topic: Predators

topic: Predators

Social media activity version | Lean version

Final cheetah conservationists freed in Iran, but the big cat’s outlook remains grim
- In April, the last four cheetah conservationists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation jailed in 2018 for alleged espionage were released from prison in Tehran; four of their colleagues had been released earlier, while one had died in custody.
- The case had a chilling effect on scientific collaboration and efforts to save the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), which is today found only in Iran, with fewer than 30 believed to remain in the wild.
- The cheetah faces a range of threats, chief among them vehicle collisions: some 52% of cheetah deaths in Iran are due to road accidents.
- Saving the species will require a comprehensive and coordinated effort, and international scientific cooperation is crucial — but conservation work has been hampered by complex geopolitical dynamics, including sanctions.

Ridiculously rare photo catches Asian caracal swimming a river in India
- A tourist took a surprising photo of a caracal, a medium-sized cat, fording a river in India.
- What makes the photo doubly unusual is that India’s caracals aren’t known for swimming — and the cat was supposed to be extinct in the region.
- Once an important species culturally in India, caracals are now endangered, according to the IUCN Red List.
- The cat is also imperiled because it often occurs outside protected areas, inhabiting less-valued grasslands.

Saving Asia’s fishing cat means protecting threatened wetland habitat
- Fishing cats are uniquely adapted to life in wetlands, possessing a double-layered coat that serves as a water barrier and insulation, partially webbed feet, ears that plug when submerged, and a curious call reminiscent of a duck.
- Spread across Asia, this small wild cat species faces myriad threats, including habitat loss, hunting and retaliatory killings, road kill, and more. Considered vulnerable across its range, the felid is also elusive and underresearched, with many knowledge gaps about its distribution and ecology.
- Conservationists are working across its range to raise the profile of this wildcat, reduce threats and understand the species. Linking its protection to equally threatened wetlands is vital, they say. Initiatives such as the Fishing Cat Project in India have achieved success in making this cat the face of these habitats.
- Multiple conservation and research projects operate in Asia under the banner of the Fishing Cat Conservation Alliance, a cooperative model that provides funding lifelines and enables international collaboration to protect this small cat.

Borneo and Sumatra megaprojects are carving up clouded leopard forests
- Massive infrastructure projects currently underway on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra are set to severely erode forest connectivity across key habitats of the Sunda clouded leopard.
- Two major highway networks and the relocation of Indonesia’s capital city to Borneo will further fragment the domain of the arboreal predator that has already experienced steep population declines in recent decades due to the expansion of oil palm and poaching.
- Experts say the findings will help to target conservation actions, but they add that road design standards and development planning processes remain woefully inadequate in the region.
- The authors call for improved development strategies that seriously consider sustainability and include data-based environmental assessments and mitigation measures, such as wildlife crossings and avoidance of sensitive ecosystems.

Nepal’s human-wildlife conflict relief system hits roadblock with new guidelines
- New guidelines intended to streamline relief and compensation for human-wildlife conflict victims in Nepal have instead created a bottleneck in the process.
- Implementation challenges arise as forest offices lack budgets under the new arrangement, hindering their ability to provide compensation.
- Human-wildlife conflict remains a significant challenge in Nepal, with more than 200 fatalities reported in the past five years, prompting discussions on alternative solutions such as insurance-based schemes

Where sea otters play, salt marshes stay, new study shows
- A new study has found that sea otters are helping to slow down salt marsh erosion in Elkhorn Slough in California by eating burrowing crabs.
- Drawing on a range of data sources, which included surveys and field experiments, the authors found that in places where sea otters were abundant, the erosion of the salt marsh slowed by as much as 80-90% over the course of the study.
- Salt marshes worldwide are disappearing due to climate change-driven factors such as rising sea levels and other human pressures.

DNA probe uncovers threatened shark species in Thailand’s markets
- A shark DNA investigation has revealed the presence of shark species threatened with extinction in products commonly sold in Thailand’s markets.
- The study identified products derived from 15 shark species, more than a third of which have never been recorded in Thai waters, highlighting the scale of the international shark trade.
- Marine conservation groups say the findings underscore that consumers of shark fin soup and other shark products could well be complicit in the demise of threatened species that fulfill vital roles in maintaining ocean balance.
- Experts have called on Thai policymakers to improve traceability in shark trade supply chains, expand marine protected areas, and make greater investments in marine research.

Let’s give the wary wolverine some space (commentary)
- Wolverines are extremely solitary animals that purposefully avoid humans, so seeing one in the wild is typically a once-in-a-lifetime encounter.
- This makes planning for their conservation very tricky.
- “Three ways we can best support wolverines into the future are to connect large areas of habitat, close seasonal use areas to create disturbance-free zones, and actively manage their populations,” a new op-ed states.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Wolves through the ages: A journey of coexistence, conflict, and conservation
- Wolves are ecologically vital as keystone species, playing a critical role in maintaining the health and balance of ecosystems. Culturally, wolves hold a unique place in the human imagination, revered and mythologized across various cultures for their intelligence, resilience, and spirit of freedom.
- From North America to Eurasia, they are deeply embedded in folklore and tradition, often symbolizing strength and guidance. In many Indigenous communities, wolves have a prominent role in traditional culture, often revered as ancestral figures, spiritual guides, and symbols of the untamed natural world.
- In her new book, “Echo Loba, Loba Echo: Of Wisdom, Wolves, and Women”, Sonja Swift dives into the multifaceted relationship between humans and wolves. From childhood recollections to ecological roles, and from colonial impacts to modern conservation efforts, her work is an exploration of how wolves mirror our own stories, fears, and hopes.
- Swift recently spoke with Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler about the deep-seated symbolism of the wolf and its significant yet often misunderstood place in our world. She also shared insights on how the conservation sector is evolving.

North Atlantic orcas reveal the troubling persistence of toxic ocean pollutants
- As the top predators in the ocean, killer whales suffer from the magnifying level of pollutants that build up in the marine food web.
- Scientists found that North Atlantic orcas feeding on marine mammals carry significantly higher levels of pollutants than orcas that eat fish.
- Levels of polychlorinated biphenyls in the orcas’ blubber are ten times higher than the toxic threshold for these dangerous household chemicals.

Clouded leopards face alarming decline amid ‘genetic crisis,’ study warns
- Supremely adapted to life in the forest canopy, clouded leopards have declined in recent decades due to habitat loss and fragmentation, indiscriminate snaring, and poaching for their patterned coats.
- New genomic evidence indicates that both species of the big cat have low levels of genetic diversity and high rates of inbreeding and negative genetic mutations — factors that could ultimately compromise their long-term survival in the wild.
- Conservationists working to maintain genetic diversity among both captive and wild populations may face an uphill struggle. Clouded leopards are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, and forest loss has fragmented wild populations, limiting genetic mixing in the wild.
- The new insights could be used by conservationists to focus protected-area design and captive-breeding programs with a view to maximizing genetic diversity.

Nepal’s clouded leopard research needs more attention: Q&A with Yadav Ghimirey
- Yadav Ghimirey, one of the pioneering clouded leopard researchers in Nepal, shares his challenges and achievements of conducting camera trap surveys, scat analysis and pelt identification of the elusive clouded leopards in different regions of Nepal, where they are very rare and poorly understood.
- He argues that clouded leopards are important for Nepal’s biodiversity and ecosystem balance and that they deserve more attention and funding from local and global conservation agencies.
- He outlines his need to assess the distribution, diet, behavior and habitat connectivity of clouded leopards in Nepal and to work on their conservation.

Return of the wolf to Nepal’s Himalayas may threaten snow leopards
- The return of wolves to Nepal’s Himalayan region is putting greater pressure on populations of naur, or blue sheep — and by extension on snow leopards, whose main prey is naur.
- New research shows that naur tend to exhibit greater vigilance in areas where both wolves and snow leopards are present, while lowering their guard somewhat when no wolves are around.
- Conservationists say the growing wolf presence threatens snow leopards through direct competition for food and through stressing out, and weakening, naur populations.
- Snow leopards already face pressure from common leopards and tigers, which are moving further uphill in response to both human threats and a changing climate.

From rat-ridden to reserve, Redonda is an island restoration role model
- In 2016, conservationists began restoring the island of Redonda, part of Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean, by removing invasive rats and goats.
- Shortly after removing these invasive species, vegetation on the island sprang back to life, and seabirds and other wildlife recolonized the island.
- In September 2023, the government of Antigua and Barbuda announced it had established the Redonda Ecosystem Reserve, covering nearly 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of land and sea.
- Experts say they hope Redonda’s restoration and successive protection will be used as a model for similar projects across the Caribbean.

In the chain of species extinctions, AI can predict the next link to break
- Scientists at Flinders University in Australia have developed a machine-learning model that predicts which species are at risk of extinction if another species is removed from an ecosystem or an invasive one is introduced.
- Trained on data on how species interact with each other, the model could serve to alert conservation managers on which vulnerable species to focus on, the developers say.
- They tested the model successfully in Australia’s Simpson Desert, where it accurately predicted which species invasive foxes and cats preyed on.
- However, the shortage of data on species interactions, along with the possible biases that arise, are gaps that still need to be filled in the model.

Critics decry Nepal minister’s ‘terrible idea’ of ‘sport hunting’ tigers
- Nepal’s environment minister has suggested selling licenses to hunt tigers in the country as a means of both controlling the predator’s population and raising money for conservation.
- But conservationists, wildlife experts and local communities have denounced it as a “terrible idea,” saying it would endanger the tigers and their wider ecosystem, as well as violate Indigenous beliefs.
- Researchers warn hunting is ineffective and unnecessary as a means of reducing human-tiger conflict, and that the tiger population may have reached its natural limit in the country anyway.

S. Africa to purge bird-eating mice from key albatross breeding island
- Non-native house mice arrived on Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean two centuries ago, when the island was a stopping-off point for sealing ships.
- Their population has exploded recently, as temperatures warm and summers lengthen. With more mouths to feed, they’ve gutted their main food source — insects — and are now feeding on seabird chicks and adults.
- While mouse attacks on seabirds remain low and their impact on nesting or breeding success isn’t known yet, conservationists nevertheless see them as a serious and growing threat.
- Now the South African government is planning a rodent eradication program for mid-2025 that will be the largest of its kind on a sub-Antarctic island.

Lucky No. 13? Latest images could add to Nepal’s 12 wildcat species
- Nepal is wildcat central, home to 12 feline species — and a new discovery could raise that number to 13.
- Camera trapping last year for a tiger census captured an image of what researchers believe is an Asiatic wildcat (Felis lybica ornata), a felid whose presence in the country has long been debated.
- Locals have a name for the Asiatic wildcat, suggesting it’s been around for a long time, but there’s been no scientific confirmation, experts say.
- To verify its presence would mean getting a DNA and sampling it, for which there’s no funding because it’s not considered a threatened species.

Return of the lions: Large protected areas in Africa attract apex predator
- It’s a critical time for lion conservation as the species declines across Africa. Globally, the lion population has dropped by 43% over the past 21 years.
- Lions are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN, with the species facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. In many of the lion’s core ranges across Africa, populations have plummeted due to, among other reasons, habitat fragmentation and poaching.
- But some African lion populations are increasing, with the big cats spotted after years of absence in parks in Mozambique and Chad. The reason: the creation of vast protected landscape mosaics, with natural corridors stretching far beyond core protected lands, which consider the large areas lions need to roam seasonally.
- This strategy entails collaboration between multiple stakeholders and across varied land uses, including state lands and private property not formally protected. These examples are showing that conservation across landscape mosaics is possible in Africa, and offer the promise of wider benefits to ecosystems and people.

‘Anthill tiger’: Putting one of Africa’s rarest wildcats on the radar
- Black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) are the smallest and also one of the rarest wildcat species in Africa. They’re very reclusive, extremely hard to find, and are among the least-studied nocturnal mammals on the continent.
- Data-scarce species like the black-footed cat are difficult to conserve because the most basic knowledge — of their home ranges, territories, habitat, and reproductive, dietary and other behaviors — is often lacking. Without these many life-cycle details, the targeting of effective preservation strategies is near impossible.
- German ecologist Alexander Sliwa has made it his life’s mission to research the elusive black-footed cat. Establishing and working with a small team, he eventually led the way to the formation of the Black-footed Cat Working Group. Thanks largely to those efforts, a substantial database on Felis nigripes now exists.
- This work led to the black-footed cat being listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Though the species’ survival remains far from secure, the design and implementation of conservation strategies will no longer have to start from scratch, and can be built on valuable, already accumulated baseline data.

Honey production sweetens snow leopard conservation in Kyrgyzstan
- Kyrgyzstan is one of a dozen countries where snow leopards live, but its population of 300-400 of the big cats living along its highest peaks is stressed by climate change, mining, road construction, and conflict with herders, whose livestock can be tempting prey.
- A new program by two snow leopard conservation NGOs is helping herders diversify away from livestock toward beekeeping, agroecology, ecotourism and handicrafts.
- Participants receive beehives and training, and help with education and research into the local snow leopard population via deployment of many camera traps, which so far suggest that the local populations of leopards and a favorite prey species, ibex, are stable or increasing.
- Half of the honey profits are invested back into the program to improve beekeeping education, purchase supplies, and to fund environmental projects chosen by the participants.

