producing what is possibly the most in-depth reporting published to date by any news media outlet on the looming insect abundance crisis.
- While major peer-reviewed studies are few (with evidence resting primarily so far on findings in Germany and Puerto Rico), there is near consensus among the two dozen researchers surveyed: Insects are likely in serious global decline.
- The series is in four parts: an introduction and critical review of existing peer-reviewed data; a look at temperate insect declines; a survey of tropical declines; and solutions to the problem. Researchers agree: Conserving insects — imperative to preserving the world’s ecosystem services — is vital to humanity.

The Great Insect Dying: How to save insects and ourselves
- The entomologists interviewed for this Mongabay series agreed on three major causes for the ongoing and escalating collapse of global insect populations: habitat loss (especially due to agribusiness expansion), climate change and pesticide use. Some added a fourth cause: human overpopulation.
- Solutions to these problems exist, most agreed, but political commitment, major institutional funding and a large-scale vision are lacking. To combat habitat loss, researchers urge preservation of biodiversity hotspots such as primary rainforest, regeneration of damaged ecosystems, and nature-friendly agriculture.
- Combatting climate change, scientists agree, requires deep carbon emission cuts along with the establishment of secure, very large conserved areas and corridors encompassing a wide variety of temperate and tropical ecosystems, sometimes designed with preserving specific insect populations in mind.
- Pesticide use solutions include bans of some toxins and pesticide seed coatings, the education of farmers by scientists rather than by pesticide companies, and importantly, a rethinking of agribusiness practices. The Netherlands’ Delta Plan for Biodiversity Recovery includes some of these elements.

The Great Insect Dying: The tropics in trouble and some hope
- Insect species are most diverse in the tropics, but are largely unresearched, with many species not described by science. But entomologists believe abundance is being impacted by climate change, habitat destruction and the introduction of industrial agribusiness with its heavy pesticide use.
- A 2018 repeat of a 1976 study in Puerto Rico, which measured the total biomass of a rainforest’s arthropods, found that in the intervening decades populations collapsed. Sticky traps caught up to 60-fold fewer insects than 37 years prior, while ground netting caught 8 times fewer insects than in 1976.
- The same researchers also looked at insect abundance in a tropical forest in Western Mexico. There, biomass abundance fell eightfold in sticky traps from 1981 to 2014. Researchers from Southeast Asia, Australia, Oceania and Africa all expressed concern to Mongabay over possible insect abundance declines.
- In response to feared tropical declines, new insect surveys are being launched, including the Arthropod Initiative and Global Malaise Trap Program. But all of these new initiatives suffer the same dire problem: a dearth of funding and lack of interest from foundations, conservation groups and governments.

The Great Insect Dying: Vanishing act in Europe and North America
- Though arthropods make up most of the species on Earth, and much of the planet’s biomass, they are significantly understudied compared to mammals, plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. Lack of baseline data makes insect abundance decline difficult to assess.
- Insects in the temperate EU and U.S. are the world’s best studied, so it is here that scientists expect to detect precipitous declines first. A groundbreaking study published in October 2017 found that flying insects in 63 protected areas in Germany had declined by 75 percent in just 25 years.
- The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme has a 43-year butterfly record, and over that time two-thirds of the nations’ species have decreased. Another recent paper found an 84 percent decline in butterflies in the Netherlands from 1890 to 2017. Still, EU researchers say far more data points are needed.
- Neither the U.S. or Canada have conducted an in-depth study similar to that in Germany. But entomologists agree that major abundance declines are likely underway, and many are planning studies to detect population drops. Contributors to decline are climate change, pesticides and ecosystem destruction.

The Great Insect Dying: A global look at a deepening crisis
- Recent studies from Germany and Puerto Rico, and a global meta-study, all point to a serious, dramatic decline in insect abundance. Plummeting insect populations could deeply impact ecosystems and human civilization, as these tiny creatures form the base of the food chain, pollinate, dispose of waste, and enliven soils.
- However, limited baseline data makes it difficult for scientists to say with certainty just how deep the crisis may be, though anecdotal evidence is strong. To that end, Mongabay is launching a four-part series — likely the most in-depth, nuanced look at insect decline yet published by any media outlet.
- Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and researchers on six continents working in over a dozen nations to determine what we know regarding the “great insect dying,” including an overview article, and an in-depth story looking at temperate insects in the U.S. and the European Union — the best studied for their abundance.
- We also utilize Mongabay’s position as a leader in tropical reporting to focus solely on insect declines in the tropics and subtropics, where lack of baseline data is causing scientists to rush to create new, urgently needed survey study projects. The final story looks at what we can do to curb and reverse the loss of insect abundance.

What’s in a name? The role of defining ‘wilderness’ in conservation
- In a recent opinion piece published in the journal Nature, several ecologists question recent efforts to delineate areas of wilderness and intactness around the world to define conservation targets.
- They argue that it would be better to build broadly supported consensus that includes the perspectives of local and indigenous communities.
- But the leader of a team that recently mapped out the remaining wilderness on land and in the ocean said that identifying these areas and developing new targets that incorporate their conservation is critical because current international agreements do not prioritize their protection.

Community-based conservation offers hope for Amazon’s giant South American turtle
- Rural communities began protecting the threatened giant South American turtle (Podocnemis expansa) along a 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) stretch of the remote Juruá River in Brazil’s Amazonas state back in 1977 – becoming the largest community-based conservation management initiative ever conducted in the Brazilian Amazon.
- A new study shows that these community stewards – who protect turtle nests and receive payment only in food baskets – have had incredible success not only in preserving endangered turtle species, but also in conserving riverine invertebrate and vertebrate species, including migratory birds, large catfish, caiman, river dolphins and manatees.
- Today, the Middle Juruá River community-protected beaches are “true islands of biodiversity, while other unprotected beaches are inhabited by few species. They are empty of life,” say study authors. On the protected beaches, turtle egg predation is a mere 2 percent. On unprotected beaches on the same river, predation rates are as high as 99 percent.
- The study also helps debunk a Brazilian and international policy that proposed the eviction of local traditional communities from newly instituted conservation units because they would be detrimental to conservation goals. Instead, researchers agree, traditional communities should be allowed to keep their homes and recruited as environmental stewards.

Worst mass extinction event in Earth’s history was caused by global warming analogous to current climate crisis
- The Permian period ended about 250 million years ago with the largest recorded mass extinction in Earth’s history, when a series of massive volcanic eruptions is believed to have triggered global climate change that ultimately wiped out 96 percent of marine species in an event known as the “Great Dying.”
- According to Justin Penn, a doctoral student at the University of Washington (UW), the Permian extinction can help us understand the impacts of climate change in our own current era.
- Penn led a team of researchers that combined models of ocean conditions and animal metabolism with paleoceanographic records to show that the Permian mass extinction was caused by rising ocean temperatures, which in turn forced the metabolism of marine animals to speed up. Increased metabolism meant increased need for oxygen, but the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen to meet those needs, and ocean life was left gasping for breath.

In the belly of the beast: journalist delves into wildlife trafficking
- Rachel Nuwer, who has written for Mongabay, Smithsonian, the New York Times and other publications, published a new book in September, “Poached,” which delves deeply into the global wildlife trafficking epidemic.
- Her book looks into the origins of the wildlife trade, its mechanisms, markets, and solutions. It covers charismatic mammals (elephants, rhinos and tigers), as well as the non-charismatic (pangolins and snakes).
- In this exclusive Mongabay Q&A, the author shares some of her most harrowing moments on the trail of global wildlife traffickers. The scariest thing of all: how accepting people can often be to the slaughter of millions of wild animals, and to the extermination of species, so as to be served a rare meat or a bogus cure.
- Still, Nuwer finds hope in the courageous individuals who fight the trade.

Map pinpoints ‘last chance’ locations of endangered species
- A new assessment updates the last known ranges for nearly 1,500 species of animals and plants at 853 locations around the world.
- The three-year effort is aimed at helping scientists, governments and conservationists identify the threats that could lead to the extinction of these species and find ways to address them.
- Governments are already using this information to identify target areas for conservation to protect the last remaining habitats of threatened species.
- Nearly half of the sites identified lack formal protection, despite many of them having been flagged as important more than a decade ago.

Haiti may lose all primary forest by 2035, mass extinction underway
- Analysis of satellite imagery and aerial photographs indicate that all of Haiti’s remaining primary forest will disappear in less than two decades if current deforestation rates continue. Results indicate primary forest cover in Haiti shrank from 4.4 percent in 1988 to just 0.32 percent in 2016, and that 42 of Haiti’s 50 largest mountains have lost all of their primary forest cover.
- These forests are home to endangered animals found nowhere else in the world; researchers say the country is already experiencing a mass extinction event due to habitat loss.
- Deforestation-intensified flooding has also been implicated in thousands of human deaths.
- Researchers say Haiti’s forest loss is driven largely by charcoal production and agriculture.