Study shows Javan leopard habitat shrinking, but real picture may be worse
- Leopards lost more than 1,300 km² (500 mi²) of suitable habitat across the Indonesian island of Java between 2000 and 2020, a new study shows.
- It found that “highly suitable” habitat for the critically endangered Javan leopard shrank during this period by more than 40%.
- Other researchers say the big cat’s situation is likely even direr, with half of the suitable habitat occurring outside protected areas, and with a total population of some 350 individuals surviving in isolated forest fragments.
- They emphasize that conservation efforts for the Javan leopard must be underpinned by a thorough population assessment, but this is still lacking.

Vulture carrion potential boon and threat for endangered Iberian lynx: Studies
- Iberian lynx recovery in Spain has been hailed as a conservation success story. Said to be among the world’s most endangered feline species, Iberian lynx numbers fell to just 200 in the wild 20 years ago, but rose in successive years due to an intensive rehabilitation program. There are more than 1,300 today.
- In 2022, scientists researching vulture behavior laid out carrion for the meat-eating birds, only to make a surprising find: A few Iberian lynx scavenged the carrion too. The scientists suggested carrion may offer an added food resource when the cat’s natural prey, the endangered European rabbit, is depleted.
- In a response to that study, another group of researchers warn that vulture feeding stations, commonly used in the Iberian Peninsula to support scavenger populations, could pose a potential conservation threat to the lynx.
- Scientists worry about the possibility of disease transmission from carrion to the endangered wild cat, though they underline further research is needed to identify the full extent of this scavenging behavior to evaluate risk. Like so many of the world’s small cats, the Iberian lynx is elusive, and challenging to study.

Video of rare West African lion cubs sparks hope for the population
- New video of a West African lioness and her three cubs is exciting news for conservation as it sparks hope for the recovery of a population perilously close to extinction in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park.
- The lioness in the video, named Florence or Flo by researchers, was the first lion fitted with a tracking collar in Senegal by Panthera and is considered NKNP’s matriarch. She had given birth to three healthy cubs while denning in the dense forest.
- West African lions are critically endangered, with only 120 to 374 remaining in the wild. Florence is the mother of an estimated nine cubs, including the first males in NKNP.
- Panthera and Senegal’s Department of National Parks have been monitoring the small West African lion population in Senegal since 2011, and after hiring anti-poaching brigades, the lion population has more than doubled from 10-15 individuals to 30. Their goal is to reach 100 lions by 2030.

New map boosts Philippine eagle population estimate, but highlights threats
- The Philippine eagle has been declared threatened with extinction for nearly three decades, but little is definitely known about its range and its wild population.
- Using satellite images, decades of georeferenced nest locations, and data from citizen scientists, a team of researchers identified 2.86 million hectares (7.07 million acres) of forest suitable for the eagles, which they estimate host around 392 breeding pairs.
- Only 32% of the identified habitats fall within the Philippines’ current protected area network, prompting researchers to call for stronger protection measures for the endemic raptor.

Himalayan catfight looms as tigers, leopards venture into snow leopard land
- A warming climate threatens to push Nepal’s three big cat species — tigers, leopards and snow leopards — into closer proximity to each other, with unknown consequences for the survival of each.
- Conventional wisdom says tigers prevail in the country’s southern plains, leopards in the mid-country hill region, and snow leopards in the Himalayas.
- But both tigers and leopards have been observed at elevations above 3,000 meters (9,800 feet), well within snow leopard territory, although conservationists say tigers are less likely to persist at these altitudes over the long term.
- A complicating factor is the role of humans, with human settlements also moving up in altitude in search of more suitable conditions, and putting all four apex species in direct competition.

For tigers in Nepal, highways are a giant roadblock best avoided
- A new study indicates that the presence of roads, and vehicle traffic, in tiger habitats could take a toll on the big cats’ behavior and long-term fitness and survival.
- A tiger fitted with a GPS collar in Nepal’s Parsa National Park was found to avoid crossing roads by day, but to cross more often during the country’s 2021 COVID-19 lockdown.
- This suggests the animals can adapt quickly when traffic volume eases, pointing to measures that can be taken to mitigate road impacts not just on tigers, but on wildlife in general.
- Researchers say the findings should give planners in Nepal something to consider as they look to double the number of lanes on the East-West Highway that runs through both Parsa and Bardiya national parks.

Forest loss may push tree-dependent marbled cats into threatened category
- Currently considered near threatened on the IUCN Red List, the little-known marbled cat may at greater risk from habitat disturbance than previously thought, a new study says.
- The study authors recommend escalating the species’ conservation status to the threatened category of vulnerable.
- Their findings are based on review of camera-trap data from across the species’ range, which found the small cat is an interior forest specialist and may change its daytime behavior to avoid humans.
- The authors say other semi-arboreal felids, such as the margay, may be similarly impacted.

With climate change, Nepal’s leopards get a bigger range — and more problems
- Climate change will make higher-elevation areas of Nepal suitable habitat for leopards, a new study shows.
- This is expected to push the big cats into increased conflict with humans and more competition with snow leopards.
- Most of the current and new habitat will fall outside protected areas, and the leopards’ preferred prey may not be available there, which could prompt the predators to hunt livestock.
- But the finding could also be an opportunity to conserve leopards in their potential new habitat, by educating communities there, ensuring availability of wild prey, and drawing up wildlife management plans.

Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Five species within the Canidae family are considered endangered. These species, while found far apart in North and South America, Asia and Africa, often share similar threats, including habitat loss, persecution, disease and climate change.
- For some at-risk canid species, loss of prey, particularly due to snaring, is a significant concern that can also exacerbate human-wildlife conflict. Ecosystem-level conservation that protects prey species populations is required to protect canids and other carnivore species, experts say.
- Conservationists and researchers emphasize that canids play important roles in maintaining the habitats in which they live. That makes protecting these predators key to restoring and maintaining functional ecosystems.
- In the face of widespread global biodiversity loss, some canid reintroductions are taking place and proving successful. These rewilding efforts are offering evidence of the importance of canids to healthy ecosystems and to reducing various ecosystem-wide threats, even potentially helping curb climate change.

For Nepal, 2022 was a roaring Year of the Tiger
- Nepal was home to 121 tigers in 2010, the same year that it and 12 other tiger range countries agreed to double the big cat’s global population by 2022.
- Since then, Nepal has nearly tripled that figure, and is now home to 355 tigers, As the number of tigers has increased, cases of attacks on humans and livestock have also gone up, raising concerns over the price that local communities are paying for tiger conservation success.
- Overemphasis on tigers may also be leading to neglect of other important species that are just as threatened, experts warn. Despite the success, threats remain: government plans to build roads and railways through important habitats could severely affect tiger populations, a study has found.

Counterintuitive: Large wild herbivores may help slow climate change
- Large animals, especially herbivores such as elephants, are often seen as being destructive of vegetation, so are not thought of as a nature-based climate solution. Scientists are proving otherwise.
- By removing living and dead plants, large animals dispose of material that may fuel wildfires, which can add large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere; by consuming vegetation and excreting dung, large animals may improve the availability of nutrients to plants and support the storage of carbon in vegetation and soil.
- By creating gaps in the vegetation and dispersing seeds, large animals create diverse ecosystems with plenty of opportunities for a variety of plants to grow, making ecosystems more resilient and better able to deal with climate change.
- By nibbling down polar region shrubs and trampling snow, large animals help maintain permafrost, helping prevent the release of carbon to the atmosphere.

Animating the Carbon Cycle: Earth’s animals vital allies in CO2 storage
- The idea of animating the carbon cycle (ACC) is relatively new. The concept champions the role that healthy populations of wild animals, both terrestrial and marine, can play in boosting the ability of ecosystems to store carbon, helping the planet stay within 1.5°C (2.7°F) of temperature rise over pre-industrial levels.
- But for ACC to be fully effective, humanity needs to preserve and protect intact nature. We also need to rebuild populations of wild animals, including apex predators such as wolves, large herds of herbivores, and invertebrates such as pollinators. By doing so we can help rebalance the functions of natural systems.
- ACC puts the spotlight on oceans too, and the role animals there can play in sequestering carbon. It calls for greater protection of the seas and marine life, allowing whale populations to grow, and protecting mesopelagic fish — the largest group of vertebrates on the planet — from overfishing.
- By looking at the bigger picture of animal-plant-ecosystem relationships, and based on the growing popularity of nature-based climate solutions, scientists believe that now is the time for the wider conservation and rewilding movements to embrace ACC to help animals fulfill their vital roles in the carbon cycle.

Rat killers in paradise: An eradication program remakes a tropical atoll
- Like many islands around the world, Tetiaroa Atoll in French Polynesia has been overrun by rats and other invasive species that profoundly affect its terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
- In July, the paradisiacal 12-island atoll was declared rat-free after years of concerted efforts to wipe out the predators.
- Scientists have been studying the atoll’s plants, seabirds, insects, lizards, crabs, coral and algae, establishing a uniquely comprehensive ecological baseline to better understand how the rat eradication will affect the atoll — and others like it.

Who let the dogs out? Feral canines pose a threat to Nepal’s wildlife
- Dogs in Nepal enjoy a special status during the Tihar festival, but for the rest of the year are often overlooked or even abandoned.
- The latter often turn feral and pose a threat to the country’s iconic wildlife — from tigers to snow leopards to dholes — through potential disease transmission and competition for prey.
- Studies show a high prevalence of diseases such as canine distemper and parvovirus among dogs near key protected areas. Conservationists say it’s up to humans to better manage their pets, including vaccinating them routinely, sterilizing them, and not abandoning them.

Community study sheds light on wild cat killings in Brazil’s central Amazon
- Alongside other threats such as deforestation, poaching places wild felids in the Amazon at risk.
- A long-running community-based monitoring program in Brazil’s central Amazonia region identified the number of wild felids killed, motivations for hunting and more.
- Of 71 felids, jaguars were killed the most. Wild cats were predominantly killed opportunistically in flooded forests in areas where human population is highest.

Wild cats threatened by ‘underrecognized’ risk of spillover disease
- Researchers warn that disease spillover from livestock and domestic animals represents a serious conservation threat to wildlife, including felids in tropical areas around the world. Spillover is most likely to occur on rapidly advancing forest-agricultural frontiers or within fragmented habitats.
- Tracking the spillover and spread of diseases from humans and domestic animals to wildlife is extremely challenging, particularly among wild felid species, which tend to be secretive and solitary, making ongoing observation difficult.
- Possible cases of disease spillover have been documented in wild cats in India, Malaysian Borneo, Thailand, Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Russia and Nepal. These are likely the tip of the iceberg, say scientists, who believe much disease among wild species is going undetected, with case numbers and outbreaks unknown.
- Scientists stress the need for greater health monitoring of wildlife to reduce this “invisible threat.” But funding for health testing is often scant, and treatment difficult. One researcher sees disease transmission from domestic animals to wildlife as perhaps the most “underrecognized conservation threat today.”

‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
- Maheshwar Dhakal, the newly appointed director-general of Nepal’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, says a regional plan is needed to sustain the Bengal tiger population.
- Following the department’s success in nearly tripling Nepal’s tiger population since 2010, Dhakal says other government agencies can also contribute by promoting ecotourism ad boosting local livelihoods.
- He also emphasizes the importance of transboundary conservation action, noting that the punishment for tiger poaching in India, where tigers from Nepal often stray into, is much more lenient than in Nepal.

Stamping out invasive species has successful track record on islands, study finds
- A recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports found that efforts to remove invasive vertebrates from islands were 88% successful between 1872 and 2020.
- Invasive species can be particularly devastating to delicate island ecosystems and the unique native species they harbor.
- The researchers looked at the methods, locations and target species of 1,550 eradication attempts on nearly 1,000 islands around the world.
- The authors say the results of the research provide a guide for conservation groups, scientists and countries to take on eradication projects in an effort to encourage the resurgence of native wildlife and restore ecosystems.

Southeast Asia’s big cats like their prey rare — as in really elusive
- A new study demonstrates that ungulates like serow are important prey for tigers and clouded leopards living in dense evergreen forests in mainland Southeast Asia.
- Numbers of these big cats are dwindling in the region due to direct killing to supply the illegal wildlife trade and the snaring crisis, which both kills the cats and severely depletes their prey populations.
- The findings go against the popular belief that clouded leopards, which spend a portion of their lives in the tree canopy, prefer to prey on primates, other arboreal species and small deer.
- Carnivore experts say the new insights will help to inform efforts to restore prey populations in the region — a key part of boosting flagging big cat numbers.

In Nepal, endangered tiger kills critically endangered gharial. What does it mean?
- A tiger entered the Kasara gharial breeding center in Chitwan National Park and killed three critically endangered gharials.
- The incident raised concerns that as the tiger population in Nepal increases, the animals could turn to the crocodiles for easy food.
- Conservationists, however, say that is unlikely as tigers have other animals to feed upon.

Study assesses wildlife exposure to rat poison on oil palm plantations
- Rodents can pose a financial risk to oil palm plantation managers as they can cause significant damage to crops, potentially reducing yields by up to 10%.
- Anticoagulant rodenticides are often used to eradicate or manage rodent populations.
- A recent study assessed the risk of exposure to wildlife species known to hunt on palm plantations.
- Little is known about exposure and the potential risk to a wide variety of species, the study warns, and more research is needed to fill these knowledge gaps.

Scotland changes course to save its last native wildcats
- The European wildcat has been put into an “intensive care” program of captive breeding and reintroduction in Scotland.
- Found only in a few small pockets in the north, it is the country’s only remaining native felid.
- But even the conservationists in charge of it accept that the program’s success is far from certain to save the “Highland tiger,” a species emblematic of Scotland’s wild landscapes.

With sea ice melting, glacial ice could be a lifeline for polar bears
- Scientists recently discovered a new subpopulation of polar bears living in southeast Greenland that is genetically and behaviorally distinct.
- While most polar bears depend upon sea ice for survival, the polar bears in Southeast Greenland use pieces of glacial ice as habitat and hunting platforms.
- Large numbers of polar bears are expected to decline as climate change accelerates, but small populations may persist in places like this, where the pace of melting is expected to be slower, experts say.

Rehabilitation research returns orphaned cheetahs to the wild
- A long-running program in Namibia has shown how orphaned cheetahs can be successfully rewilded, presenting a rehabilitation template for wild-born, captive-bred individuals of other species.
- The program by the Cheetah Conservation Fund took in 86 young cheetahs orphaned due to human-wildlife conflict, and eventually released 36 of them between 2004 and 2018.
- Twenty-seven of the cheetahs eventually became independent in the wild, while one female went on to raise two cubs — the “pinnacle of success” for any wildlife reintroduction effort.
- The study authors and independent experts agree that having safe release sites — where the newly reintroduced animals won’t run the risk of conflict with humans or other predators — and rigorous post-release monitoring are key to rehabilitation success.

Yellowstone’s wolves defied extinction, but face new threats beyond park’s borders
- Since their reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park in the Mountain West of the United States in the 1990s, the North American gray wolf has recovered, once again taking up the mantle of a keystone species in its environment.
- But the wolf’s resurgence has raised the ire of ranchers and hunters, and new laws allowing expanded wolf hunts have sprung up across the region.
- Biologists contend that wolves play a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and data suggest that the threat to overall livestock numbers is exaggerated.
- Still, an entrenched fear, perhaps dating to humans’ earliest interactions with wolves, has helped to stir up a desire for vengeance against the species.

Tiger-centric conservation efforts push other predators to the fringes
- Nepal and India have made huge strides in boosting their tiger populations over the past decade, but these conservation actions may have come at the expense of other predators, research shows.
- In Nepal, species such as leopards and sloth bears have been pushed to the fringes of conservation areas that have been optimized for tigers, leading to increased human-wildlife conflict.
- The current approach of burning tall grasses and rooting out tree shoots to give deer and antelope fresh grass, and tigers fresh prey, isn’t even working in the tigers’ favor, one study shows.
- Conservationists say there needs to be a habitat management approach that accommodates a wider range of both prey and predator species.

Scientists uncover widespread declines of raptors in Kenya
- New research has found a steep decline in numbers for Kenya’s raptors over the past 40 years.
- Encounters with 19 of 22 species studied using road surveys fell during that period, 14 of these declining by 20-95% when compared to the 1970s.
- The study’s findings underlined the importance of protected areas for Kenya’s raptors as populations declined less severely inside parks and reserves.

Release the cats: Training native species to fear invasive predators
- Invasive predators, like cats and foxes, have wreaked havoc on native species across Australia, leading conservationists to build fenced-in havens.
- But now researchers are finding that some animals in these havens have lost all fear not only of invasive predators but native ones as well.
- To combat this, researchers are trying a new strategy: release a few predators back into these havens to select for predator-savvy animals to aid long-term species conservation.
- Early efforts to date have shown some success, but scientists say much longer studies are needed.

As tiger numbers in Nepal and India grow, their freedom to roam shrinks
- Nepal is one of the few countries on track to double its tiger population this year from a 2010 baseline.
- But a growing sense of “animal nationalism” threatens to mar this success, with local media playing up the tigers’ travels across the border into India.
- The big cats, which don’t recognize political boundaries, have always roamed a wide range in this region, yet even this behavior is under threat as key corridors are restricted or cut off entirely by infrastructure projects by both countries.
- Conservationists have called for keeping nationalism out of planning and implementation of conservation efforts, for the sake of this iconic species.

Indigenous knowledge and science team up to triple a caribou herd
- A wildlife recovery effort in British Columbia, Canada, has successfully increased a caribou herd from 38 individuals to 113 in less than a decade, according to a new study.
- Two First Nations communities partnered with Canadian scientists, the government and private companies to reduce predators and care for new calves in the short term, while restoring habitat in the long term by securing more than 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of land for caribou.
- Human interventions, including logging and energy infrastructure, are blamed for fragmenting caribou habitat and increasing predator numbers.
- The project involves killing wolves, a main predator of the caribou, drawing ire from some conservationists.

Female putty-nosed monkeys get their males to run defense against predators
- A new study found that female putty-nosed monkeys use alarm calls to recruit males to be their “hired guns” when a predator is detected, only stopping their vocalizations once males have been enlisted to ward off the threat.
- Recruited males will vocalize their participation with a “pyow” call, which may aid their reproductive chances in the future, according to the study.
- The researchers also observed that male putty-nosed monkeys emitted a newly described “kek” call when responding to a simulation of a leopard moving along the forest floor.
- The researchers say that this study, as well as related studies, can aid conservation efforts for the putty-nosed monkey, a near-threatened species, and broaden our understanding of communicative and cognitive capacities of non-human primate species.

More meat and playtime can calm your killer kitty
- A new study found that feeding cats a grain-free, high-meat-protein diet and engaging in 5 to 10 minutes of daily object play reduce predation by cats by up to 36% and 25%, respectively.
- High densities of cats have been linked to devastating effects on populations of small vertebrates at continental scales including billions of small mammals and birds killed each year in the United States alone.
- Although keeping your cat indoors is the only way to prevent it from hunting, those involved in the study expressed hope that these preventative measures will be simple enough for pet owners with indoor/outdoor cats to adopt, sparing the lives of many small and wild creatures.

Are wolves related to dogs? Candid Animal Cam meets the largest member of the dog family
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

As predators return to Sweden’s wild, ecotourism looks to change mindsets
- Top carnivores such as bears, wolves and lynxes are thriving in the wild in Sweden, where many of them were once extinct or nearly wiped out.
- Policies such as hunting restrictions and compensation for herders affected by livestock predation have allowed these species to recover.
- However, the growing presence of these animals, in particular the wolf, has been controversial, especially among farmers and hunters.
- Ecotourism operators, who expect the predator populations to hold steady over the long term, want locals to see that they can coexist with, and even profit from, the wildlife in their midst.

Spots of hope: Some good news for South Africa’s cheetahs
- Cheetahs have vanished from 90% of their historical range in Africa.
- A metapopulation project in South Africa has almost doubled the population of cheetahs in this project in less than nine years.
- The program works by nurturing several populations of the cat in mostly private game reserves, and swapping cheetahs between these sites to boost the gene pool.
- South Africa is now the only country in the world with a significantly increasing population of wild cheetahs, and has begun translocating the cats beyond its borders.

Howling in the dark: Shining a light on a newly remembered wolf
- The African golden wolf was only recently designated as a species in its own right, after decades of being conflated with the golden jackal.
- The patchy taxonomic record means little is known about the species, including its behavior, range and population, leaving researchers without a baseline for determining its conservation status. But pioneering work in Morocco by Liz Campbell, a researcher at the University of Oxford, is starting to paint a picture of this enigmatic species, seen by local shepherds as a major threat to their livestock.
- Campbell’s surveys and interviews show that this fear appears to be overblown, with far more sheep dying from cold weather or disease than predator attack, and half of the witnessed attacks carried out by feral wild dogs.

Spying on fear in the wild: Q&A with ecologist Meredith Palmer
- Meredith Palmer uses camera traps to study the dynamics of predator-prey relationships in the wilds of Africa and North America.
- Her work is crucial to informing conservation management by ensuring that the reintroduction of predators contributes to a self-regulating ecosystem.
- Building largely on networks of camera traps that churn out hundreds of thousands of images, she must rely on citizen scientists who help her review them.
- Palmer also advocates for greater collaboration between the technology and conservation communities: “My cellphone does a billion things I wish my camera traps would do,” she states in this interview with Mongabay.

The ‘Cougar Conundrum’: Q&A with author Mark Elbroch
- In a new book, The Cougar Conundrum: Sharing the World with a Successful Predator, wildlife biologist Mark Elbroch explores the polarizing debate around mountain lions in the United States.
- Elbroch is the puma program director for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.
- Mountain lion behavior has long been cloaked in mystery and mythology. Still, recent research has revealed a complex portrait of the mountain lion (Puma concolor) and its role in the landscape.
- Elbroch argues for moving past the entrenchment around how to manage mountain lions and for a more inclusive debate incorporating the views of a larger proportion of society.

In picturesque Boracay, a crown-of-thorns infestation is eating away at the reef
- The coral reef surrounding the resort island of Boracay, which the Philippine government wants to reopen to tourists, is under attack from a crown-of-thorns starfish infestation.
- Local officials receiving reports of a possible outbreak weren’t able to confirm for four months because of the COVID-19-related lockdown, and were only allowed to dive in early July.
- A similar outbreak occurred in 2018, which prompted officials to tap volunteer divers to help collect the crown-of-thorns.
- But with the pandemic and lockdown, officials are short of volunteer divers and are considering training fisherfolks to help save Boracay’s coral reefs.

Predators disproportionately impacted by human land use changes, study finds
- New research looking at whether particular types of wildlife are more affected than others by habitat loss determined that predators are the most impacted, as was expected — but the study results held some surprises nonetheless.
- Because the loss of plant resources makes it harder for large predators to find sufficient food when land use changes occur within their range, researchers expected to find that these types of animals would be especially affected.
- The analysis showed that predators are indeed more affected by habitat loss than other groups — but that larger carnivores are not threatened with the largest declines. It was small invertebrates that were found to face the worst impacts.

Rare Amazon bush dogs caught on camera in Bolivia
- Video footage of a pack of rarely-seen bush dogs has been captured by a camera trap at a ranch in eastern Bolivia.
- The footage, was captured at San Miguelito, a ranch located about 190 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of the city of Santa Cruz.
- The video shows a group of South American bush dogs walking down a trail through the Chiquitano dry forest, an ecosystem that was heavily impacted by fires last August and September, although San Miguelito itself didn’t experience any fires.
- Bush dogs are distributed widely through lowland tropical forests in Central and South America, but are rarely seen.

2020 ballot initiative would restore wolves to Colorado
- This month, more than 200,000 signatures were delivered to the Colorado secretary of state calling for the restoration of gray wolves to be put on the 2020 ballot.
- If passed, Initiative 107 would direct the state to develop a plan for reintroducing wolves to western Colorado by 2023.
- Mongabay reached out to wildlife biologist Mike Phillips to hear his opinion of the initiative.

How Laos lost its tigers
- A new camera trap study finds that tigers vanished from Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area by 2014, their last stand in Laos.
- Leopards were killed off 10 years prior, making these big cats also extinct in Laos.
- Scientists believe it’s most likely that the last tigers and leopards of Laos succumbed to snares, which are proliferating in astounding numbers across Southeast Asian protected areas.
- The Indochinese tiger now only survives in Thailand and Myanmar, and may be on the edge of extinction.

Predator-free by 2050? High-tech hopes for New Zealand’s big conservation dream
- To preserve New Zealand’s remaining native biodiversity, the country has begun an ambitious nationwide program to eliminate its most damaging non-native invasive predators — rats, stoats and possums — by 2050.
- To carry out this mammoth task, government and private entities across the country are applying new technologies to existing detection, exclusion, trapping, poisoning and other strategies used to reduce the numbers of harmful predators.
- The program has wide public support, though some effective technologies, particularly gene editing, are controversial; recognition of the importance of public support, as well as cost and effectiveness, help guide the program’s development.

Rise in crocodile sightings linked to habitat degradation in Indonesia
- The capture of a saltwater crocodile by Indonesian villagers last February was the latest in a series of increasingly frequent — and occasionally deadly — sightings of the reptiles near human settlements.
- The animal was eventually released by the local conservation agency into an unsettled area.
- Conservation officials say the destruction of the crocodiles’ habitat by blast fishing and conversion of coastal areas into farms may be driving the animals out of the wild and closer to villages.
- Officials have called on villagers not to harm the animals if they catch them, given that they’re a protected species under Indonesian law.

Solving the mystery of the UK’s vanishing hen harriers
- The numbers of breeding hen harriers, one of England’s rarest birds and a protected species, dropped sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
- To better understand why hen harriers were vanishing, researchers tracked the movements of 58 birds using satellite-based tags in conjunction with remote sensing land management data.
- Birds with tags that stopped transmitting spent their last week of life predominantly on moors where hunters shoot grouse and were 10 times more likely to disappear or die when grouse moors dominated their ranges, suggesting they were killed.
- The findings indicated that 72 percent of the tagged harriers were either confirmed or considered very likely to have been illegally killed.