Dress like a polar bear: learning to love muskoxen at 15 below zero
- Enduring subzero temperatures that make your face freeze, dressing as a bear, and getting chased by an angry male muskox, are all in a day’s work for biologist Joel Berger. His experiences and scientific insights are featured in a new book that focuses on the lives and survival strategies of muskoxen and other cold-adapted animals.
- The autobiographical book, “Extreme Conservation: Life at the Edge of the World,” profiles Berger’s studies of inhospitable ecosystems, ranging from the high latitudes above the Arctic Circle, to the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau.
- Mongabay contributor Gloria Dickie interviews Berger to see what makes a human want to live and work in some of the Earth’s most brutal environments. The quick answer: to see how barely studied Northern and alpine large mammals — especially muskoxen — are adapting, or not adapting, to a rapidly warming world.
- Berger’s findings regarding instinctual and learned behavior, evolution and survival in a globally warmed world turn out to be revelatory not only to cold-adapted animals, but also relevant to wildlife species around the globe — and to the scientists who want to conserve them.

Another Cecil? Secrecy surrounds June trophy lion hunt
- A U.S. trophy hunter baited and killed a male lion on June 7th in Umbabat Private Nature Reserve, a part of Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa. Suspicions are that the animal shot was Skye, a beloved lion in the region.
- U.S. citizen Jared Whitworth allegedly paid nearly $80,000 for the hunt. Authorities say the animal killed wasn’t Skye, but have offered no proof. Skye hasn’t been seen since the day Whitworth made his kill, and one of the lion’s cubs was found dead, which often happens when other males take over a pride.
- If the killed lion was Skye, this would be a breach of South African regulations, because the lion was too young to be legally hunted. Authorities also say that if it is confirmed that the lion was baited, that could violate South African laws.
- In response, the U.S. Humane Society and Center for Biological Diversity sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking it to reject importation of the mystery lion’s body. In March, the Trump administration’s USFWS announced a new policy to consider African trophy import permits on a case-by-case basis.

Rwandan people and mountain gorillas face changing climate together
- The Critically Endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), has been brought back from extinction’s brink in Rwanda, with numbers in the Virunga Mountains around Volcanoes National Park estimated at 604 individuals in 2016, up from 480 in 2010. But long-time observers say climate change is bringing new survival challenges to the area.
- Longer and deeper droughts in recent years have caused serious water shortages, which impact both local farmers and the mountain gorillas. People now must often go deep into the park to find clean water, which increases the likelihood of contact with the great apes, which increases the likelihood for the transfer of human diseases to the animals.
- Hotter temps and dryer conditions could also pressure farmers to move into gorilla habitat in future, as they seek more productive cropland at higher altitudes. Also, as the climate changes, bamboo availability may be decreasing, depriving gorillas of a favorite food. This could force troops to forage outside the park in croplands, possibly leading to conflict.
- Forced changes in diet could impact gorilla nutrition, making the great apes more susceptible to disease. A major disease outbreak could be disastrous due to low population numbers. Scientists urge more research to understand how climate change affects human behavior, which then affects gorillas, and how the fate of the two primates intertwines.

Hunting, fishing causing dramatic decline in Amazon river dolphins
- Both species of Amazon river dolphin appear to be in deep decline, according to a recent study. Boto (Inia geoffrensis) populations fell by 94 percent and Tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis) numbers fell by 97 percent in the Mamirauá Reserve in Amazonas state, Brazil between 1994 and 2017, according to researchers.
- Difficult to detect in the Amazon’s murky waters, both species are listed as “Data Deficient” by the IUCN. But researchers maintain that if region-wide surveys were conducted both species would end up being listed as Critically Endangered.
- The team noticed scars from harpoon and machete injuries on the dolphins they caught. Interviews with fishermen confirmed the team’s suspicions: dolphins were being hunted for use as bait. The mammals also get entangled in nets and other fishing gear, are hunted as food, eliminated as pests, and suffer mercury poisoning.
- Researchers believe the passage and enforcement of new conservation laws could save Amazon river dolphins, and halt their plunge toward extinction. But a lack of political will, drastic draconian cuts to the Brazilian environmental ministry budget, and continued illegal dolphin hunting and fishing make action unlikely for now.

Pangolins on the brink as Africa-China trafficking persists unabated
- Pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world, with more than a million snatched from the wild in the past decade, according to IUCN estimates. The four Asian species have been hunted nearly to extinction, while the four African species are being poached in record numbers.
- The illegal trade largely goes to China and other East Asian nations, where pangolin meat is an expensive delicacy served to flaunt wealth and influence. Pangolin is also a preferred ingredient in traditional medicine in Asia and Africa. Traditional healers in Sierra Leone use pangolin to treat 59 medical conditions, though there is no evidence of efficacy.
- In 2016, pangolins were given the highest level of protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a multilateral treaty signed by 183 nations. But laws and enforcement in African nations, along illegal trade routes, and in Asia continue to be weak, with conservationists working hard to strengthen them.
- Pangolins don’t thrive in captivity, but the Tikki Hywood Foundation in Zimbabwe and Save Vietnam’s Wildlife have succeeded in rescuing confiscated pangolins and restoring them to the wild. Six U.S. zoos are trying to raise pangolins as part of the controversial Pangolin Consortium project — only 29 of 45 imported individuals remain alive.

Frogs may be ‘fighting back’ against deadly pandemic
- Chytridiomycosis is caused by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a type of chytrid fungus.
- Scientists believe Bd originated in Africa, and has spread around the world where it has contributed to the declines and extinctions of at least 200 amphibian species globally.
- But a new study finds populations of several Panamanian frog species exposed to Bd appear to have gained resistance to the pathogen. Previous research indicates U.S. frogs may also have developed resistance after exposure.
- The authors of the study say their findings offer hope for the survival of amphibians around the world. But they caution that detecting the remnant populations that survive infection and helping them persist and proliferate will require extensive monitoring efforts.

More than 40 percent of Madagascar’s freshwater life sliding toward extinction, IUCN finds
- In an assessment of 653 freshwater plant and animal species living on Madagascar and nearby islands, biologists found that 43 percent are threatened with extinction or there isn’t enough information to assess how well they’re doing.
- Nearly 80 percent of endemic plants examined in the study face extinction.
- The team lists unsustainable farming practices, deforestation, dam construction, mining and the overuse of natural resources, such as overfishing, as causes for the widespread declines.

Cerrado: appreciation grows for Brazil’s savannah, even as it vanishes
- The Brazilian Cerrado – a vast savannah – once covered two million square kilometers (772,204 square miles), an area bigger than Great Britain, France and Germany combined, stretching to the east and south of the Amazon.
- Long undervalued by scientists and environmental activists, researchers are today realizing that the Cerrado is incredibly biodiverse. The biome supports more than 10,000 plant species, over 900 bird and 300 mammal species.
- The Cerrado’s deep-rooted plants and its soils also sequester huge amounts of carbon, making the region’s preservation key to curbing climate change, and to reducing Brazil’s deforestation and CO2 emissions to help meet its Paris carbon reduction pledge.
- Agribusiness – hampered by Brazilian laws in the Amazon – has moved into the Cerrado in a big way. More than half of the biome’s native vegetation has already disappeared, as soy and cattle production rapidly replace habitat. This series explores the dynamics of change convulsing the region.

Trump to allow elephant and lion trophies on case-by-case basis
- President Obama banned U.S. citizens from bringing home elephant and lion trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe. In November, 2017, Trump’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed that ban until Trump himself overruled the USFWS, pausing the new rule until the president could make a final decision.
- This week, the USFWS said in a memorandum that it will permit U.S. citizens to bring lion and elephant hunting trophies home from Africa – potentially including Zimbabwe and Zambia – on a case-by-case basis.
- Conservationists largely responded negatively to the decision, critiquing it for offering little or no transparency, inviting corruption, and identifying no stated system or criteria for determining how permit selections will be made.
- A variety of lawsuits are ongoing which could still influence the shape of the new rule.

Beyond polar bears: Arctic animals share in vulnerable climate future
- The media has long focused on the impacts of climate change on polar bears. But with Arctic temperatures rising fast (this winter saw the warmest October to February temperatures ever recorded), a wide range of Arctic fauna appears to be at risk, though more studies are needed to determine precise causes, current effects on population, and future projections.
- Diminishing Arctic snow, especially in the spring, may leave wolverines without ideal places to den. Caribou and reindeer populations have been in serious decline due to natural population fluctuation, but scientists don’t know if their numbers will recover under changed climate conditions.
- Lemmings are also being impacted by diminishing snow, often leaving the rodents without cover in spring and autumn. Their decline could impact the predators that prey on them, including Arctic foxes, red foxes, weasels, wolverines, and snowy and short-eared owls.
- Snowy owls have raised concerns because the seabirds they hunt in winter, which congregate around small holes in the Arctic ice, could become more widely dispersed in broader stretches of open water and therefore be harder to prey on. Scientists say more study of Arctic wildlife is urgently needed, but funding and media attention remains sparse.

‘Photo Ark’ a quest to document global biodiversity: Q&A with photographer Joel Sartore and director Chun-Wei Yi
- The film “RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark” follows National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore as he travels the world snapping pictures of thousands of different animal species.
- In the last 12 years, Sartore has photographed nearly 8,000 species.
- “RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark” was named Best Conservation Film at the New York WILD Film Festival.

The ozone layer is still getting thinner, new study finds
- A team of scientists measured the total amount of ozone in the atmosphere and found that the overall concentration is about the same as it’s been, despite a measured boost in the upper layer.
- That discovery led the team to surmise that the lower level of the ozone layer is still getting thinner.
- It could be that climate change is forcing ozone in the atmosphere to spread out more quickly toward the poles.
- Another hypothesis is that some of the compounds that have replaced CFCs in the past three decades may similarly be stripping the atmosphere of ozone, just as CFCs did.