Hunting pumas to save deer could backfire, new research suggests
- A new study finds that the age of individual pumas near Jackson, Wyoming, had the greatest influence over the prey they chose to hunt.
- Older mountain lions went after elk, among the largest prey species in the study area, while the younger cats hunted small animals like raccoons as well as mule deer.
- The research calls into question the validity of recent wildlife management plans in the western United States to grow mule deer populations by culling mountain lions, the authors say.

Those kicks were fast as lightning: Kangaroo rats evade deadly snake strikes
- A research team has shown that desert kangaroo rats fend off predatory rattlesnakes through a combination of speedy reaction times, powerful near-vertical leaps, and mid-air, ninja-style kicks.
- Locating snakes through radio tracking and filming snake-kangaroo rat interactions with high-speed video cameras enabled the team to analyze strike and reaction speed, distance and angle the rats moved to avoid being bitten, and aspects of the impressive maneuverability displayed by most kangaroo rats in the recordings.
- About 81 percent of recorded snake strikes were accurate, yet the snake actually bit the kangaroo rat in just 47 percent of the strikes and latched on long enough in just 22 percent of strikes to actually kill and eat the kangaroo rat.
- The slowed-down videos demonstrate the importance of kangaroo rats’ physical features, including long tails and powerful legs, and mid-air maneuverability in escaping predation.

Can jaguar tourism save Bolivia’s fast dwindling forests?
- Few countries in the tropics have seen trees chopped down as quickly as Bolivia did between 2001 and 2017.
- Within Bolivia, nearly two-thirds of that loss occurred in just a single state—Santa Cruz—as agribusiness activity, namely cattle ranching and soy farming, ramped up.
- This loss has greatly reduced the extent of habitat for some of Bolivia’s best known species, including the largest land predator in the Americas, the jaguar. On top of habitat loss, jaguars in Santa Cruz are both persecuted by landowners who see them as a danger to livestock, and targeted in a lucrative new trade in their parts, including teeth and bones.
- Duston Larsen, the owner of San Miguelito Ranch, is working to reverse that trend by upending the perception that jaguars necessarily need be the enemy of ranchers.

In a predator-infested forest, survival for baby birds comes by the road
- Fledglings of a common bird, the white-rumped shama, in a tropical forest in Thailand were more likely to survive if they came from nests near a roadway than if they fledged deeper in the forest, researchers have found.
- The scientists believe that predators’ preference for the forest’s interior at this study site led to the difference in survival rates.
- Still, they caution that the apparent benefits of one road for a small subset of a single species don’t necessarily extend to the broader bird community, and say that planners should avoid building roads through areas of high conservation value.
- More research is necessary to determine if this effect is specific just to this study site.

Flashing lights ward off livestock-hunting pumas in northern Chile
- A new paper reports that Foxlights, a brand of portable, intermittently flashing lights, kept pumas away from herds of alpacas and llamas during a recent calving season in northern Chile.
- Herds without the lights nearby lost seven animals during the four-month study period.
- The research used a “crossover” design, in which the herds without the lights at the beginning of the experiment had them installed halfway through, removing the possibility that the herds were protected by their locations and not the lights themselves.

Shorebirds can no longer count on the Arctic as a safe haven for rearing their young
- A new analysis of over 70 years’ worth of shorebird population data suggests that climate change has altered the migratory birds’ Arctic safe haven to such a degree that it is now helping drive rapid declines in their numbers.
- After studying data from 38,191 nests found across all seven continents and belonging to 237 populations of 111 different species, an international team led by researchers with the Milner Centre for Evolution at the UK’s University of Bath determined that shorebirds worldwide have experienced a drastic increase in nest predation over the past seven decades.
- The data suggests that nest predation rates have doubled in the North Temperate Zone, which includes Europe and most of Asia and North America. In the Arctic, which migratory shorebirds are used to using as something of a refuge, rates of daily nest predation have tripled.

Pumas engineer their environment, providing habitat for other species
- A new study finds that mountain lions in the western United States change their surroundings and as a result are “ecosystem engineers.”
- A team of scientists tracked 18 lion kills in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming and identified 215 species of beetles living in, on and off the carcasses — that is, the kills provided habitat as well as food for scavengers.
- The work demonstrates the critical role mountain lions play in providing resources to other species in the ecosystems in which they live.

Filling in the gaps: Managing endangered species on the high seas
- Information about how marine animals move through the oceans has become vitally important as efforts progress to create a global plan for securing sustainable fish stocks in the high seas. Researchers are integrating new technologies and applying new approaches to data sets to find answers.
- A recent examination of the long-term Tagging of Pelagic Predators (TOPP) data set has mapped the travel patterns of marine predators — certain whale, turtle, tuna, shark, and seabird species — through their life cycles.
- The study showed that many of these predators spend over half their time on the high seas, supporting the need for global strategies to protect and monitor the high seas. Vessel identification systems paired with several emerging satellite technologies can help.

Restore wolves or slaughter deer to save Japanese forests?
- Without wolves, an important apex predator, Japan faces a booming deer population that has upset the ecological balance of the country’s forests.
- The sika deer, which researchers say occupy two-thirds of Japanese national forests, pose a particular threat.

Speed trap: Cameras help defuse human-cheetah conflict in Botswana
- Increases in human-wildlife conflict could undermine Botswana’s conservation efforts, with farmers in some areas shooting carnivores preventatively to protect their livestock.
- Camera traps have helped researchers in Botswanan farmland to monitor cheetahs and other elusive or low-density predators without habituating them to human presence, a key feature in areas where farmers believe they will kill livestock.
- Communicating with local farmers and sharing camera-trap data on cheetahs’ territorial behavior and long-distance travel can help show farmers there may be far fewer individuals than they realize — “the cheetah seen today on one farm may be the same one seen [earlier] several farms away.”

Bear-human conflict risks pinpointed amid resurgent bear population
- New research maps out the potential risk “hotspots” for black bear-human conflict based on an analysis of conditions that led to nearly 400 bear deaths between 1997 and 2013.
- The study area covered the Lake Tahoe Basin and the Great Basin Desert in western Nevada.
- The methods used to predict risks based on environmental variables could help wildlife managers identify and mitigate human-carnivore conflict in other parts of the world, the authors write.

Why top predators matter (insider)
- Few species have faced such vitriolic hatred from humans as the world’s top predators.
- Even where large areas of habitat are protected, the one thing that is often missing is top predators.
- Jeremy Hance writes about three studies that reveal just how important top predators are to their ecosystems.
- This is an insider story. To read, please become a member.

A ‘perfect policy storm’ cuts puma numbers by almost half near Jackson, Wyoming
- A 14-year study following 134 tagged mountain lions north of Jackson, Wyoming, found a 48 percent reduction in their numbers.
- The researchers found that the combination of the reintroduction of wolves and increases in elk and mountain lion hunting led to the precipitous drop.
- Lead study author and Panthera biologist Mark Elbroch recommends suspending puma hunting for three years in the region to allow the population to recover.

A warmer climate tinkers with Arctic spider’s choice of prey
- A team of researchers found that higher temperatures led Arctic wolf spiders to eat fewer insect-like springtails in study plots.
- Springtails eat fungus, an essential decomposer in the Arctic ecosystem, so with more springtails around in the warmer study plots, there was less decomposition.
- The scientists suggest that this change in prey preference could modulate the effects of a warming climate on the carbon that’s released from the thawing tundra.

Plant communities roar back after rat removal from Pacific islands
- In a multi-year study, scientists found that tree seedlings were more than 5,000 percent more abundant after rats were eradicated from Palmyra Atoll, a group of 25 small islands in the Pacific Ocean.
- Invasive rats, brought by ships over the past few centuries, eat tree seedlings and vegetation, in addition to driving down seabird numbers.
- Managers eradicated the islands’ rats in 2011, and within a month, seedling densities had increased.

Fishing gear poses the greatest danger to young great whites off the West Coast of the U.S.
- Fishing lines and nets pose the most significant threat to the survival of young white sharks in the waters off Mexico and southern California, according to a new study.
- A team of scientists used a relatively “untapped” but ubiquitous storehouse of data to develop a statistical model for the survival rates of juvenile white sharks.
- The researchers calculated that 63 percent of young white sharks living in this part of the Pacific survive annually, but that nearly half probably come in contact with gillnets set by commercial fishers.
- The findings point to best practices, such as barring gillnets from inshore “nurseries” and asking fishers to check their nets for trapped sharks more regularly, that could help protect great whites.

India’s foxes and monkeys are dumpster diving and eating food scraps
- In Spiti Valley in northern India, red foxes can be seen rummaging through kitchen waste. Such dumpster diving could potentially bring wild animals in close proximity to humans and increase conflict, researchers say.
- Increasing reliance of wild animals on food waste could affect other ecological processes.
- In the state of West Bengal, for example, some troops of rhesus macaques spend most of their time “begging or chasing” tourists for food. These troops, unlike the forest-dwelling ones, contribute very little to the dispersal of seeds, researchers have found.

Suspected poisoning takes down 11 lions in Uganda park
- Eight cubs and three female lions have been found dead, apparently from eating poisoned meat in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
- Lions, along with other predators, have been in decline across Uganda since the 1970s.
- Recent studies indicate that the country’s growing human population has driven lions out of their former habitats and that the big cats are killed to defend the livestock of local communities.

Tropical forest fragmentation nearing ‘critical point,’ study finds
- In addition to having severe repercussions for animals like jaguars and tigers that require vast tracts of connected habitat, forest fragmentation has a big carbon footprint.
- A new physics-based study finds fragmentation of tropical forests may be reaching a threshold past which fragmentation will shoot up sharply. At this threshold, even a relatively small amount of deforestation could lead to dramatic fragmentation – and significant habitat loss and greenhouse gas emissions.
- The team calculated that at current deforestation rates, the number of fragments will increase 33-fold in Central and South America by 2050, and their average size will drop from 17 hectares to 0.25 hectares.

Friend, not foe: Review highlights benefits of predators and scavengers
- Predators are typically better known for harassing pets and livestock or being the source of disease than they are for the valuable — and often less visible — services they provide.
- A review published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution catalogs benefits provided by predators to humans documented in the scientific literature.
- Authors of the review highlighted instances that ranged from the potential for mountain lions to cut down deer-vehicle collisions, bats that save corn farmers at least $1 billion annually, and vultures that clear away tons of organic waste.

Island-hopping toxic toad threatens iconic Komodo dragon
- The islands of Wallacea, which include parts of Indonesia, are home to many species that exist nowhere else in the world.
- The Asian common toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) has spread across the islands under the conservation radar while conservationists struggle to cope with a similar invasion in Madagascar.
- If the advance of the toad across Wallacea is not stopped, scientists worry it could have devastating consequences for the world’s largest lizard, the Komodo dragon.

The plight of predators: Q&A with the director of ‘The Hunt: Living with Predators’
- “The Hunt” is a BBC series that showcases the lives of predators around the world.
- Several episodes have been nominated for prizes at the 2017 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival taking place this week in Jackson, Wyoming.
- Mongabay caught up with series director Rob Sullivan to discuss his work on “The Hunt” – in particular an episode that explores the relationship between predators and humans.

Collateral damage: Snow leopards and trophy hunting in Kyrgyzstan
- The mountains of Kyrgyzstan provide important connective habitat for endangered snow leopards.
- Government-supported hunting of Marco Polo sheep and Siberian ibex is being blamed for depleting the food supply of snow leopards and driving their numbers down.
- Ecologists say more animals are being hunted than can naturally reproduce, while government representatives contend the harvest is sustainable.
- A bill that would have banned hunting until 2030 was narrowly defeated earlier this year.

Reef Market Economy: Energetics key to keeping fish in the sea and the store
- Many coral reefs have lost their top predators due to overfishing, changing the structure of their food chains.
- Researchers have found that when top predators are overfished, medium-sized predators benefit, but to the overall detriment of the ecosystem.
- Local communities worldwide depend on coral reef fisheries for income and easily accessible protein, but better management is needed for these fisheries to last.

Cheetahs return to Malawi after decades
- The cheetahs have been moved into special enclosures called bomas for now, where the animals will learn to adapt to their new home under constant supervision.
- After spending some time in the bomas, the cheetahs will be released into the wider park.
- The cheetahs are the first large predator to be reintroduced into Liwonde National Park, and are said to be in good health.

China’s first national park, an experiment in living with snow leopards
- Sanjiangyuan National Park is expected to open in 2020 as China’s first park in its new national park system.
- As many as 1,500 endangered snow leopards (Panthera uncia) live in the area. The cats are subject to poaching and persecution in retaliation for their predation on livestock, which are edging out their natural prey.
- The new park seeks to capitalize on the reverence many local Tibetan Buddhists have for wildlife, employing a conservation model that engages the public and attempts to ease tensions between people and predators.
- The new national park system is intended to create a more effective kind of protected area than currently exists in China.

A Whitley Award winner’s 20-year battle to save the world’s largest eagle in Venezuela
- The Whitley, which has been nicknamed “the Green Oscars,” is one of the biggest and most important awards in the conservation world.
- Alexander says he is honored to have received such recognition for his work: “I have devoted my entire life as a student and, after that, in the professional field, to the conservation of the biological diversity and to the dissemination of its importance and role as an essential element of the planet.”
- Alexander studied veterinary medicine and was determined to specialize in working with wild animals. It was while rehabilitating harpy eagles at a Venezuelan zoo that he had his first contact with these magnificent birds of prey.

Goddesses of the wind: How researchers saved Venezuela’s harpy eagles
- Venezuelan scientist Eduardo Álvarez Cordero is not only a man who knows harpy eagles: having started one of the biggest and oldest studies about the species, and taken part in the training of many of the world’s harpy specialists, he is a man to whom we owe a lot of what humankind knows about this fascinating animal.
- Currently a professor at the City College of Gainesville, Florida, Eduardo has monitored harpy eagles in Venezuela and Panama since the late 80s with a sense of urgency.
- Eduardo’s PhD work, begun in 1988, eventually led to the creation of the Harpy Eagle Conservation Program. It was also the beginning of another story of unthinkable bravery, in which an ecotourism program built a more prosperous scenario for harpies, locals, and the forests upon which they both rely.

Scientists rediscover ‘lost’ monitor lizard in Papua New Guinea
- The only specimen of the monitor lizard Lesson collected on New Ireland never reached its destination in France and was not studied in detail.
- Since then, it has been believed that the monitor lizards on New Ireland are the common mangrove monitors (Varanus indicus).
- But the new study confirms that the monitor lizards on New Ireland are a distinct species.

Human-wildlife conflict is decimating leopard numbers in one of their last African strongholds
- A research team led by Dr. Samual Williams of the Department of Anthropology at Durham University in the UK conducted a long-term trap survey from 2012 to 2016 in order to study the leopard population in South Africa’s Soutpansberg Mountains, one of the leopard’s last strongholds in Africa.
- They found that the cats’ population density decreased by 44 percent between 2012 and 2016. That means that, based on a previous estimate of their abundance, the leopard population in the Soutpansberg Mountains has decreased by two-thirds since 2008, Williams and his co-authors note in the study.
- While the researchers argue that, based on their findings, a current ban on leopard hunting in South Africa should not be lifted in areas where the species is facing sharp declines in numbers, they add that efforts to reduce often-lethal conflicts between leopards and humans might have an even bigger impact.

Camera traps reveal undiscovered leopard population in Javan forest
- Government camera traps spotted three individuals in the Cikepuh Wildlife Reserve, along the southern coast of Indonesia’s main central island of Java.
- The environment ministry says 11 leopards are thought to exist in the sanctuary.
- The Javan leopard is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.

Man surrenders pet crocodile he raised for 13 years
- The crocodile was 4 meters long.
- It consumed up to three chickens or ducks a day — very expensive for its owner.
- Officials took the crocodile to a breeding park in Sumatra’s largest city, Medan.

Based on available evidence, non-lethal predator control is more effective than lethal means
- Lethal methods for controlling predators include hunting, destroying litters of young, poisoning, live-trapping followed by killing, and the use of kill traps.
- Non-lethal methods include livestock-guarding animals, a visual deterrent known as “fladry” in addition to other types of deterrents and repellents, enclosures, diversionary feeding, and sterilization.
- But, the authors of the study say, these methods are often selected and deployed without first taking into consideration the experimental evidence of those methods’ effectiveness at curbing predation-related threats or avoiding ecological degradation.

Protecting the animal that eats lemurs — why it’s important to conserve Madagascar’s largest carnivore
- Despite fosa’s claim to being ‘kings of the jungle,’ they face a difficult future. Deforestation has reduced Madagascar’s primary forest to less than 10 percent, with much of it fragmented and bearing signs of degradation and human intrusion.
- These large-scale reductions in forest not only reduce fosa habitat but also promote increased interaction with humans.
- Fosa are not only likely to be keystone species, but their large home range requirements make them an even greater conservation tool.

Reducing human-wildlife conflict in the blink of a light
- As people settle closer to remaining natural areas, livestock predation by lions and other wild carnivores causes financial loss to often poor herders and farmers.
- Disruptive light systems, invented independently by herders trying reduce nighttime guarding of animals, emulate the movements of a night watchman to dissuade lions, foxes, and other predators from approach penned livestock.
- Users of Lion Lights, invented by 11-year-old Richard Turere, and similar light systems report very high success in deterring would-be predators and can play a role as part of a human-wildlife conflict reduction toolkit.

‘Biogeographical oddity’: New monitor lizard is the only large predator on remote Pacific Island
- Researchers have discovered a new monitor lizard on the remote island of Mussau, which has a turquoise or blue-pigmented tail, and a pale yellow tongue, a trait that it shares with only three other known species of Pacific monitors.
- The lizard is the only known large-sized predator and scavenger on the island, and is separated from its closest relative by several hundreds of kilometers of open sea, study says.
- Researchers have named the lizard Varanus semotus, referring to its isolated existence on Mussau Island.

Humans are ‘super-predators’: unique and unsustainable
- Most natural predators prefer juvenile prey, but humans preferentially target adult prey, recent study has found.
- Such disproportionate killing of adult prey can affect the reproductive potential of populations in the wild, and ecological interactions within food webs, authors write in the paper.
- Humans most likely do not provide any ecosystem services in return, researchers say.

Blinded by the light: simple devices help protect farms and reduce human-wildlife conflict
- Farmers and herders worldwide struggle to protect crops and livestock from predation, often killing potential predators in retaliation.
- Foxlights produce randomly blinking lights that resemble the flashlight/torch of a person walking by.
- With success in deterring foxes from attacking lambs, the concept is being tested with other crop and livestock predators in Africa and Asia.

Recovery of predators causes unexpected conservation challenges

A female California sea lion bearing a satellite tag tends to her pup. Photo credit: NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center. For decades, many global conservation efforts have focused on protecting declining populations of large predators at the top of the food chain, and there are numerous successful stories of recovery. From an ecosystem perspective, however, […]
Taking technology out in the cold: working to conserve snow leopards

A very alert snow leopard. Photo credit: Bernard Landgraf, Wikimedia Commons. Conservation work is important not just in tropical rainforests, but also in snow-covered peaks and steep slopes, the home of snow leopards and a number of unusual ungulates, including blue sheep and Asiatic ibex. When these and other native prey are scarce, snow leopards […]
U.S. to remove extinct cougar from Endangered Species Act

Mountain lion in Oregon. Photo by: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The U.S. government has declared the Eastern cougar extinct more than 80 years after its a believed a hunter in Maine wiped out the last individual. Scientists still dispute whether the Eastern cougar was a distinct subspecies, but either way officials believe the […]
Lions return to Rwanda

One of the female lions being translocated to Rwanda. Photo by: Matthew Poole. After 15 years, the roar of lions will once again be heard in Rwanda. Today the NGO, African Parks, will begin moving seven lions from South Africa to Rwanda’s Akagera National Park. It was here that Rwanda’s last lions were poisoned by […]
Cat update: lion and African golden cat down, Iberian lynx up

West African lion listed as Critically Endangered Iberian lynx. Photo by: A Rivas. A new update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has categorized the West African population of lions—which is considered genetically distinct and separate from East and Central African lions—as Critically Endangered. Based largely on a paper in 2014, the […]
Asiatic lion population rises by 27% in five years

Asiatic lion. Photo by: Sumeet Moghe/Creative Commons 3.0. A new survey last month put the number of wild Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) at 523 individuals, a rise of 27% from the previous survey in 2010. Once roaming across much of Central and Western Asia, Asiatic lions today are found in only one place: Gir […]
Happy tigers: Siberian population continues to grow

Captive Siberian tiger at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Bronx Zoo. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS. The Siberian tiger population continues to rebound, according to the latest numbers from the subspecies’ stronghold in Russia. Ten years ago, conservationists estimated 423-502 Amur tigers in Siberia. But last month, the Russian government and WWF said numbers had […]
Tigers expanding? Conservationists discover big cats in Thai park

Tigers have been documented in Thailand’s Chaloem Ratanakosin National Park for the first time. Photo by: ZSL and Thailand’s Department of National Parks. For the first time conservationists have confirmed Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris corbetti) in Thailand’s Chaloem Ratanakosin National Park. In January, camera traps used by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Thailand’s […]
Zambia lifts hunting ban on big cats

Lions in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Nine months after Zambia lifted its general trophy hunting ban—including on elephants—the country has now lifted its ban on hunting African lions (Panthera leo) and leopards (Panthera pardus). The Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) lifted the ban after surveying its big cat populations and […]
Australia becomes first country to ban lion trophies

Young lion in Kruger National Park in South Africa. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last month, Australia became the world’s first country to ban the import or export of lion trophies, often taken from so-called canned hunting where lions are raised solely to be shot by foreign hunters. “These new rules mean that if you […]
King of the jungle returns to Gabon after nearly 20 year absence

Male lion in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Most of the world’s lions are now found in southern and eastern Africa. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. There’s a new cat in town. For the first time since 1996, conservationists have proof of a lion roaming the wilds of the Central African country of Gabon. The […]
Tiger family photo surprises scientists

An Amur tiger father leading a mother and three cubs in Russia. Photo by: WCS, Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve, and Udegeiskaya Legenda National Park. In a frigid Russian forest, a camera trap snapped 21 family photos over two minutes. This wasn’t a usual family, though, this was a tiger family, more specifically an Amur tiger (Panthera […]
Photos: Amur leopard population hits at least 65

Camera trap of Amur leopard. The Amur leopard evolved its thick coat to keep warm in the cold, long winters. Photo by: WWF. Most of the world’s big predators are in decline, but there are some happy stories out there. This week, WWF announced that the Amur leopard population has grown to a total of […]
To keep big cats out, use a cat door

Swing gates help decrease human-wildlife conflict in South Africa As a hunter searches for prey, heat radiates off the sun stroked horizon distorting the landscape. At the snap of a twig and a rustle in thorny acacia the hunter is off. Keen eyed hearing pinpoint its prey: the cheetah spots an impala and immediately gives […]
Feds confirm first wolf in the Grand Canyon area shot dead

A photo of 914F just north of the Grand Canyon wearing an inactive collar. The wolf was shot dead on in Utah. Photo courtesy of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Last fall, tourists to the north rim of the Grand Canyon reported seeing a gray wolf (Canis lupus). The only problem was there had […]
Super-rare carnivore photographed in Yosemite after missing for nearly a century

Sierra Nevada fox caught on camera trap in Yosemite National Park. Photo by: National Park Service. For years, biologists believed the Sierra Nevada fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) was down to a single population of around 20 animals in California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park. But then in 2010, biologists found a small population near Sonora Pass. […]
Adorbs: scientists capture first photos of African golden cat kittens

Elusive, little-known cats are ‘just unbelievably sneaky’ The African golden cat is arguably the continent’s least known feline, inhabiting dense tropical forests, almost never seen, and, of course, long-upstaged by Africa’s famous felines: lions, cheetahs, and leopards. But a few intrepid scientists are beginning to uncover the long-unknown lives of these wild cats, which are […]
Video: camera trap catches jaguar hunting peccaries

Catching a jaguar on a remote camera trap in the Amazon is a rare, happy sight. But catching a jaguar attempting to ambush a herd of peccaries is quite simply astonishing. “A research assistant, who was coding the videos sent me an email to have a look,” said primatologist, Mark Bowler, a postdoctoral fellow at […]
India’s tiger population up by more than 500 animals in four years

Ocean’s 15: meet the species that have vanished forever from our seas
- In the last 500 years, the oceans have suffered far fewer extinctions than on land&.
- According to a recent study in Science, 15 animals are known to have vanished forever from the oceans while terrestrial ecosystems have seen 514 extinctions.
- The researchers, however, warn that the number of marine extinctions could rise rapidly as the oceans are industrialized.