Muskox and other Arctic mammals are feeling the heat of climate change
- Past studies have looked at Arctic climate change impacts on wildlife primarily among marine animals and with polar bears, but there is little data on most terrestrial mammals.
- Now, As part of a broader attempt to develop an ecological baseline for Arctic wildlife, researchers have focused on muskoxen, the least studied mammal in North America.
- According to a new study, increasingly common extreme weather events – such as rain-on-snow and extremely dry winter conditions occurring in Russia and Alaska during muskox gestation – result in smaller head size among muskox young. Smaller animals generally have poor survivorship rates.
- Scientists say that, with the Arctic warming twice as fast as the world average, new studies are urgently needed on cold climate mammals including muskoxen, reindeer and caribou, to determine how rapidly escalating climate change up North is impacting wildlife, habitats and ecosystems.

Natural World Heritage Sites in trouble, especially in the Tropics
- From the Great Barrier Reef to the Galapagos Islands and the forests of central Africa, over a third of Natural World Heritage Sites designated by UNESCO are under threat from myriad problems.
- Of the seventeen locations with a critical conservation outlook, sixteen are in the Tropics, and the majority of those are in Africa. Less than half of African World Heritage sites received a “good” outlook. Lack of funding in developing nations is a major problem.
- Sites harboring rich biodiversity, such as Virunga and Garamba national parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras, are especially at risk.
- The most common threats to Natural World Heritage Sites are invasive non-native species, unsustainable tourism, poaching, hydroelectric dams, and logging, with climate change the fastest growing threat.

U.S. zoos learn how to keep captive pangolins alive, helping wild ones
- The Pangolin Consortium, a partnership between six U.S. zoos and Pangolin Conservation, an NGO, launched a project in 2014 which today houses fifty White-bellied tree pangolins (Phataginus tricuspis).
- Common knowledge says that pangolins are almost impossible to keep alive in captivity, but the consortium has done basic research to boost survival rates, traveling to Africa and working with a company, EnviroFlight, to develop a natural nutritious insect-derived diet for pangolins in captivity.
- While some conservationists are critical of the project, actions by the Pangolin Consortium have resulted in high captive survival rates, and even in the successful breeding of pangolins in captivity.
- The Pangolin Consortium is able to conduct basic research under controlled conditions at zoos on pangolin behavior and health – research that can’t be done in the wild. Zoos can also present pangolins to the public, educating about their endangered status, improving conservation funding.

U.S. court ruling complicates Trump’s elephant and lion policy
- A federal appeals court has found that the Obama administration did not follow proper procedures in 2014 when it banned importing elephant trophies from Zimbabwe. The USFWS failed to seek public comment at the time, among other infractions.
- This new ruling puts the Trump administration decision, made in November, ending the ban and allowing elephant trophy hunting imports, into question.
- Further complicating matters is Trump’s dubbing of the November USFWS decision as a “horror show,” and his putting of the policy on hold awaiting his response. To date, Trump has said nothing further.
- The way things stand now, U.S. hunters can import elephant trophies from South Africa and Namibia. They can import lion body parts from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. But the legality of importing elephant trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe remains in limbo.

Trump’s indecision on trophy hunting reignites heated debate
- On November 15, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted a ban on the U.S. import of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. The president put a hold on the order two days later, calling trophy hunting in a tweet a “horror show.” He has yet to make a final determination regarding the USFWS order.
- At the same time, Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the establishment of the International Wildlife Conservation Council. One goal of the body will be to promote with the U.S. public the “economic benefits that result from U.S. citizens traveling abroad to [trophy] hunt.”
- While trophy hunting does provide revenue for land and wildlife conservation in some special cases in Africa, the new U.S. council will likely have its work cut out for it, since many Americans no longer see trophy hunting of endangered species as ethical.
- Conservationists counter pro-trophy hunting advocates by noting that rampant government corruption in nations like Zimbabwe and Zambia make it unlikely that most trophy hunting revenues ever reach the African preserves, local communities or rangers that need the funding.

Trump budget undercuts U.S. commitment to global wildlife conservation
- President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would make extensive cuts to already underfunded programs to combat wildlife trafficking and to aid African and Asian nations in protecting elephants, rhinos, tigers, pangolins and other endangered wildlife.
- Trump’s budget proposes a 32 percent across-the-board cut in U.S. foreign assistance, affecting hundreds of sustainability, health and environmental programs.
- Major cuts would come to the Department of State, USAID, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service programs.
- Congress needs to approve a 2018 budget by December, and no one knows if it will approve the president’s desired deep cuts. However, hostility from the administration and many in the GOP to wildlife programs is unlikely to go away any time soon, with more and larger reductions in years to come.

Seychelles home to new species of caecilian, a legless amphibian
- The Petite Praslin caecilian (Hypogeophis pti) is the world’s newest — and possibly the smallest — caecilian, a type of legless amphibian.
- Scientists discovered the animal on the island of Praslin in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
- The new species is the seventh caecilian species found in the Seychelles, where the amphibians have been evolving for 64 million years.

Booming legal Amazon wildlife trade documented in new report
- Wildlife trade attention has recently focused on Africa. But a new report spotlights the brisk legal international trade in plants and animals from eight Amazon nations. The report did not look at the illegal trade, whose scope is largely unknown.
- The US$128 million industry exports 14 million animals and plants annually, plus one million kilograms by weight, including caiman and peccary skins for the fashion industry, live turtles and parrots for the pet trade, and arapaima for the food industry.
- The report authors note that such trade, conducted properly, can have benefits for national economies, for livelihoods, and even for wildlife — animals bred in captivity, for example, can provide scientists with vital data for sustaining wild populations.
- The report strongly emphasizes the need for monitoring, regulating and enforcing sustainable harvest levels of wild animals and plants if the legal trade is to continue to thrive, and if Amazonian forests and rivers are not to be emptied of their wildlife.

The world’s first biotacide (commentary)
- Many refer to it as the Sixth Mass Extinction, but it isn’t. It’s different.
- We are not simply in the sixth round of a continuing series of events that have devastated life on Earth. We are in the midst of the first of a new type of event, unlike the earlier mass extinction events.
- The five mass extinctions were naturally occurring cataclysmic events that completely changed the course of evolution and life on Earth. The current event is a ‘biotacide,’ an unnatural cataclysmic event that is changing the course of life on Earth.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Ongoing mass extinction causing ‘biological annihilation,’ new study says
- Building on research in which they showed that two species have gone extinct per year over the past century, a team of biologists analyzed the population trends for 27,600 vertebrates around the world.
- They found that nearly a third of the animals they looked at were on the decline.
- In a closer look at 177 well-studied mammals, the team found that all had lost 30 percent or more of their home ranges, and 40 percent had lost at least 80 percent of their habitat.

How a mass extinction event gave us the majority of frogs alive today
- Based on fossil records and the available genetic data, scientists have generally estimated that modern frog species first began to appear at a steady pace between 150 million and 66 million years ago. But new research shows that the timeframe for the first appearance of modern frog species was significantly tighter than that.
- While most frogs alive at the time were also wiped out by the mass extinction event 66 million years ago, the researchers theorize that, with so many other species having disappeared, there were suddenly an abundance of new ecological niches that the surviving frogs could fill. Moving into all of those different habitats essentially jumpstarted the evolutionary process and allowed for rapid frog diversification.
- Nearly 90 percent of the short-bodied, tailless amphibians roaming our planet right now first appeared in the years following the cataclysmic event that caused all dinosaurs but birds to go extinct, according to the study.

Study finds hundreds of thousands of tropical species at risk of extinction due to deforestation
- Scientists have long believed that the rate at which we are destroying tropical forests, and the habitat those forests represent, could drive a global mass extinction event, but the extent of the potential losses has never been fully understood.
- John Alroy, a professor of biological sciences at Australia’s Macquarie University, examined local-scale ecological data in order to forecast potential global extinction rates and found that hundreds of thousands of species are at risk if humans disturb all pristine forests remaining in the tropics.
- Mass extinction will occur primarily in tropical forests because Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity is so heavily concentrated in those ecosystems, Alroy notes in the study.

‘We can save life on Earth’: study reveals how to stop mass extinction
- Researchers analyzed 846 regional ecosystem types in 14 biomes in respect to the “Nature Needs Half” scientific concept that states proper functioning of an ecosystem requires at least half of it to be there.
- They found 12 percent of ecoregions had half their land areas protected while 24 percent had protected areas and native vegetation that together covered less than 20 percent.
- The study indicates the tropical dry forest biome is the most endangered. Closely behind it are two others: the tropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, and the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. All are highly biodiverse, providing habitat for many species.
- The researchers say while many ecosystems have been highly degraded, achieving 50 percent protection is still possible – if current conservation goals are scaled up.

Extinct mammoths and rhinos portend a grim future in a warming climate
- The new analysis shows that, while hunting caused problems for cold-dwelling rhinos and mammoths, and in some cases drove them from certain areas completely, the changing climate ultimately led to their extinction.
- Hunting pressure also eradicated some species of horses, but others, such as wild horses (E. przewalskii) and donkeys (E. asinus), were able to survive.
- Along with deer, these mammals probably survived because of their smaller sizes, increased mobility and higher reproductive rates than either mammoths or rhinos.
- With just a 1-degree Celsius rise in Earth’s temperature per century, we could see the same rise in temperatures over the next 500-1,000 years that took 10,000-15,000 years at the end of the last ice age.