Mother and cub: researchers photograph rare cat with cub in Sumatra

A mother Asian golden cat holding her cub, who was caught on camera trap in the Kerinci Seblat National Park in Sumatra. Photo by: Sumatran Tiger Research Team. Researchers working in Kerinci Seblat National Park have captured a remarkable image of a mother Asian golden cat (Catopuma temminckii) carrying her young in her mouth. The […]
Judge protects Midwest wolves after 1,599 killed in three years

Future wolf hunting and trapping seasons in the Upper Midwest are on hold after a judge ruled the Obama Administration erred in removing the top predator from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) last month. The ruling came nearly three years after the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service dropped federal protections for the so-called Great Lakes’ wolf […]
Ocelots live in super densities on Barro Colorado Island

An ocelot in Colombia. Photo by: Brodie Ferguson. By comparing camera trapping findings with genetic samples taken from feces, biologists have determined that the density of ocelots on Barro Colorado Island in Panama is the highest yet recorded. There are over three ocelots per every two square kilometers (0.77 square miles) on the island, according […]
When predators attack, plants grow fewer thorns

An African wild dog scans the bushland for prey. Photo Credit: AT Ford Crisp lines of light begin to play out across the landscape. As the morning light grows, blades of grass take shape and, amongst rocky outcrops, green acacia breaks the yellow and gold of the savannah. Stirring in this early morning atmosphere is […]
Rhino, cheetah win the world’s top camera trap photo contest

Overall winner of the photography categories and Animal Portraits winner: Black rhino, Zambia. Photo by: Will Burrard-Lucas. Two big—and endangered—mammals took 2014’s top prizes in the world’s biggest camera trap photo contest: a black rhino and a Asiatic cheetah. The gorgeous shot of a black rhino at night in Zambia photo won the overall photo […]
Feds: gray wolf may have returned to the Grand Canyon after 70 years

Obama administration proposes to remove wolves from the ESA even as the animals spread to new states A photo of what is believed to be a gray wolf sporting an inactive radio collar in forests just north of the Grand Canyon. Photo courtesy of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. For an update on this […]
Russia and China blamed for blocking Antarctic marine reserve

An Antarctic krill. Photo by: Uwe Kils/Creative Commons 3.0. Another year, another failed attempt to protect a significant chunk of the Ross Sea, which sits off the coast of Antarctica. According to observers, efforts to create the world’s biggest marine protected area to date were shot down by Russia and China during a meeting in […]
Photos: slumbering lions win top photo prize

This photo of slumbering lions has won Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols the much-coveted Wildlife Photographer of the Year Title. Photo by: Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols / Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014. The king of beasts took this year’s top prize in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, which is co-owned by the Natural History Museum […]
Saving Asia’s other endangered cats (photos)

Flat-headed cat and fishing cat require immediate research and conservation attention. It’s no secret that when it comes to the wild cats of Asia—and, really, cats in general—tigers get all the press. In fact, tigers—down to an estimated 3,200 individuals—arguably dominate conservation across Asia. But as magnificent, grand, and endangered as the tigers are, there […]
‘River wolves’ recover in Peruvian park, but still remain threatened inside and out (photos)

A giant river otter with a fish in its mouth. Photo by: Frank Hajek. Lobo de río, or river wolf, is the very evocative Spanish name for one of the Amazon’s most spectacular mammals: the giant river otter (Pteronura brasiliensis). This highly intelligent, deeply social, and simply charming freshwater predator almost vanished entirely due to […]
The only solution for polar bears: ‘stop the rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gases’

Steven Amstrup will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 11th, 2014. In 1773, an expedition headed by Constantine John Phipps, the Second Baron Mulgrave, embarked on a dangerous journey North—to see how far they could go before having to turn back. In his report at the end of […]
What makes the jaguar the ultimate survivor? New books highlights mega-predator’s remarkable past and precarious future

An interview with Alan Rabinowitz, author of the new book, An Indomitable Beast: the Journey of the Jaguar Female jaguar (staring into camera) with subadult male offspring moving through an old oil palm plantation in the jaguar corridor of Colombia. Photo by: Esteban Payan, Panthera. For thousands of years the jaguar was a God, then […]
Malayan tiger population plunges to just 250-340 individuals

Malayan tiger. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Malaysia is on the edge of losing its tigers, and the world is one step nearer to losing another tiger subspecies: the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni). Camera trap surveys from 2010-2013 have estimated that only 250-340 Malayan tigers remain, potentially a halving of the previous estimate of […]
Meet the newest enemy to India’s wildlife

Cars versus leopards: big cats and other animals face decline due to rising traffic. A big cat crosses the Mysore-Mananthavadi Highway as commercial vehicles look on. Photo credit: Vikram Nanjappa. Adapted from a 2010 report on wildlife mortality reduction measures in the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve. WARNING: Graphic photos below. On the front page of the […]
Forgotten species: the exotic squirrel with a super tail

Everyone knows the tiger, the panda, the blue whale, but what about the other five to thirty million species estimated to inhabit our Earth? Many of these marvelous, stunning, and rare species have received little attention from the media, conservation groups, and the public. This series is an attempt to give these ‘forgotten species‘ some […]
Demand for shark fin plunging

Shark fins are usually sliced off the animal while its still alive. Photo by: WildAid/Hilton. Shark fin demand has dropped precipitously in China in just a few years, according to a new report by WildAid. The wildlife NGO has spearheaded a major media campaign, incorporating celebrities like Yao Ming, to raise awareness about the impacts […]
Seeking justice for Corazón: jaguar killings test the conservation movement in Mexico

Female jaguar with radio collar and cub found burned near reserve in Northern Mexico Corazón in 2009. This jaguar, living near the U.S.-Mexican border, was killed and burned in February, sparking calls for conservation reform. Photo courtesy of the Northern Jaguar Project/Naturalia. Eight years ago, a female jaguar cub was caught on film by a […]
Short-eared dog? Uncovering the secrets of one of the Amazon’s most mysterious mammals

Meet Oso: how a ‘pet’ short-eared dog helped scientists shed light on this cryptic carnivore Fifteen years ago, scientists knew next to nothing about one of the Amazon’s most mysterious residents: the short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis). Although the species was first described in 1883 and is considered the sole representative of the Atelocynus genus, biologists […]
Scientists can now accurately count polar bears…from space

Polar bears are big animals. As the world’s largest land predators, a single male can weigh over a staggering 700 kilograms (about 1,500 pounds). But as impressive as they are, it’s difficult to imagine counting polar bears from space. Still, this is exactly what scientists have done according to a new paper in the open-access […]
Cats’ best friend? A new role for guard dogs in South Africa

Dogs protect livestock from predators, predators from humans The last couple centuries have seen the decline of many large predator species. While there has been a surge of recovery and reintroduction programs to combat this problem, human population growth and limited protected areas have led to increased rates of human-wildlife conflicts in many regions of […]
Stuff of fairy tales: stepping into Europe’s last old-growth forest

On bison, wolves, and woodpeckers: the wonder of Europe’s only lowland virgin forest. Bialowieza Forest at dawn. Old-growth forest is characterized by ancient trees, tall canopies, little undergrowth, and a huge amount of dead wood. Photo by: Lukasz Mazurek/Wild Poland There is almost nothing left of Europe’s famed forests, those that provided for human communities […]
Chinese fishermen get the ultimate phone video: a swimming tiger

Two Chinese fishermen got the catch of their lives…on mobile phone this week. While fishing in the Ussuri River, which acts as a border between Russia and China, the fishermen were approached by a swimming Siberian tiger. These tigers, also known as Amur tigers, are down to around 350-500 animals. At first the brothers thought […]
Camera trap captures first ever video of rarely-seen bird in the Amazon…and much more
- Nocturnal curassow filmed in the wild for the first time: A camera trap program in Ecuador’s embattled Yasuni National Program has struck gold, taking what researchers believe is the first ever film of a wild nocturnal curassow.
- The only member of the genus, Nothocrax, the nocturnal curassow is the smallest curassow, a group of birds in the Cracidae family and distantly related to mound-building birds in Australasia.
- The nocturnal curassow is known for its booming singing at night.

Four donors pledge $80 million for big cats

Four donors from around the world have pledged $80 million to cat conservation group, Panthera. The money will fund projects working to preserve tigers, lions, jaguars, cheetahs, leopards, snow leopards, and cougars over ten years. “Today marks a turning point for global cat conservation,” said Panthera Founder and Chairman of the Board, Thomas Kaplan, who […]
Camera trap catches rare feline attempting to tackle armored prey (VIDEO)

Illustration of the African golden cat. Image by: John Gerrard Keulemans. One of the world’s least known wild cats may have taken on more than it could handle in a recent video released by the Gashaka Biodiversity Project from Nigeria’s biggest national park, Gashaka Gumti. The video, taken by remote camera trap, shows an African […]
Scientists release odd-looking, Critically Endangered crocodiles back into the wild (PHOTOS)

Among the largest and most endangered crocodilians in the world, the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) is on the verge of extinction today. This harmless fish-eating crocodile has fewer than 200 adult breeding individuals in the wild, their numbers having plummeted rapidly over the past few decades due to destruction of their riverine habitats, entanglement in fishing […]
After 89-year absence a wolf returns to Iowa…and is shot dead

DNA testing has confirmed that an animal shot in February in Iowa’s Buchanan County was in fact a wolf, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. This is the first confirmed gray wolf (Canis lupus) in the U.S. state since 1925. Experts believe the wolf likely traveled south from Wisconsin or Minnesota, the latter […]
Kala: the face of tigers in peril

In 1864, Walter Campbell was an officer in the British Army, stationed in India when he penned these words in his journal: “Never attack a tiger on foot—if you can help it. There are cases in which you must do so. Then face him like a Briton, and kill him if you can; for if […]
Scientist discovers a plethora of new praying mantises (pictures)

A new species of praying mantis named after former Vice President Al Gore—Liturgusa algorei—for his climate activism. Photo courtesy of Svenson et al. Despite their pacific name, praying mantises are ferocious top predators with powerful, grasping forelimbs; spiked legs; and mechanistic jaws. In fact, imagine a tiger that can rotate its head 180 degrees or […]
Incredible encounter: whales devour European eels in the darkness of the ocean depths

The Critically Endangered European eel makes one of the most astounding migrations in the wild kingdom. After spending most of its life in Europe’s freshwater rivers, the eel embarks on an undersea odyssey, traveling 6,000 kilometers (3,720 miles) to the Sargasso Sea where it will spawn and die. The long-journeying eels larva than make their […]
Predator appreciation: how saving lions, tigers, and polar bears could rescue ourselves

Lioness feeding. Photo by: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. In the new book, In Predatory Light: Lions and Tigers and Polar Bears, authors Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Sy Montgomery, and John Houston, and photographers Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson share with us an impassioned and detailed appeal to appreciate three of the world’s biggest predators: lions, […]
Over 2,500 wolves killed in U.S.’s lower 48 since 2011

Hunters and trappers have killed 2,567 gray wolves in the U.S.’s lower 48 states since 2011, according to recent data. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) were protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for nearly 40 years before being stripped of their protection status by a legislative rider in 2011. Last year total wolf populations were […]
Feral crèches: parenting in wild India

The Wildlife Conservation Society-India has been camera trapping wild animals for over 20 years in the Western Ghats. The results reveal the most intimate, fascinating and sometimes comical insights into animal behavior and ecology. These mammals generally become secretive and protective during parenting, and therefore we seldom get to see little ones in the wild. […]
Wonderful Creatures: A nematode drama played out in a millipede’s gut

Nematodes are typically small animals that to the naked eye look very much alike; however, these creatures are fantastically diverse —on a par with the arthropods in terms of species diversity. At face value, nematodes lack the charisma of larger animals, so there are very few biologists who have made it their life’s work to […]
Snow leopards and other mammals caught on camera trap in Uzbekistan (photos)

Scientists knew that snow leopards (Panthera uncia) still survived in the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan, but late last year they captured the first ever photos. Camera traps in the Gissar Nature Reserve took photos of the big cats, along with bear, lynx, ibex, wild boar, and other mammals. The camera trap program was led […]
For agoutis, the night is fraught with peril

Scientists discover clear temporal patterns between the ocelot and its agouti prey. The early bird might get the worm, but, as scientists have discovered, the bird is also quite likely to become a cat’s meal. In a study recently published in the online Animal Behavior journal, scientists from the US and the Netherlands have examined […]
German government gives tigers $27 million

At a summit in 2010, the world’s 13 tiger range states pledged to double the number of tigers (Panthera tigris) in the wild by 2020. Today, non-tiger state Germany announced its assistance toward that end. Through its KfW Development Bank, the German government has pledged around $27 million (20 million Euro) to a new program […]
Rewilding Chile’s savanna with guanacos could increase biodiversity and livestock

‘They justify bigness:’ rewilding the ancestor of the llama in Chile Local extinctions have occurred across a variety of habitats on every continent, affecting a gamut of species from large predators such as the wolves of North America, to tiny amphibians like the Kihansi spray toad of Tanzania. The long trek toward reversing such extinctions […]
86 percent of big animals in the Sahara Desert are extinct or endangered

Bigger than all of Brazil, among the harshest ecosystems on Earth, and largely undeveloped, one would expect that the Sahara desert would be a haven for desert wildlife. One would anticipate that big African animals—which are facing poaching and habitat loss in other parts of the world—would thrive in this vast wilderness. But a new […]
Scientists discover new cat species roaming Brazil

As a family, cats are some of the most well-studied animals on Earth, but that doesn’t mean these adept carnivores don’t continue to surprise us. Scientists have announced today the stunning discovery of a new species of cat, long-confused with another. Looking at the molecular data of small cats in Brazil, researchers found that the […]
Camera traps reveal Amur leopards are breeding in China (photos)

Good news today about one of the world’s rarest mammals: camera traps in China’s Wangqing Nature Reserve have captured the first proof of breeding Amur leopards in the country, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The photos show a mother Amur leopard with two cubs. A recent survey by WWF-Russia estimated the total wild […]
Wolves boost food for Yellowstone’s threatened grizzlies

Wolves and grizzlies aren’t best buddies. Burly bears can barge in on a feasting pack, making off with the wolves’ fresh kill. Wolves have been known to dig into bear dens and snag a cub. But after gray wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, grizzly bears ate more berries in the summer for […]
Could camera trap videos galvanize the world to protect Yasuni from oil drilling?

Even ten years ago it would have been impossible to imagine: clear-as-day footage of a jaguar plodding through the impenetrable Amazon, or a bicolored-spined porcupine balancing on a branch, or a troop of spider monkeys feeding at a clay lick, or a band of little coatis racing one-by-one from the dense foliage. These are things […]
World’s most cryptic feline photographed in logging concession

The bay cat is arguably the world’s least-known member of the cat family (Felidae). Although first described by scientists in 1874, no photo existed of a living specimen until 1998 and a wild cat in its rainforest habitat wasn’t photographed until five years later. Given this, scientists with Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Imperial […]
Honey badgers and more: camera traps reveal wealth of small carnivores in Gabon (photos)

Gabon has lost most of its big meat-eaters including lions, spotted hyenas, and African wild dogs (although it’s still home to a lot of leopards), but a new study focuses on the country’s lesser-known species with an appetite for flesh. For the first time, researchers surveyed Gabon’s small carnivores, including 12 species from the honey […]
Camera-traps reveal surprising mammals at remote site in Honduras (photos)

A camera trap survey along the Sikre River in Honduras has discovered that the region is home to a menagerie of rare mammals, including giant anteaters. The survey, published in mongabay.com’s open access journal, Tropical Conservation Science, recorded five cat species in 70 square kilometers. The Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve (RPBR), through which the Sikre […]
Samburu’s lions: how the big cats could make a comeback in Kenya

Shivani Bhalla will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 12th, 2013. In 2009 conservationists estimated that less than 2,000 lions survive in Kenya, a drop of 26 percent in just seven years. In addition, the East Africa country continues to hemorrhage lions: around a hundred a year. Poaching, […]
Terror from above: eagle tackles deer in stunning camera trap photos

During a routine Amur tiger survey with remote camera traps in December 2011, a few photos gave biologists a shock when they revealed the stunning sight of a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) launching itself on the back of a 7-month old sika deer (Cervus nippon) and bringing down prey that outweighed it by at least […]
Lions rising: community conservation making a difference for Africa’s kings in Mozambique

Colleen Begg will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 12th, 2013. Everyone knows that tigers, pandas, and blue whales are threatened with extinction—but lions!? Researchers were shocked to recently discover that lion populations have fallen precipitously: down to around 30,000 animals across the African continent. While 30,000 may […]
Protecting predators in the wildest landscape you’ve never heard of

A Ruaha male lion in his prime. Photo © : Sasja van Vechgel. The Serengeti, the Congo, the Okavango Delta: many of Africa’s great wildernesses are household names, however on a continent that never fails to surprise remain vast wild lands practically unknown to the global public. One of these is the Ruaha landscape: covering […]
Featured video: how tigers could save human civilization

In the video below, John Vaillant, author of the The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, tells an audience at TEDxYYC about the similarities between tigers and human beings. Given these similarities—big mammals, apex predator, highly adaptable, intelligent, and stunningly “superior”—John Vaillant asks an illuminating question: what can we learn from the tiger? […]
Last disease-free Tasmanian devils imperiled by mine

The federal environment minister, Mark Butler, has given the go-ahead to a controversial mine that the courts halted amid concerns it could drastically affect the last stronghold of the Tasmanian devil. Butler said he had granted approval to Shree Minerals to proceed with its iron ore mine at Nelson Bay River in the north-west of […]
Nepal’s tigers on the rebound

Nearly two hundred tigers roam the lowland forests of Nepal, according to a new survey. This is a 63 percent increase in the country’s tiger population since 2009, and rare good news for global efforts to save the tiger from extinction. The survey counted 198 Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) across five parks and three […]
Scientists: lions need funding not fences

Fences are not the answer to the decline in Africa’s lions, according to a new paper in Ecology Letters. The new research directly counters an earlier controversial study that argued keeping lions fenced-in would be cheaper and more effective in saving the big cats. African lion (Panthera leo) populations across the continent have fallen dramatically: […]
The Egyptian Vulture on the Balkans – a hopeful but perilous conservation story

“They look like humans: have bare skin, wrinkles, hairdos… Maybe that’s why many people don’t like them,” says Dr. Stoyan Nikolov from the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds about Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus). Poisoned, electrocuted, shot, these rare and magnificent birds are the fastest disappearing raptors in Europe. The globally endangered species has […]
60 big cats killed in Brazilian parks in last two years

At least 60 big cats have been killed within national protected areas in Brazil during the past two years according to a recent survey published in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science (TCS). The report, which focuses on jaguar (Panthera onca) and puma (Puma concolor) populations, within Brazilian protected areas shows that reserve management […]
Local people provide wildlife and forest data in park plagued by conflict

There are often many obstacles for scientists when gauging wildlife decline and forest loss, and one of the most difficult is civil conflict, like the situation in the Similipal Tiger Reserve in India. But a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science (TCS) finds that local communities may be used to gauge […]
Conserving top predators results in less CO2 in the air

What does a wolf in Yellowstone National Park have in common with an ambush spider on a meadow in Connecticut? Both are predators and thus eat herbivores, such as elk (in the case of wolves) and grasshoppers (in the case of spiders). Elk and grasshoppers also have more in common than you probably imagine: they […]
Tibetan monks partner with conservationists to protect the snow leopard

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th—July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. Snow leopard. Photo by: Steve Winter/National Geographic. Tibetan monks […]
Monster shark sparks talk of overfishing

A giant mako shark caught by a sports-fisherman in California Monday has spurred a conversation about declining shark populations worldwide, reports the Associated Press. The female shark caught Monday off Huntington Beach by Jason Johnston of Mesquite, Texas, weighed in at 1,323 pounds and measured 11 feet long and eight feet around at its midsection. […]
Monitor lizards vanishing to international trade in pets and skins

Illegally traded lizards (left to right): black tree monitor (Varanus beccarii), Reisinger’s tree monitor (Varanus reisingeri), emerald monitor (Varanus prasinus), and the blue-spotted tree monitor (Varanus macraei). Photo courtesy of Jessica Lyons. The world’s monitor lizards remind us that the world was once ruled by reptiles: this genus (Varanus) includes the world’s biggest lizards, such […]
Snowy tigers and giant owls: conservation against the odds in Russia’s Far East

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th – July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. An Amur tiger in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains, […]
Three new species of carnivorous snails discovered in endangered habitat in Thailand (photos)

Scientists from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Natural History Museum, London recently discovered three new species of carnivorous snails in northern Thailand. However, the celebration of these discoveries is tainted by the fact that the new snails are already threatened with extinction due to the destruction of their limestone habitat. The new snail species named […]
Scientists capture one of the world’s rarest big cats on film (photos)

Less than a hundred kilometers from the bustling metropolis of Jakarta, scientists have captured incredible photos of one of the world’s most endangered big cats: the Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas). Taken by a research project in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park, the photos show the magnificent animal relaxing in dense primary rainforest. Scientists believe that […]
Could the Tasmanian tiger be hiding out in New Guinea?

Many people still believe the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) survives in the wilds of Tasmania, even though the species was declared extinct over eighty years ago. Sightings and reports of the elusive carnivorous marsupial, which was the top predator on the island, pop-up almost as frequently as those of Bigfoot in North America, but to […]
Crazy cat numbers: unusually high jaguar densities discovered in the Amazon rainforest

Jaguars (Panthera onca) are the biggest cat in the Americas and the only member of the Panthera genus in the New World; an animal most people recognize, the jaguar is also the third largest cat in the world with an intoxicatingly dangerous beauty. The feline ranges from the harsh deserts of southern Arizona to the […]
Industrialized fishing has forced seabirds to change what they eat

The bleached bones of seabirds are telling us a new story about the far-reaching impacts of industrial fisheries on today’s oceans. Looking at the isotopes of 250 bones from Hawaiian petrels (Pterodroma sandwichensis), scientists have been able to reconstruct the birds’ diets over the last 3,000 years. They found an unmistakable shift from big prey […]
Endangered primates and cats may be hiding out in swamps and mangrove forests

What happens to animals when their forest is cut down? If they can, they migrate to different forests. But in an age when forests are falling far and fast, many species may have to shift to entirely different environments. A new paper in Folia Primatologica theorizes that some 60 primate species and 20 wild cat […]
13 year search for Taiwan’s top predator comes up empty-handed

After 13 years of searching for the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura), once hopeful scientists say they believe the cat is likely extinct. For more than a decade scientists set up over 1,500 camera traps and scent traps in the mountains of Taiwan where they believed the cat may still be hiding out, only […]
Obama Administration to propose stripping protection from all gray wolves

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is proposing to end protection for all gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the lower 48 states, save for a small population of Mexican wolves in New Mexico, reports the Los Angeles Times. The proposal comes two years after wolves were removed from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in […]
Bizarre, little-known carnivore sold as illegal pet in Indonesian markets (photo)

Few people have ever heard of the Javan ferret-badger, but that hasn’t stopped this animal—little-known even to scientists—from being sold in open markets in Jakarta according to a new paper in Small Carnivore Conservation. The Javan ferret-badger (Melogale orientalis) is one of five species in the ferret-badger family, which are smaller than proper badgers with […]
Lions for sale: big game hunting combines with lion bone trade to threaten endangered cats

Koos Hermanus would rather not give names to the lions he breeds. So here, behind a 2.4-meter high electric fence, is 1R, a three-and-a-half-year-old male, who consumes 5kg of meat a day and weighs almost 200kg. It will only leave its enclosure once it has been “booked”‘ by a hunter, most of whom are from […]
Amur leopard population rises to 50 animals, but at risk from tigers, poachers

In the remote Russian far east, amid pine forests and long winters, a great cat may be beginning to make a recovery. A new survey estimates that the Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) population has risen to as many as 50 individuals. While this may not sound like much, it’s a far cry from a […]
Male lions require dense vegetation for successful ambush hunting

Female lion with wildebeest kill in Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. For a long time male lions were derided as the lazy ones in the pride, depending on females for the bulk of hunting and not pulling their weight. Much of this was based on field observations—female lions hunt cooperatively, often in open savannah, […]
Forgotten lions: shedding light on the fate of lions in unprotected areas

Male lion in Zambia. Photo by: Stuart Pimm. African lions (Panthera leo) living outside of protected areas like national parks or reserves also happen to be studied much less than those residing within protected areas, to the detriment of lion conservation initiatives. In response to this trend, a group of researchers surveyed an understudied, unprotected […]
The end of wild Africa?: lions may need fences to survive

Lions hang out by a fence in Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa. Photo by: Luke Hunter. In order for dwindling lion populations to survive in Africa, large-scale fencing projects may be required according to new research in Ecology Letters. Recent estimates have put lion populations down to 15,000-35,000, a massive drop from a population that […]
Chinese government creating secret demand for tiger trade alleges NGO (warning: graphic images)

Tiger bodies in freezer in Guilin Tiger Bear Farm. Photo by: Belinda Wright/WPSI. The number of tigers being captive bred in China for consumption exceed those surviving in the wild—across 13 countries—by over a third, according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). The report, Hidden in Plain Sight, alleges that while […]
Asiatic cheetahs: on the road to extinction?

New road projects imperils Critically Endangered cheetah subspecies Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) are unique among large cats. They have a highly specialized body, a mild temperament, and are the fastest living animals on land. Acinonyx jubatus venaticus, the Asiatic subspecies, is unique among cheetahs and the only member of five currently living subspecies to occur outside […]
Jaguars, tapirs, oh my!: Amazon explorer films shocking wildlife bonanza in threatened forest

Watching a new video by Amazon explorer, Paul Rosolie, one feels transported into a hidden world of stalking jaguars, heavyweight tapirs, and daylight-wandering giant armadillos. This is the Amazon as one imagines it as a child: still full of wild things. In just four weeks at a single colpa (or clay lick where mammals and […]
Chasing down ‘quest species’: new book travels the world in search of rarity in nature

A poster-child for rare species: the Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) captured on camera trap in its last stand: Ujung Kulon National Park Java, Indonesia. Photo by: © Mike Griffiths / WWF-Canon. In his new book, The Kingdom of Rarities, Eric Dinerstein chases after rare animals around the world, from the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) in […]
Tigers gobble up 49 percent of India’s wildlife conservation funds, more imperiled species get nothing

Bengal tiger in Rantgambhore National Park. Photo by: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen. Nearly half of India’s wildlife budget goes to one species: the tiger, reports a recent article in Live Mint. India has devoted around $63 million to wildlife conservation for 2013-2013, of which Project Tiger receives $31 million. The Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is […]
Catching Borneo’s mysterious wild cats on film

Marbled cat. Photo courtesy of: Jyrki Hokkanen. In my childhood’s biology books from the 50’s, the Australian marsupial tiger Thylacine is classified rare but alive. Today we know that the last thylacine died in a Tasmanian zoo 7th September, 1936, after a century of intensive hunting encouraged by bounties. The local government had finally introduced […]
Animal picture of the day: the world’s biggest cat

An eighteenth-month-old Amur tiger, named Botzman, was recently moved from a zoo in Moscow to Zoological Society of London (ZSL) Whipsnade Zoo. Photo courtesy of ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Siberian tiger, is the world’s biggest cat. An adult male weighs on average about 390 pounds (176 […]
Over 1,500 wolves killed in the contiguous U.S. since hunting legalized

Wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Photo courtesy of Yellowstone National Park. Hunters and trappers have killed approximately 1,530 wolves over the last 18 months in the contiguous U.S., which excludes Alaska. After being protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for 38 years, gray wolves (Canis lupus) were stripped of their protected states in 2011 […]
U.S. proposes to list wolverine under Endangered Species Act

Wolverine in the snow. Photo by: Bigstock. Arguably one of the toughest animals on Earth, the wolverine (Gulo gulo) may soon find itself protected under the U.S.’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) as climate change melts away its preferred habitat. Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced it was proposing to place the […]
Geneticists discover distinct lion group in squalid conditions