Controversial policy could spur tiger trade in China
- In China, around 6,000 captive tigers are raised on “farms,” often under inhumane conditions, and their pelts sold for hefty sums in a poorly regulated market upheld through legal loopholes by the Chinese government. Breeding tigers on these farms is legal, but sale of their parts is not — something that may be about to change.
- The State Forestry Administration, tasked with protecting wildlife and overseeing China’s tiger farms, is now deciding whether to commercialize tigers by adding them to a list of legally farmed wildlife, paving the way for tiger parts to be sold to supply a growing Chinese luxury market.
- Long used in Chinese medicine, tiger products are now a status purchase for China’s wealthiest and most powerful. Collectors stockpile tiger bone wine; tiger skins are regularly gifted to seal business deals. Some wealthy Chinese hold “visual feasts” where guests watch a tiger be killed and cooked — then eat it.
- Breeding tigers for trade in their parts contravenes a 2007 decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a treaty signed by 183 nations, including China. There is pressure in China and abroad to shut down tiger farms, even as Chinese business interests lobby to expand a lucrative industry.

Climate change driving widespread local extinctions; tropics most at risk
- Climate change forces three fates on species: adapt, flee or die. A new meta-analysis compiled data from 27 studies to see how species distributions have changed over timescales of 10-159 years, and included 976 species. Almost half (47 percent) had seen some local populations disappear along the warming edge of their ranges.
- The tropics were especially vulnerable to climate change-driven local extinctions. The data showed that 55 percent of tropical and subtropical species experienced local extinctions, whereas the figure was only 39 percent for temperate species. Though the tropical data set was not large, this higher tropical risk concurs with past studies.
- Tropical species are at greater risk due to climate change because they live in some of the world’s hottest environments, so are already at the upper limit of known temperature adaptation, are restricted to small areas, particular rare habitats, and narrow temperature ranges, or have poor dispersal ability and slow reproductive rates.
- Scientists see multiple solutions to the problem: beyond the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions, they recommend conserving large core areas of habitat, and preserving strong connectivity between those core areas, so plants and animals can move more freely between them as required as the world warms.

Field Notes: Finding Jacobo; an Andean cat captivates conservationists
- The Andean cat ranges from remote areas of central Peru to the Patagonian steppe. Perfectly adapted to extreme environments, this small feline is threatened by habitat degradation and hunting, but most of all it suffers from anonymity: it’s hard to save an animal that no one ever sees.
- So few of these endangered cats are scattered across such vast landscapes that even most of their advocates have never seen the species they’re trying to protect. But the conservation efforts that could save this cat could also preserve the wild places where Andean cats live.
- When a male Andean cat was found wandering around a soccer field, Andean Cat Alliance members agreed to forego the extraordinary opportunity to study the animal in captivity, and try instead to return “Jacobo” to the wild.
- Andean Cat Alliance coordinators Rocío Palacios and Lilian Villalba orchestrated the multinational volunteer release effort. Conservationists equipped Jacobo with a GPS collar and hope that tracking his travels will reveal new data about this secretive cat, considered a symbol of the Andes.

Field Notes: Predicting how the pet trade spreads infectious disease
- The exotic animal trade is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the US is the world’s leading importer. While the US government is on the alert for well known animal-transmitted diseases, there is no mandatory health surveillance for most animals coming though US ports for commercial distribution.
- Live animal imports could bring new diseases into the US and infect endemic wildlife, with devastating consequences as, for example, was seen with the worldwide exposure of amphibians to Chytrid fungus which resulted in the decline of more than 200 species.
- Elizabeth Daut is drawing on her training as a veterinarian and her extensive experience with wildlife to create a computer model that evaluates the risk of importing infectious diseases to the US via the exotic animal trade.
- Predictions produced by her model could help prioritize which species and exporting countries might warrant extra attention at ports of entry. With a better understanding of disease risks, government agencies could improve surveillance and develop better infectious disease prevention plans.

Bright lights, big city, tiny frog: Romer’s tree frog survives Hong Kong
- Discovered in the 1950s, Romer’s tree frog has so far been declared extinct, rediscovered, immediately declared Critically Endangered, been seriously threatened by an international airport, and become the focus of one of the first ever successful, wholesale population relocation projects conducted for an amphibian.
- At just 1.5 to 2.5 centimeters (0.6 to 1 inch) in length, this little brown frog lives at just a few locations within the sprawl of Hong Kong Island, as well as on a few outlying islands. It lives in moist forest leaf litter on the forest floor, and depends on temporary fish-free pools of water for breeding.
- When Hong Kong planned a major new international airport within the shrinking habitat of the Romer’s tree frog, scientists responded quickly, studying the animal’s lifestyle, eating and breeding habits; they then instituted a captive breeding program at the Melbourne Zoo, and launched a restoration program. It worked.
- While some restoration site populations have since failed, others continue to thrive. And with new protections now in place, scientists hold out some hope that Romer’s tree frog may be a Hong Kong resident for many years to come.

‘Running out of time’: 60 percent of primates sliding toward extinction
- The assessment of 504 primate species found that 60 percent are on track toward extinction, and the numbers of 75 percent are going down.
- Agricultural expansion led to the clearing of primate habitat nearly three times the size of France between 1990 and 2010, impinging on the range of 76 percent of apes and monkeys.
- By region, Madagascar and Southeast Asia have the most species in trouble. Nearly 90 percent of Madagascar’s more than 100 primates are moving toward extinction.
- Primates also face serious threats from hunting, logging and ranching.

All I want for Christmas… a wildlife researcher’s holiday wish list
- They are some of the world’s most unique, beautiful (though sometimes, really ugly), little known, but always seriously threatened species. They’re among the many Almost Famous Asian Animals conservationists are trying to save, and which Mongabay has featured in 2016.
- The examples included here are Asia’s urbane fishing cat, Vietnam’s heavily trafficked pangolin, Central Asia’s at risk wild yaks and saiga, and Indonesia’s Painted terrapin. All of these, and many more, could benefit from a holiday financial boost.
- Mostly these creatures need the same things: research and breeding facilities; educational workshops; and really cool, high tech, high ticket, radio collars and tracking devices. These items come with price tags ranging from a few hundred bucks, to thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars.

Vanishing point: Bumblebee bat is world’s smallest; it’s also at risk
- Asia boasts 442 bat species, more than a third of the globe’s 1,200 species total. While many of these bats haven’t even been assessed by the IUCN, 7 are known to be Critically Endangered, 15 are Endangered and 44 are Vulnerable.
- The bumblebee bat roosts in caves in Thailand and Myanmar. While population estimates have risen recently due to the discovery of new populations, this small bat is Vulnerable. Its roosting caves and forest habitat are being disrupted by people.
- Bats worldwide are understudied and also unloved, partly due to poor public perceptions perpetuated by hundreds of horror movies with their portrayals of bloodsucking bats. The truth is that bats are incredibly beneficial to humans, eating prodigious amounts of insect pests.
- One of the most fascinating facts about the bumblebee bat is that its two geographically separated populations in Thailand and Myanmar might currently be undergoing speciation, a process scientists would like to observe. Of course, that won’t happen if nothing is done to keep this tiny mammal from going extinct.

Home for the holidays: Chimp exits war-torn Iraq, lands in Kenya
- After years of effort, animal welfare advocates have negotiated the freedom of Manno, a trafficked chimpanzee who had been smuggled out of Syria for $15,000 and into a private zoo in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the zoo, Manno suffered severely cramped conditions; he was fed a steady diet consisting mostly of snack foods.
- Freeing the animal involved diplomatic negotiations at the highest level in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Kenya. Manno arrived in Kenya on November 30, and is undergoing a 90-day health quarantine at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary.
- The young chimp still must be accepted into the Sanctuary population. This is a slow, possibly multiyear, process, requiring introduction to a foster mother, followed by introduction to female chimps, then other males in the community. Manno’s long acclimation to humans will not allow him to ever return to the wild.
- The chimp’s rescue was facilitated by individuals and organizations including Spencer Seykar, a Canadian high school teacher; Jason Mier, the executive director of Animals Lebanon; Jane Goodall and her institute; Daniel Stiles of the Project to End Great Ape Slavery; Dr. Stephen Ngulu, head wildlife veterinarian at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the staff of Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, and others.

Silent soldiers of the extreme, or why I’m glad I’m not a wild yak
- They are big mammals — wild yaks, muskoxen, saiga, takin and more — possessing a multitude of wildly ingenious evolutionary adaptations that allow them to live at the margins, in Asia’s coldest, toughest habitats. But they lack defenses against us and are at risk.
- While some of these magnificent animals have received scattered attention from conservationists and the media across the years, most do not benefit from the publicity boon — or budgets — accorded to rhinos and snow leopards.
- They are unsung, mostly unstudied, existing in the shadows — hidden by high elevations, deep snow, daunting deserts, and in our lack of knowledge and indifference. Scientist Joel Berger asks us to look at why we love only thin slivers of the natural world, while ignoring much of the bounty and beauty at the margins that could provide us hope and inspiration.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Where have all the lutungs gone? Mystery monkeys fast disappearing
- Asia boasts 16 species of lutung, in two ranges, one in south central and Southeast Asia (northeast India, southern China, Taiwan, Borneo, Thailand, Java and Bali), and the other at the southern tip of India and on Sri Lanka.
- Lutungs are tree dwellers, threatened by a rapid loss of tropical forests due to oil palm plantations, logging, and human population growth; the animals are also illegally hunted for bushmeat, traditional medicine and the pet trade.
- Like so many Almost Famous species, lutungs suffer from a lack of publicity, research, funding and local concern. Except for a few species, most are protected accidentally, when a forest in which lutungs live is preserved by a government or NGO trying to protect charismatic megafauna.
- Of the 16 lutung species, the IUCN assesses 4 as Vulnerable, 2 as Near Threatened, 7 as Endangered, 2 as Critically Endangered, and one as suffering from insufficient data for a conservation assessment. While surveys are lacking, all lutungs are known to be in decline, some alarmingly.

Hunted to the brink: Mammals in crisis
- A study pulling together information on threatened land mammals found that hunting for meat and medicine is driving 301 toward extinction.
- The authors raise concerns about food security for humans and ecosystem collapse if we don’t prevent this crisis for mammals.
- Proposed solutions include shoring up international markets for bushmeat and animal body parts, investments in laws and enforcement to protect wildlife, and increased education about the scale of the problem.

The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey: discovered and immediately endangered
- Discovered in 2010 and promptly listed as Critically Endangered, the Myanmar snub-nosed monkey lives only in the remote high forests of Northeast Myanmar, and across the border in China’s Gaoligong Mountain Natural Reserve. There are as few as 260-330 left in the wild.
- Hunting, illegal logging and proposed hydropower development, taking place within the context of a simmering civil conflict, threaten to push the species to extinction.
- On the plus side, conservationists have already gone a long way toward winning over local communities, getting them to stop hunting the animals; while the government’s approval of a newly proposed national park offers hope that the Myanmar snub-nosed monkey can be preserved.

Field Notes: Can we alter endangered species to be more adaptable?
- Endangered species often don’t reproduce well in captivity or when reintroduced to the wild. Researcher Stephanie Courtney Jones believes that by studying the “pesty” traits that help invasive species reproduce well, and to be successful in multiple habitats, we might be able to help endangered species do the same.
- Courtney Jones is studying an invasive mouse species to see how wild and captive animals differ over generations. While, for example, there are no external difference between captive and wild mice, internally, the more generations mice spend in captivity, the more their spleens, kidneys and gut length shrinks.
- She wonders if such changes are plastic, and if by introducing challenges — different foods or behaviors — endangered species could be made to display more useful survival traits. Exploiting this plasticity might, for example, reactivate a latent trait that would allow a species that today lives in just one narrow habitat to live across a wide range of habitats, helping it adapt to climate change.
- The researcher recognizes the challenges in her work. There are, for example, massive numbers of variables involved, and changing one specific trait can also unintentionally trigger the manifestation of other traits. And no one knows how altered endangered species might then interact within the environment.

How humans create as well as destroy species
- The effect of human activity on the natural world is profound, and if we want to gain a complete understanding of how it is altering the biosphere, then examining speciation is important.
- We know that speciation does exist, and so does human-induced speciation. If we want to use biodiversity as a measure of our impact on the biosphere, then surely speciation needs to be considered.
- Speciation can occur rapidly, and is not necessarily slower than extinction, so it is certainly relevant.

Climate change pledges not nearly enough to save tropical ecosystems
- Last December, 178 nations pledged to cut their carbon emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius — with an aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees. A study in the journal Nature has found that pledges so far are insufficient to keep the world from blasting past the 2 degree mark, even as scientists meet this week in Geneva to consider plans to reach the goal.
- While scientists have long known that extreme temperature rises in the Arctic presaged ecosystem devastation there, they believed that less extreme temperature rises in the tropics might have smaller, less serious impacts on biodiversity.
- Recent findings, however, show that major tropical ecosystems, ranging from coral reefs and mangroves to cloud forests and rainforests are already seriously threatened by climate change with likely dangerous repercussions for wildlife.
- While nations work to commit to, and achieve, their Paris commitments, scientists say it is vital that tropical countries continue to protect large core tracts of wild land linked by wild corridors in order to conserve maximum biodiversity — allowing for free, unhampered movement of species as climate change unfolds.

Out of sight, out of mind: Asia’s elusive Fishing Cat in trouble
- Fishing cats have a broad but discontinuous range, including wetland areas of mainland Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and perhaps Malaysia), as well as the islands of Sri Lanka and maybe Java. But these small nocturnal wild cats are rarely seen. Habitat loss has caused a drastic decline, and as few as 3,000 may remain in the wild.
- Fishing cats are prestigious swimmers, love the water, and eat mostly fish, but they also eat just about anything that they can catch, including birds, snakes, frogs, insects, terrestrial mammals such as civets and rodents, along with domestic livestock such as ducks and chickens.
- While primarily wetland species, Fishing cats have recently proven to be quite adaptable, and the animals have been discovered making night time raids on fishponds in the highly urbanized city of Colombo, Sri Lanka, population 650,000+.
- The major block to Fishing cat conservation is that it is almost unknown to the public and to funders. The animals are almost never seen in the wild, but researchers who have spent time with Fishing cats say that this species’ time in the public limelight could be on the verge of occurring.

Malayan Sun bear: bile trade threatens the World’s smallest bear
- The Malayan Sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) is listed as Vulnerable to Extinction by the IUCN, and is threatened by habitat loss and hunting for traditional medicine. Its range once extended across mainland Southeast Asia, to Sumatra and Borneo, but the animal now occurs only patchily throughout.
- Sun bears are a keystone species, vitally important to seed dispersal, pest control and nutrient cycling, so their extinction would likely bring major, though largely unstudied, impacts to tropical forests.
- Killing Sun bears is prohibited under international and national wildlife protection laws, but these laws are often poorly enforced, while international trade in bear bile to serve the traditional medicine industry continues to boom.
- Conservationists in Indonesia and elsewhere are studying Sun bear behavior to improve rescue and restoration efforts. Others want to eliminate commercial bear farms where bear bile is extracted, and end trafficking by creating strong national legislation, improving enforcement, and raising public awareness.

Unknown, ignored and disappearing: Asia’s Almost Famous Animals
- Asia is home to a vast array of primates and other mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish — all fascinating, all uniquely adapted to their habitats. Many are seriously threatened, but little known by the public.
- One conservation argument says that protecting charismatic species like tigers, rhinos and orangutans and their habitat will also protect lesser known species such as pangolins, langurs and the Malayan tapir. But this is a flawed safety net through which many little known species may fall into oblivion.
- Over the next six months, Mongabay will introduce readers to 20 Almost Famous Asian Animals — a handful of Asia’s little known fauna — in the hope that familiarity will help generate concern and action.
- In this first overview article, we rely as much on pictures as on words to profile some of Asia’s most beautiful, ugly, strange, magnificent and little known animals.

Conservation, Divided: in-depth series starts Tuesday
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future.
- Veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance completed the series over the course of eight months.
- Conservation, Divided launches next Tuesday, April 26. Stories will run weekly through May 17.

Will mining company drive mass extinction of Madagascar’s wildlife?
- An invasive toxic toad, called the Asian toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus), is rapidly spreading throughout the island country, threatening the survival of its rare and endemic species, scientists say.
- A number of factors point towards Ambatovy mine as the most likely culprit, experts allege in a report.
- Despite the growing evidence, Ambatovy has shown no real effort to address the problem, scientists say.

Here Are The Top 15 Environmental Stories of 2015
- This was a year that saw President Obama reject the Keystone pipeline as historic droughts and a vicious wildfire season wracked the western US and Canada.
- The world committed to climate action in Paris as Southeast Asia was choking on the worst Indonesian haze in years.
- Shell aborted its plans to drill in the Arctic for the “foreseeable” future and ExxonMobil is being investigated for lying to the public about climate risks.

Biologist finds “we are on pace to create a mass extinction” of frogs worldwide
- John Alroy, a professor of biology at Australia’s Macquarie University, says “a runaway train of extinction is now likely to produce what would be seen as a global mass extinction.”
- A large majority of the 200 extinct frog species were probably lost in the past few decades, just as extinctions and severe population crashes began accelerating in the 1970s and 1980s.
- The current extinction rate for frogs is four orders of magnitude higher than the long-term background average, Alroy found.

World on course to lose 1 in 6 species to climate change – South America, Australia, New Zealand face even more extinctions

Renowned biologist E.O Wilson, assessing Earth’s sixth great extinction now underway, described the future as a shrinking keyhole through which all species must pass as humanity responds to, and hopefully averts catastrophe. A new study published in the journal Science shows that this keyhole could drastically narrow with each degree increase in global temperature due […]
Ongoing overkill: loss of big herbivores leading to ’empty landscapes’

Megaherbivore collapse particularly acute in Asia and Africa. Hunting may be the single greatest threat to the world’s endangered megaherbivores. Skinned antelope for sale in Guinea, Africa. Photo by: Terry Sunderland for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Ten thousand years from now, human historians—or alien ones—may view the current wave of biodiversity loss and […]
Empty seas? Scientists warn of an industrialized ocean

If nothing done, extinction levels in the ocean could soon resemble those on land Bluefin tuna. Although most bluefin tuna species have been decimated by overfishing, they are still caught. Photo by: Stewart Butterfield. This is obvious, but still important: humans are not a marine species. Even as we have colonized most of our planet’s […]
To collect or not to collect? Experts debate the need for specimens

Modern day expeditions face a collection dilemma as scientists consider ethics and endangerment A tray of Eriocnemis (a genus of hummingbird) specimens, Swedish Museum of Natural History – Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet,Stockholm, CC BY-SA 3,0 License, Wikimedia. In 1912, a group of intrepid explorers led by Rollo and Ida Beck, widely acknowledged to be the foremost marine […]
Egyptian art helps chart past extinctions of big mammals

What happened to Egypt’s Serengeti-like ecosystem? Art helps scientists unravel the past The scientists found that major disappearances coincided with climate and environmental changes. Click here to see a Brazilian interactive graphic of the extinctions. Graphic by: William Mariotto and Vinicius Sueiro, Estadao. Life in modern Egypt clings to the Nile River. This crowded green […]
It only took 2,500 people to kill off the world’s biggest birds

All of the world’s moas exterminated by just a few thousand people A Haast’s eagle divebombing a pair of moas. A new study finds that it only took a few thousand people to kill off the nine species of moas found on New Zealand, an act which also led to the extinction of their only […]
Pet trade likely responsible for killer salamander fungus

New chytrid fungus may threaten hundreds of salamander species As if amphibians weren’t facing enough—a killer fungal disease, habitat destruction, pollution, and global warming—now scientists say that a second fungal disease could spell disaster for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of species. A new paper published today in Science finds that this new disease has the potential […]
The Search for Lost Frogs: one of conservation’s most exciting expeditions comes to life in new book

An interview with Robin Moore, author of the new book, In Search of Lost Frogs: The Quest to Find the World’s Rarest Amphibians The Cuchumatan golden toad (Incilius aurarius) from the Cuchumatanes mountains of Guatemala, found during a search for lost salamanders. This species was only discovered as recently as 2012. It is so new […]
How do we save the world’s vanishing old-growth forests?

Scientists say both rich and developing countries must recognize primary forests as a conservation priority. Primary rainforest in Imbak Canyon in the state of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The forest is home to pygmy elephants, clouded leopard, orangutans, banteng, and proboscis monkeys among thousands of other species. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. There’s nothing in the […]
Why conservationists need a little hope: saving themselves from becoming the most depressing scientists on the planet

Have conservationists become too pessimistic for their own good—and the good of their cause? Tad Lo waterfalls in Laos. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Here’s a challenge: take a conservationist out for a drink and ask them about their work. Nine times out of ten—or possibly more—you’ll walk away feeling frustrated, despondent, and utterly hopeless. […]
13 newly-discovered birds declared extinct

The only believed drawing of an Oceanic parrot (Eclectus infectus) from life made in 1793 in Tonga. Illustration by: Unknown. In a recent update of the IUCN Red List, scientists have identified 13 new bird species that have gone extinct since 1500. In total the list now finds that at least 140 bird species gone […]
It’s not just extinction: meet defaunation

Unknown orange butterfly in Sumatra. Scientists believe we are in the midst of a defaunation crisis, which is impacting animals, and ecological services, the world over. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Get ready to learn a new word: defaunation. Fauna is the total collection of animals—both in terms of species diversity and abundance—in a given […]
Only 15 percent of world’s biodiversity hotspots left intact

Green under siege: world’s biodiversity hotspots 85 percent impacted With only 3.5 percent intact vegetation left in the Atlantic Forest, it is the world’s most imperiled biodiversity hotspot. This is an image of intact forest in Intervales State Park. Photo by: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Creative Commons 3.0. The world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots—which harbor 75 percent of […]
Unrelenting population growth driving global warming, mass extinction

Scientists need to start speaking out on overpopulation Suburb development in Colorado Springs, Colorado U.S. The population of the U.S. is currently growing at around 0.7 percent annually. Photo by: David Shankbone. It took humans around 200,000 years to reach a global population of one billion. But, in two hundred years we’ve septupled that. In […]
Extinction rates are 1,000x the background rate, but it’s not all gloomy

Andinobates cassidyhornae is a very recently described poison dart frog from the Western Andes of Colombia. It is typical of recently described species in having a very small geographical range and being in an area where habitat loss is a major threat to its existence. Photo by: Luis Mazariegos. Current extinction rates are at the […]
The quiet zoo revolution

How the world’s best zoos are working to save biodiversity in an age of extinction. Tiger meets human at the Minnesota Zoo. Physical spaces where people can easily encounter and connect with wild species, zoos and aquariums are unique institutions. Yet in an age of environmental crises, are they doing enough to save species from […]
Apocalypse now? Climate change already damaging agriculture, acidifying seas, and worsening extreme weather

It’s not just melting glaciers and bizarrely-early Springs anymore; climate change is impacting every facet of human civilization from our ability to grow enough crops to our ability to get along with each other, according to a new 2,300-page report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The massive report, from the Nobel Prize-winning […]
Blame humans: new research proves people killed off New Zealand’s giant birds

Artist’s rendition of the coastal moa, which a new paper says was hunted to extinction, along with all of its relative, by humans. Image by: Michael B. H./Creative Commons 3.0. Moas were a diverse group of flightless birds that ruled over New Zealand up to the arrival of humans, the biggest of these mega-birds stood […]
Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record – book review

Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record reaches into your imagination and draws you closer to the final days of a variety of extinct animals on Earth. Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record is filled with poignant and powerful first-hand accounts, photographic records, and illustrations. Written by Errol Fuller, a global expert on extinctions, […]
The lemur end-game: scientists propose ambitious plan to save the world’s most imperiled mammal family

Verreaux’s Sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), listed as Vulnerable, in a heated chase. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Due to the wonderful idiosyncrasies of evolution, there is one country on Earth that houses 20 percent of the world’s primates. More astounding still, every single one of these primates—an entire distinct family in fact—are found no-where else. The […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Connecting forest fragments

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Stuart Pimm Aerial view of forest fragment in Costa Rica. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Dr. Stuart Pimm is an expert in extinctions: why they happen, how fast they happen, and how they can be prevented. Reconnecting forest fragments and avoiding fragmentation, according to Pimm, are among the […]
Featured video: what would a world without wildlife look like?
Greenpeace today released a clever video highlighting the global biodiversity crisis with a little help from a much-beloved Disney film. While it might seem unlikely the Africa’s animals will vanish, this is exactly what’s happening in parts of the continent due to poaching, unsustainable bushmeat trade, habitat loss, massive development projects that are often poorly […]
Governments should respond to ocean acidification ‘as urgently as they do to national security threats’

The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday. An international audit of the health of the oceans has […]
‘Ecological Armageddon’: mammals vanish entirely from forest fragments after 25 years

As tropical forests worldwide are increasingly cut into smaller and smaller fragments, mammal extinctions may not be far behind, according to a new study in Science. Tracking native smalls mammals in Chiew Larn Reservoir, Thailand for over 25 years, scientists found a stunning and rapid decline in mammal populations, until most forests were almost completely […]
Climate change could kill off Andean cloud forests, home to thousands of species found nowhere else

One of the richest ecosystems on the planet may not survive a hotter climate without human help, according to a sobering new paper in the open source journal PLoS ONE. Although little-studied compared to lowland rainforests, the cloud forests of the Andes are known to harbor explosions of life, including thousands of species found nowhere […]
Forest fragmentation leading to higher extinction rates

The world’s species are in worse trouble than widely-assumed, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which reevaluates how scientists estimate extinction rates. The new model takes into account the impact of forest fragmentation on extinction rates for the first time, filling in a gap in past […]
Nutrient deficiency in Amazon rainforest linked to megafauna extinction

Around twelve thousand of years ago, the Amazon was home to a menagerie of giant creatures: the heavily armored glyptodons, the elephant-sized ground sloth, and the rhino-like toxodons among others. But by 10,000 B.C. these monsters were largely gone, possibly due to overhunting by humans or climatic changes. There’s no question that the rapid extinction […]
Climate could warm more rapidly than any time in the last 65 million years

According to a new review of 27 climate models, scientists say the global climate is likely to experience a warmth as great as any in the last 65 million years, only much, much faster. According to the study published today in Science, the Earth’s land temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) […]
Over 700 species added to the threatened categories on the IUCN Red List (photos)

In another sign of the global biodiversity crisis, the IUCN Red List has added 715 species to its threatened categories of Vulnerable, Endangered, and Critically Endangered in this year’s update. Some of these species were evaluated by the IUCN Red List for the first time while others saw their conditions deteriorate, such as the the […]
Over 500 scientists warn we ‘are causing alarming levels of harm to our planet’

A new consensus statement by 520 scientists from around the world warns that global environmental harm is putting at risk the happiness and well-being of this and future generations. “Based on the best scientific information available, human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current path,” […]
Biosphere conservation: monumental action is critical to avert global environmental crisis

Human-caused changes to our biosphere—the global total of the world’s ecosystems—are now so great and alarmingly rapid that human lives and societies undoubtedly face epic challenges in the near future as our biosphere deteriorates, planetary boundaries are reached, and tipping points exceeded. We may survive, we may painfully adapt, but it is a fair bet […]
Future generations to pay for our mistakes: biodiversity loss doesn’t appear for decades

The biodiversity of Europe today is largely linked to environmental conditions decades ago, according to a new large-scale study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Looking at various social and economic conditions from the last hundred years, scientists found that today’s European species were closely aligned to environmental impacts on the […]
Humans killed over 10 percent of the world’s bird species when they colonized the Pacific Islands

One of the survivors: the Takahē, a flightless rail from New Zealand. Photo by: © ZSL. Around 4,000 years ago intrepid Polynesian seafarers made their way into an untamed wilderness: the far-flung Pacific Islands. Over a thousands or so years, they rowed from one island to another, stepping on shores never yet seen by humans. […]
Warlords, sorcery, and wildlife: an environmental artist ventures into the Congo

Roger Peet (in blue shirt) posing with Forest Rangers. Photo courtesy of Roger Peet. Last year, Roger Peet, an American artist, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to visit one of the world’s most remote and wild forests. Peet spent three months in a region that is largely unknown to the outside world, […]
Will Amazon species lose the climate change race?

Insect nymph in Manu National Park, Peru. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Deforestation could increase the risk of biodiversity loss in the Amazon by forcing species to migrate further in order to remain at equilibrium with changing climates, says new research. “As migration models are made more realistic through the inclusion of multiple climatic, biotic, […]
Wealthy nations, excluding U.S., pledge to double funds for biodiversity

Biodiversity-rich rainforests make way for palm oil plantations in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Although negotiations came down to the wire, nations finally brokered a new deal at the 11th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Hyderabad, India; at its heart is a pledge to double resources from wealthier countries […]
India pledges over $60 million for biodiversity, but experts say much more needed

A black buck in Mahavir Harini Vanasthali National Park near Hyderabad, India. The black buck is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. Habitat loss and poaching remain threats even as the black buck recovers from historical lows in the 1970s. Photo by: Pranav Yaddanapudi. The Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, pledged […]
North American freshwater fish going extinct at rate over 800 times the fossil record

Since 1898 North America has lost at least 39 species of freshwater fish, according to a new study in Bioscience, and an additional 18 subspecies. Moreover, the loss of freshwater fish on the continent seems to be increasing, as the rate jumped by 25 percent since 1989, though even this data may be low. “Estimates […]
Still time to save most species in the Brazilian Amazon
- Once habitat is lost or degraded, a species doesn’t just wink out of existence: it takes time, often several generations, before a species vanishes for good.
- A new study in Science investigates this process, called “extinction debt”, in the Brazilian Amazon and finds that 80-90 percent of the predicted extinctions of birds, amphibians, and mammals have not yet occurred.
- But, unless urgent action is taken, the debt will be collected, and these species will vanish for good in the next few decades.

96 percent of the world’s species remain unevaluated by the Red List

The IUCN Red List releases its 2012 update, adding 247 species to its threatened categories. The king cobra has been evaluated by the IUCN Red List for the first time and listed as Vulnerable. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Nearly 250 species have been added to the threatened categories—i.e. Vulnerable, Endangered, and Critically Endangered—in this […]
Scientists give world leaders ‘Fs’ on climate change, biodiversity, and desertification

Aerial view of Egypt’s drylands. Desertification is a global problem, but a UN treaty on the issue has largely been ignored. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. It seems world leaders may need to retake environmental studies. As the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development opens, the scientific journal, Nature, has evaluated the progress made on three […]
Scientists: if we don’t act now we’re screwed

Aerial view of the infamous Río Huaypetue gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon. This remote but massive gold mine is known for the destruction of primary rainforest, widespread mercury pollution, and child and slave labor. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Scientists warn that the Earth may be reaching a planetary tipping point due to a […]
Scientists to Rio+20: save biodiversity to save ourselves

An as yet unidentified species of gecko on the island of Java, Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. World leaders need to do much more to protect the Earth’s millions of species for the services they provide, according to a new scientific consensus statement in Nature based on over 1,000 research papers. Written by 17 […]
Island bat goes extinct after Australian officials hesitate

Now extinct: the Christmas Island pipistrelle. Photo by: Lindy Lumsden. Nights on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean will never again be the same. The last echolocation call of a tiny bat native to the island, the Christmas Island pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi), was recorded on August 26th 2009, and since then there has been only […]
Wildlife in the tropics plummets by over 60 percent

Devastated rainforest in Indonesian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In 48 years wildlife populations in the tropics, the region that holds the bulk of the world’s biodiversity, have fallen by an alarming 61 percent, according to the most recent update to the Living Planet Index. Produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) […]
Biodiversity loss cripples plant growth

Jungle tree in Ujung Kulon National Park on the Indonesian island of Java. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. For decades scientists have been warning that if global society continues with “business-as-usual” practices the result will be a mass extinction of the world’s species, an extinction event some researchers say is already underway. However, the direct […]
For Earth Day, 17 celebrated scientists on how to make a better world

Observations of planet Earth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005. Photo by: NASA. Seventeen top scientists and four acclaimed conservation organizations have called for radical action to create a better world for this and future generations. Compiled by 21 past winners of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize, a new paper […]
Cinderella animals: endangered species that could be conservation stars

Somali wild ass and mother in nature. The African wild ass could be a conservation flagship species according to a new paper. Photo by: Bigstock. A cursory look at big conservation NGOs might convince the public that the only species in peril are tigers, elephants, and pandas when nothing could be further from the truth. […]
Humans killed off magnificent Australian megafauna, flipping rainforest into savannah

An extinct marsupial mega-herbivore, Diprotodon optatum. Drawing by Peter Murray. Image © Science/AAAS. The theory that humans, and not climate change, was primarily responsible for the extinction of giant marsupials in prehistoric Australia takes another step forward with a new study in Science. Exploring sediment cores for past evidence of big herbivores, researchers found that […]
Carbon emissions paving way for mass extinction in oceans

Ocean acidification growing at a rate faster than anytime in 300 million years. To the left a discoaster of marine plankton before an ocean acidification event 56 million years ago, and to the right its counterpart corroded by ocean acidification event. Image taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Human emissions of carbon dioxide may […]
When giant coyotes roamed the Earth

Coyote feeding on elk carcass in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by: Jim Peaco/U.S. National Park Service. Not long ago, geologically speaking, coyotes (Canis latrans) were bigger and more robust than today’s animals. In the late Pleistocene, over 10,000 years ago, coyotes rivaled grey wolves (Canis lupus) in size. But, according to a new paper in […]
Seals, birds, and alpine plants suffer under climate change

The number of species identified by scientists as vulnerable to climate change continues to rise along with the Earth’s temperature. Recent studies have found that a warmer world is leading to premature deaths of harp seal pups (Pagophilus groenlandicus) in the Arctic, a decline of some duck species in Canada, shrinking alpine meadows in Europe, […]
Civilization shifting: a new leaderless era

Self-organizing networks and open-source ventures in the age of global disruption “The American Empire, and the global political economy it has spawned, is unraveling—not because of some far-flung external danger, but under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is unsustainable—already in overshoot of the earth’s natural systems, exhausting its own resource base, alienating […]
Unanimous agreement among scientists: Earth to suffer major loss in species

The thylacine, the dodo, the great auk, the passenger pigeon, the golden toad: these species have become symbols of extinction. But they are only the tip of the recent extinction crisis, and according to a survey of 583 conservation scientists, they are only the beginning. In a new survey in Conservation Biology, 99.5 percent of […]
New site is a match-maker for world’s endangered frogs

The golden toad (Bufo periglenes) is one of well-over a hundred frogs that are believed to have gone extinct over the past few decades. Photo by: US Fish and Wildlife Service. A new initiative by the conservation group, Amphibian Ark, hopes to match lonely, vanishing frogs with a prince/princess to to save them. Dubbed FrogMatchMaker.com […]
11 challenges facing 7 billion super-consumers

The Turkana tribe of northern Kenya are buffeted by constant drought and food insecurity, which recent research says may be worsening due to climate change. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about Halloween this year is not the ghouls and goblins taking to the streets, but a baby born somewhere in […]
Five ways to feed billions without trashing the planet

Soy fields meet Amazon rainforest in Brazil. A new study argues that the destruction of rainforests for agriculture must stop. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. At the end of this month the UN predicts global population will hit 7 billion people, having doubled from 3.5 billion in less than 50 years. Yet even as the […]
UN calls for secure contraceptives as wildlife group hands out Endangered Species condoms

Sometime at the end of this month, the seventh billion person on Earth will be born: that’s seven billions mouths to feed, seven billion throats to water, and seven billion bodies to keep warm. But the population continues to rise: experts believe the global human population could hit 10 billion by 2050. A UN meeting […]
Florida loses two species to extinction

The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced yesterday that the believe two species in Florida have vanished into the long dark night: the South Florida rainbow snake (Farancia erytrogramma seminola) and the Florida fairy shrimp (Dexteria floridana). The species were under review for possibly being added to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but it’s likely […]
Scientists find frog genes that provide immunity to extinction plague

Scientist trying to save a La Loma tree frog, a species imperiled by chytridiomycosis at Panama’s Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Scientists with Cornell have discovered genetics that may provide immunity to frogs in face of the killer amphibian-disease chytridiomycosis. This plague, which is spreading to amphibian populations worldwide, is […]
Controversial study finds intensive farming partnered with strict protected areas is best for biodiversity

Tropical forest in Ghana, an irreplaceable habitat for many species. Photo courtesy of Ben Phalan. Given that we have very likely entered an age of mass extinction—and human population continues to rise (not unrelated)—researchers are scrambling to determine the best methods to save the world’s suffering species. In the midst of this debate, a new […]
World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse
World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse clearly describes in terms of national and social security how the looming current threat to our collective global future is not from catastrophic war as many describe in hindsight the 20th Century, rather from cataclysmic climate change, biodiversity loss, and water degradation. A world […]
Humanity knows less than 15 percent of the world’s species

Unidentified butterfly in Sumatra. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Scientists have named, cataloged, and described less than 2 million species in the past two and a half centuries, yet, according to an new innovative analysis, we are no-where near even a basic understanding of the diversity of life on this small blue planet. The study […]
Over 80 percent of rediscovered species still face extinction

Imagine if your job was to locate extinct species. In 2010, biologists with The Search for Lost Frogs set out on a tropical mission hoping to confirm the existence of frog species not seen in decades. The team recovered proof of four out of a hundred missing species, including a toad among the expedition’s Top […]
The glass is half-full: conservation has made a difference

Focused conservation efforts, including reintroduction of captive individuals into the wild, have saved the golden lion tamarin from extinction. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Don’t despair: that’s the message of a new paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, which argues that decades of conservation actions at multiple scales have had a positive impact for […]
Protected areas not enough to save life on Earth

Sprawl in the desert: urban sprawl spreading out from Las Vegas. A new study finds that to save life on Earth, society must confront human population and overconsumption of resources. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Since the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 protected areas have spread across the world. Today, over 100,000 protected […]
First ever picture of long lost rainbow toad

Not seen since 1924 and never photographed: an adult female Borneo Rainbow Toad, also referred to as Sambas Stream Toad (Ansonia latidisca). Photo © Dr. Indraneil Das. Scientists are elated after the surprise rediscovery of a wildly-colored frog not seen for 87 years and never before photographed—until now. The Bornean rainbow toad, also known as […]
Climate change to push over 10 percent of the world’s species to extinction by 2100

Scientists have predicted for decades that climate change could have a grave impact on life on Earth, which is already facing numerous threats from habitat loss, over-exploitation, pollution, invasive species, and other impacts. However, empirical proof of extinctions–and even endangerment–due to climate change have been difficult to come by. A new study in the Proceeding […]
Ocean prognosis: mass extinction

A new report finds that the oceans are facing a mass extinction. One day many of the world’s marine species may only be found in aquariums, if at all, such as this green sea anemone in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Multiple and converging human impacts on the world’s oceans are […]
Over 900 species added to endangered list during past year

Previously unpublished 17th Century Dutch sketch of the dodo, taken from a real specimen, either alive or stuffed. Dronte means dodo in Dutch. The past twelve months have seen 914 species added to the threatened list by the world’s authority of species endangerment, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List. Over […]
Amphibian-plague strikes frogs harder in pristine ecosystems

Hyloscirtus colymba tree frog being fed after being treated for Chytridiomycosis. Photo taken by Rhett A. Butler at Summit Park. Frog populations worldwide are facing two apocalypses: habitat destruction and a lethal plague, known as chytridiomycosis. Over 30 percent of the world’s amphibians are currently threatened with extinction and it is thought at least 120 […]
New paper stirs up controversy over how scientists estimate extinction rates

The golden toad (Bufo periglenes) is one of well-over a hundred frogs that are believed to have gone extinct over the past few decades. Photo by: US Fish and Wildlife Service. A new paper in Nature negating how scientists estimate extinction rates has struck a nerve across the scientific community. The new paper clearly states […]
3,000 amphibians, 160 land mammals remain undiscovered—that is if they don’t go extinct first

This fruit bat was first discovered in a remote tropical forest in Papua New Guinea. Although scientists have yet to name the species, the popular media has already dubbed it the ‘Yoda bat’ given its resemblance to the Jedi master character from the Star Wars series. Fruit bats are vital to rainforests as they disperse […]
Save the Frogs Day focuses on banning Atrazine in US

This year’s Save the Frogs Day (Friday, April 29th) is focusing on a campaign to ban the herbicide Atrazine in the US with a rally at the steps of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Kerry Kriger, executive director of frog-focused NGO Save the Frogs! and creator of Save the Frogs Day, says that Atrazine is […]
New method to measure threat of extinction could help conservationists prioritize

Researchers have developed a new method to predict how close species are to extinction. Dubbed SAFE (Species Ability to Forestall Extinction) the researchers believe the new tool, published in the Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, should help conservationists select which species to focus on saving and which, perhaps controversially, should be let go. “The idea […]
More biodiversity equals cleaner water, but why?

New study shows how greater biodiversity more efficiently scrubs pollutants from freshwater. A new landmark study not only proves that adding more species to a freshwater stream linearly increases the ecosystem’s ability to clean pollutants, but also shows why. The study, published in Nature found that by increasing the biodiversity of a lab controlled mini-stream […]
Kepunahan massal keenam di dunia masih bisa dicegah

Spray toad Kihansi saat ini punah keberadaannya di alam liar setelah habitatnya terkena dampak sebuah bendungan. Foto oleh: Rhett A. Butler. Jadi, ini kabar baiknya: kepunahan massal, keenam di dunia, masih dapat dicegah. Tetapi berita buruknya: jika spesies yang ada saat ini terancam punah -bahkan selama seribu tahun berikutnya- homo-sapien akan menjadi satu-satunya spesies yang […]
15 conservation issues to watch

Deforestation near Gunung Palung in Indonesian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler Deforestation, oil spills, coral acidification: these are just a few examples of ongoing, and well-researched, environmental changes that are imperiling the world’s biodiversity. But what issues are on the horizon? At the end of 2010, experts outlined in Trends in Ecology & Evolution […]
Rich plant diversity leads to increased productivity, ecosystem services

Gunung Leuser Rain Forest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Rainforests are the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A new study finds that diversity of plant species matters—big time. Analyzing nearly 600 research studies, the meta-study in the American Journal of Botany found that productivity in biodiverse plant ecosystems […]
World’s sixth mass extinction still preventable

The Kihansi spray toad is currently extinct in the wild after its habitat was impacted by a dam. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. So, here’s the good news: a mass extinction, the world’s sixth, is still preventable. But the bad news: if species currently threatened with extinction vanish—even over the next thousand years—homo-sapiens will be […]
Parks key to saving India’s great mammals from extinction

Tigress photo captured at Nagarahole National park by camera trap. Copyright: K Ullas Karanth/WCS. An interview with Krithi Karanth, a part of our Interviews with Young Scientists series. Krithi Karanth grew up amid India’s great mammals—literally. Daughter of conservationist and scientist Dr. Ullas Karanth, she tells mongabay.com that she saw her first wild tigers and […]
Top 25 most endangered turtles: Asian species in crisis

Surviving hundreds of millions of years on Earth have not saved turtles from facing extinction at human hands. A new report by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Turtle Conservation Coalition, identifies the world’s 25 most imperiled turtles, including one that is practically assured extinction: ‘Lonesome George’ the last Abdington Island tortoise in the […]
Worldwide search for ‘lost frogs’ ends with 4% success, but some surprises

Unprecedented search evidence of ‘Sixth Great Extinction’. Last August, a group of conservation agencies launched the Search for Lost Frogs, which employed 126 researchers to scour 21 countries for 100 amphibian species, some of which have not been seen for decades. After five months, expeditions found 4 amphibians out of the 100 targets, highlighting the […]
Not enough data on world’s tropical plants to predict impact of warming world

How many tropical plant species are threatened by climate change? Which plants have big enough ranges to survive a warming world, not to mention deforestation? How likely is it that the tropics are undergoing a current mass extinction? These questions may appear straight forward, but a new study in Global Change Biology finds that researchers […]
Earth could see 4 degrees Celsius warming in less than a lifetime

By the time children born this year reach 50 years old, the Earth could be 4 degrees Celsius warmer (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warns a new study as governments meet in Cancun for this year’s UN climate summit, which is not expected to produce an agreement. Last year governments pledged in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord to […]
Losing nature’s medicine cabinet
- In all the discussions of saving the world’s biodiversity from extinction, one point is often and surprisingly forgotten: the importance of the world’s species in providing humankind with a multitude of life-saving medicines so far, as well as the certainty that more vital medications are out there if only we save the unheralded animals and plants that contain cures unknown.
- Already, species have provided humankind everything from quinine to aspirin, from morphine to numerous cancer and HIV-fighting drugs. “As the ethnobotanist Dr. Mark Plotkin commented, the history of medicine can be written in terms of its reliance on and utilization of natural products,” physician Christopher Herndon told mongabay.com.
- Herndon is co-author of a recent paper in the journal Biotropica, which calls for policy-makers and the public to recognize how biodiversity underpins not only ecosystems, but medicine.

Mass extinction fears widen: 22 percent of world’s plants endangered

Scientific warnings that the world is in the midst of a mass extinction were bolstered today by the release of a new study that shows just over a fifth of the world’s known plants are threatened with extinction—levels comparable to the Earth’s mammals and greater than birds. Conducted by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the […]

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