Behind bars and waiting for science: the power of genetic testing for the Addis Fifteen. Male and female Addis lions in the Addis Ababa Lion Zoo. Photo courtesy of: Klaus Eulenberger. They languished behind bars in squalid conditions, their very survival in jeopardy. Outside, an international team of advocates strove to bring worldwide attention to […]
Claim of human and tiger ‘coexistence’ lacks perspective

The tiger is a globally endangered top predator occupying only 7% of its historic range and only 3000-3500 individuals are believed to be left in wild. Picture © Kalyan Varma. Nepal’s Chitwan National Park was the site of a study, published in September 2012 by Carter and others, which concluded that, tigers coexist with humans […]
Living beside a tiger reserve: scientists study compensation for human-wildlife conflict in India

Bengal tiger in Kanha Tiger Reserve. Photo by: Kalyan Varma. During an average year, 87% of households surrounding Kanha Tiger Reserve in Central India report experiencing some kind of conflict with wild animals, according to a new paper in the open-access journal PLOS One. Co-existence with protected, free-roaming wildlife can be a challenge when living […]
Three developing nations move to ban hunting to protect vanishing wildlife

African savannah elephants on the Chobe River in Botswana. From 2014 on, hunting will no longer be allowed in Botswana’s public lands. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. Three developing countries have recently toughened hunting regulations believing the changes will better protect vanishing species. Botswana has announced it will ban trophy hunting on public lands beginning in […]
In the kingdom of the black panther

A black panther (in this case a leopard) caught on camera trap in the Kenyir Wildlife Corridor. Photo courtesy of Rimba. The black panther has a mythical aura: Rudyard Kipling chose the animal for one of his heroes in The Jungle Book, in the 1970s it became the symbol of an African-American socialist party, while […]
An avalanche of decline: snow leopard populations are plummeting

Snow leopard in the Toronto Zoo. Photo by: John Vetterli. The trading of big cat pelts is nothing new, but recent demand for snow leopard pelts and taxidermy mounts has added a new commodity to the illegal trade in wildlife products, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Traditionally, the market for large cat products […]
Lion population falls 68 percent in 50 years

Female lion with wildebeest kill in Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. African lions, one of the most iconic species on the planet, are in rapid decline. According to a new study in Biodiversity Conservation, the African lion (Panthera leo leo) population has dropped from around 100,000 animals just fifty years ago to as few […]
Jeff Corwin talks sharks

Sharks are among the most feared of all the world’s predators, yet humans kill tens of millions of sharks for every person who falls victim to shark attack. Part of our fear stems from lack of understanding. A new eBook however tries to change that. Jeff Corwin, an Emmy Award Winning TV host, has this […]
Africa’s great savannahs may be more endangered than the world’s rainforests

Grasslands in Kenya’s Masai Mara. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Few of the world’s ecosystems are more iconic than Africa’s sprawling savannahs home to elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and the undisputed king of the animal kingdom: lions. This wild realm, where megafauna still roam in abundance, has inspired everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Karen Blixen, and […]
New Guinea singing dog photographed in the wild for the first time

Cropped close-up of New Guinea singing dog. This is arguably the first time the dingo-like canine has been photographed in the wild. Photo by: Tom Hewitt. A rarely seen canine has been photographed in the wild, likely for the first time. Tom Hewitt, director of Adventure Alternative Borneo, photographed the New Guinea singing dog during […]
Wolves, mole rats, and nyala: the struggle to conserve Ethiopia’s highlands

Gaysay Grasslands in Bale Mountains National Park. Photo courtesy of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). There is a place in the world where wolves live almost entirely off mountain rodents, lions dwell in forests, and freshwater rolls downstream to 12 million people, but the place—Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park—remains imperiled by a lack of legal […]
Controversial wolf hunt moves to the Midwest, 196 wolves killed to date

Many top predators worldwide remain hated and feared. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service. The hugely controversial wolf hunt in the U.S. has spread from the western U.S. (Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming) to the Midwest (Minnesota and Wisconsin) this year. Although the wolf hunt is less than a month old in the region—and only […]
Conservationists turn camera traps on tiger poachers

Camera trap catches intruders in Lazovsky Nature Reserve. Photo courtesy of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Remote camera traps, which take photos or video when a sensor is triggered, have been increasingly used to document rare and shy wildlife, but now conservationists are taking the technology one step further: detecting poachers. Already, camera traps […]
Picture of the day: cheetah cubs wrestle Halloween pumpkins

Zookeepers at the Zoological Society of London’s Whipsnade Zoo gave pumpkins to six five-month old cheetah cubs and watched them run wild. Photo courtesy of ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. The fastest land animal in the world, cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) can exceed 110 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour) in short bursts. This speed allows them […]
Leopard poaching is a bigger problem in India than previously believed

Leopard skin. © TRAFFIC. A recent study conducted by wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC uncovered unnerving statistics about the illegal trade of leopards (Panthera pardus) in India: at least four leopards have been poached every week for the past decade in the country. The study, entitled Illuminating the Blind Spot: A study on illegal trade […]
Illegal hunting threatens iconic animals across Africa’s great savannas, especially predators

Lion with a snare around its neck. Photo by: Frederike Otten. Courtesy of Panthera. Bushmeat hunting has become a grave concern for species in West and Central Africa, but a new report notes that lesser-known illegal hunting in Africa’s iconic savannas is also decimating some animals. Surprisingly, illegal hunting across eastern and southern Africa is […]
After seven year search, scientists film cryptic predator in Minas Gerais

Still from camera trap video. Bush dog on left side. Photo courtesy of WWF Brasil. South America’s rare and little-known bush dog (Speothos venaticus) looks like a miniature dachshund who went bad: leaner, meaner, and not one to cuddle on your lap, the bush dog is found in 11 South American countries, but scientists believe […]
Photos: emperor penguins take first place in renowned wildlife photo contest

This was the image Paul had been so hoping to get: a sunlit mass of emperor penguins charging upwards, leaving in their wake a crisscross of bubble trails. The location was near the emperor colony at the edge of the frozen area of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. It was into the only likely exit hole […]
Picture of the day: the maned lioness

A maned lioness in Botswanna’s Okavango Delta. Photo by: Deon de Villers. The title is not a typo. Sometimes lioness grow manes as rich and large as males, and there appears to be larger proportion of such ‘maned lionesses’ in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Luke Hunter, head of the cat NGO Panthera, told National Geographic News […]
Photos: new mammal menagerie uncovered in remote Peruvian cloud forest

Possible new species of night monkey in the Aotus genus. Photo by: Alexander Pari. Every year scientists describe around 18,000 new species, but mammals make up less than half a percent of those. Yet mammal surprises remain: deep in the remote Peruvian Andes, scientists have made an incredible discovery: a rich cloud forest and alpine […]
Cute animal picture of the day: caracal kitten in Yemen

Close-up of a caracal kitten in Yemen taken by camera trap. Photo by: the Foundation for the Protection of the Arabian Leopard. The first ever research project on the caracal (Caracal caracal) in Yemen has taken an astounding photo of a mother caracal and her kitten in the Hawf Protected Area. Conducted by largely local […]
Jaguar conservation gets a boost in North and Central America

First camera trap photo of a jaguar taken by Panthera in a deforested area of Costa Rica’s Barbilla-Destierro SubCorridor. Photo by: Panthera. Jaguar conservation has received a huge boost in the past few months both in Latin America and in the U.S. An historic agreement singed between the world’s leading wild cat conservation organization Panthera […]
Cute animal picture of the day: tiger triplets

The Siberian tiger triplets were born to parents, Katharina and Sasha. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS. Last month, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Bronx Zoo saw the arrival of three Siberian tiger cubs (Panthera tigris altaica). Also known as Amur tigers, they are the world’s largest cats with adult males weighing up to 318 kilograms […]
Arachnopocalypse: with birds away, the spiders play in Guam

The accidental introduction of the brown tree snake on Guam has resulted in a loss of birds and a subsequent explosion of spiders. Photo by: Isaac Chellman. The island of Guam is drowning in spiders. New research in the open-access journal PLOS ONE has found that in the wet season, Guam’s arachnid population booms to […]
Rare birds abound in Brazil’s Acre state

The Brazilian state of Acre has had little attention by bird-lovers and bird scientists, though it lies deep in the Amazonian rainforest. Now a new survey in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science by ornithologist, John J. DeLuca, works to build a better picture of rare birds in this largely-neglected region. The work is […]
Buffer zones key to survival of maned wolf

Maned wolf at Beardsley Zoo. Photo by: Sage Ross. Known for its abnormally long lanky legs, its reddish-orange coat, and its omnivorous diet, the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) is one of the more beautiful and bizarre predators of South America. However its stronghold, the Brazilian Cerrado, is vanishing rapidly to industrialized agriculture and urban development. […]
Local knowledge matches scientific data on wildlife abundances

Zebra in Zimbabwe. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. How far can scientists trust local knowledge when it comes to ecosystems? This is a question that is undergoing heavy debate in scientific circles. A new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science contributes to the debate by finding that basic local knowledge of animal abundance […]
Tiger and cubs filmed near proposed dam in Thailand
A tigress and two cubs have been filmed by remote camera trap in a forest under threat by a $400 million dam in Thailand. To be built on the Mae Wong River, the dam imperils two Thai protected areas, Mae Wong National Park and Huay Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, according to the World Wide Fund […]
King of the jungle: lions discovered in rainforests

Female lion peers through the thick foliage of a montane rainforest in Ethiopia. Photo by: Bruno D’Amicis/NABU. Calling the African lion (Panthera leo) the ‘king of the jungle’ is usually a misnomer, as the species is almost always found in savannah or dry forests, but recent photos by the Germany-based Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union […]
Cute animal pictures of the day: lynx triplets

Eurasian lynx triplets were recently born at the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) Whipsnade Zoo. Photo by: ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. With a massive range, spanning from scattered populations in Western Europe to Eastern Siberia, the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) is a highly successful mid-sized predator. Listed as Least Concern by the IUCN Red List, the […]
Animal picture of the day: leopard with giant prey

BPL-223 with the carcass of gaur calf, an animal that may be twice the size of the leopard. Photo by: Vinay S. Kumar. Click to enlarge. It’s true: a leopard cannot change its spots—even after eight years! Using a computer program that looks at leopard spot patterns, researchers were able to identify the above leopard, […]
First snow leopards collared in Afghanistan as species faces rising threat from climate change

The research team conducts a dental exam of a snow leopard prior to its release. Photo by: Anthony Simms/WCS. Scientists have captured and collared two snow leopards (Panthera uncia), arguably one of the world’s most elusive predators, in Afghanistan for the first time. Undertaken by researchers with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Afghani vets, the […]
Cute animal picture of the day: spotted hyena cub

Spotted hyena cub (sex not yet determined) born at Colchester Zoo. Photo courtesy of Colchester Zoo. Spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) are found across sub-Saharan Africa. Adept hunters, hyenas can also survive by scavenging and opportunism. They form the largest packs of any carnivore, which are run by matriarchs. Although, they resemble dogs, the hyena is […]
Animal picture of the day: Sunda clouded leopard in Borneo

A Sunda clouded leopard caught on camera trap. The Sunda clouded leopard was only recently declared a distinct species from its mainland Asian relative. See close-up below. Photo by: Sabah Wildlife Department. The Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) is the largest wild cat in Borneo and is classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red list […]
Animal picture of the day: rare image of Asiatic cheetah and cubs

A rare image of a mother Iranian cheetah and its three cubs. Photo by: Javad Shokouhi/Yazd DOE-CACP. The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), also known as the Iranian cheetah, is one the world’s rarest cat subspecies with somewhere between 70-110 individuals left. No surprisingly it is considered Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List. “This […]
‘Time pollution’: loss of predators pushes nocturnal fish to take advantage of the day

Large-eyed nocturnal fish, such as this moontail bullseye, are highly specialized for operating in the dark. Part of the reason they may have adapted to nighttime living was to avoid predators that are active during the day. Photo by: J. Huang. Nocturnal fish—which sport big eyes for improved night vision—are taking back the day in […]
Nearly 50 tigers die in India in last six months

Bengal tiger in Rantgambhore National Park. Photo by: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen. Since January 1st, 48 Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) have been found dead in India, which has the world’s largest population of tigers. According to India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), 19 of those deaths have been confirmed to be at the hands of […]
Jaguars photographed in palm oil plantation

Jaguar cub approaches camera trap in palm oil plantation in Colombia. Mother looks on from behind. Photo by: Panthera. As the highly-lucrative palm oil plantation moves from Southeast Asia to Africa and Latin America, it brings with it concerns of deforestation and wildlife loss. But an ongoing study in Colombia is finding that small palm […]
New campaign targets snares in effort to save world’s big cats

This six-month old Sumatran tiger cub was strung up in a snare for three days before it was rescued. However, it’s paw had to be amputated. While the cub survived, its freedom has been lost. Unable to hunt and fend for itself, the cub now lives in captivity on the Indonesian island of Java. Photo […]
Animal picture of the day: tracking cheetahs in Namibia

Cheetahs fitted with collars. Photo by: N/a’an ku se Research Project. Click to enlarge. The N/a’an ku se Carnivore Conservation Research Project in Namibia has recently been tracking a male cheetah named Boris. After caught hunting in a game farm, Boris was captured, tagged with a radio collar for GPS tracking, and released back into […]

Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia